Pet Nightmare

I have not written a post about our pets for a long time.  Bessie and Perdie the dogs and Kismet the cat had to stay in Ipoh, Malaysia when we moved to Jeddah and live with a friend, our vet, while we waited for import permits. 

Bessie, our oldest dog is a loved and loving member of the family.
We have missed her terribly.

A few weeks ago we got some excellent news, Bessie and Kismet would be able to join us at the start of September.  Perdie is still waiting for an import permit.  While we were a little sad that our reunion with Perdita would be delayed a while longer we were over the moon at the prospect of seeing Bessie and Kismet again.  Bessie because, at 15 years old we know she does not have much longer with us and Kismet because she was only 6 months old when we had to leave her and we were worried that she had forgotten us. 

Bessie before travelling to KL,
old but strong and healthy

 We had some problems with Bessie’s export clearance.  The government vet in KL reported that she had ticks and needed to be cleaned.  Given that she had left our vet’s care tick free she can only have got them at the very expensive and apparently recommended pet hotel in KL.  We thought nothing of it as the handling company said they would arrange treatment and it should not impact on her travel date.  The weekend before the pets were due to arrive was hectic, our daughters celebrate their birthdays on 1 and 2 September so I had two lots of cupcakes to bake for the girls to bring into class and then two cakes to bake for their joint birthday party.

After just a few days in KL, this is the photograph that gave us nightmares.
Tick fever was slowly killing our beloved dog.

During the party on the Saturday we got some very disturbing news, Bessie had become very sick with an infection and was being sent for blood tests.  They sent us a photo of an open and infected wound that had developed on a patch of dry skin on her elbow.  Stuck thousands of kilometres away from our pet we started to become very worried.  At this stage, however the handling company were still talking about her recovering and being well enough to fly with a few days delay, we thought they were being optimistic given the photographs but we did not think the condition was too serious.  By the following day, however, her condition had deteriorated very badly and the emergency vet said she would recommend that Bessie be put to sleep. Our older children were distraught, Bessie has been with them all their lives,  friend and confidante.  Mr EE and I were heartbroken, Bessie joined our family when we returned from honeymoon, our first ‘baby’.  I know owners are partial but she has always been a very special dog. People who are scared of dogs still want to pet her, with her fuzzy face she looks like the eponymous hero of the popular Hairy MacClary children’s books.  She has comforted us and our family members during the hardest times of our lives and given so many people so much joy.  She deserved much more than dying alone in a hospital in a strange city.

The so called luxury pet hotel ha allowed Bessie's
elbow to get wet and infected.  How long did they wait
before seeking treatment for a wound to get this bad?

Without another thought we booked a last minute flight to KL, I packed a carry on and went straight to the airport.  Given the time difference I would be landing late afternoon on Monday 5 September, the 15^th anniversary of the day Bessie came to live with us.  I emailed the hospital to ask them to do all they could to keep her alive until I arrived.  Our vet in Ipoh said she would drive down to KL after work so she could also say goodbye to Bessie.  I spent the flight alternately watching rubbish to try to keep my mind off things and scrolling through photographs of Bessie praying that I would get there in time.  The flight was almost empty which was a good thing because I must have looked demented with tears streaming down my face the whole time.  Without luggage I was able to speed through immigration.  Not knowing where the hospital was and almost dropping with exhaustion I decided to get a taxi instead of a rental car.  The hospital gave him directions and told me that Bessie was still holding on.  They also offered to suspend their normal 15 minute visiting restrictions and allow me to spend as much time as I needed with Bess.

Bessie was very sick and struggling to respond
when I found her.

When I arrived she was hooked up to a drip in a ward kennel.  She was very sick but  made an effort to lift her head when she saw me, it crashed straight back down to the floor.  I crawled in there with her, stroking her head and holding her paw.  Her breathing was shallow and laboured and her heart hardly beat.  She snuffled at the old socks I had brought from Mr EE and the children, we wanted her to know that even though I was the only one there, the others had not forgotten her and when we called Jeddah  she stirred at the sound of the voices at the other end of the phone. 

After lots of cuddling (I lay in the cage with her)
She finally managed to take some water from her bowl.

I sat there for about 4 hours and in that time she seemed to perk up a little.  She was able to take water from my hand and made small movements to try to push closer to me.  It broke my heart, left for 8 months and she still wanted nothing more than to be with me.  By the time my own vet had arrived Bess was able to lift her head enough to take water from the bowl.  We looked through the medical tests, Bessie’s exposure to ticks had resulted in the infection which was causing her organs to shut down, alone in a strange place she had not had the will to fight.  Our vet thought that in more familiar surroundings Bess would perk up.  She offered to take her back to her own surgery and nurse her there,  I could visit until my return flight.  While she was sick the vet thought the move would not distress her any more than being alone and would give her a chance of recovery, if she did not get better we could put her to sleep in comfortable surroundings.  Mr EE and I discussed it over the phone and decided that if the vet thought it worth a try we would give it a go.  Suddenly a funeral trip had turned into a rescue mission.  We put Bessie on some towels in the back of the Drs car and she dropped me at a hotel before heading north.

I was relieved to see Kismet had not
suffered from her time in the hotel.

The next morning I found a hire car company and headed to the handling company offices.  Kismet was there ahead of her flight and given the condition Bessie had been in I wanted to check that she was ok, luckily she was fine and remembered me.  The visit also gave me a chance to go through a timeline of events and work out exactly what had happened as I want, eventually to put in a complaint about the pet hotel.

Bessie still sick bu looking brighter for being with loved ones

By the time I got up to Ipoh Bess really was a lot brighter, able to twitch her tail and take some liquid food.  After spending some time with her the vet took me to her home to visit Perdie, she had been a little down since Bessie (who she sees as a mother) and Kismet left but gave me the most rapturous of welcomes.  She climbed in my lap, licked my face and feet and pressed and leaned against me as though she never wanted to let me go.  If the hotel had allowed dogs I would have taken her with me.  

Perdie was over the moon to see me again

The following morning at the vets and Bessie looked like a different dog.  She had crawled off her bed in the night to do her business which was the first time we had seen her interested in self care.  She had taken her cannula out and was licking the paw it had been in.  Seeing her looking so much better we decided to try her on solid food and gave her a meal of steamed chicken and rice.  She was clearly hungry and I felt rather mean limiting her to a few bites so as not to upset her stomach.  Perdie was also happy to see me and we spent a happy few hours playing and throwing balls and I spoiled her with the biggest bone I could find.  

Wednesday morning, moving around and with
some light in her eyes.

Perdie still happy to see me.

When I got back to Bessie she was well enough to lick my hand and actively snuggle in to me.  What a difference a few days and some love can make.  We don’t know yet whether she will recover enough to be able to fly but if she does not our vet (who loves her almost as much as we do) will keep her for us for as long as she lives.  Hopefully being in a loving environment and having Perdie around will work wonders.  If she does fly, and when Perdie does, we will pay to have the pets transported to and from Ipoh to KL for vet checks and for the final flight, there is no way they will ever go to that pet hotel again and I will put in a formal complaint to the Malaysian authorities, the vet, who sits on several animal cruelty advisory boards will help me. My pet may be 15 years old but she is still loved and her life still has value, they neglected her until she became sick all the time charging me money for their ‘care’. 

Brighter by the minute

I almost did not want to leave on Thursday as I could see how much my presence meant to Bessie but I had to leave to get my flight.  Just before I left she stood up and was able to take a short walk outside to do her business.  An improvement beyond anything we could have hoped for.  We are not stupid, we know that at 15 Bessie could go at any time but we want her to be with people who love her and to give her every chance.  We are beyond grateful to the vet and so thankful that this happened in a country we could get to without visa problems.  Had this happened in Saudi, for example, or Kazakhstan we would never have been able to get to the dog.  I am also so proud of Master EE who, without prompting or rancour, gave up is chance to join his school trip to New York, so that I could fly to Malaysia to be with Bessie.  

Saying goodbye to Perdie

Just a few days after we thought she
would need to be put to sleep Bessie can stand!

The house in Jeddah is lovely and we are turning it into a home but it has always felt as though it is missing something.  Being with the dogs again made me realise that we are missing them, we have always had dogs and I don’t think any of us feel that a house can really be a home without a pet in it.  They clearly feel the same way about us.  That feeling was somewhat tempered when I walked through the door to see Kismet playing with the children, she makes the house a happier place by her presence and we hope one or both of our dogs can join us soon.

For more information and stories on expat pets please click the picture below.

Posted as part of the Animal Tales blog link up.

Why I Hate Pet Shops

I should probably qualify the statement in my title.  A good pet shop, one that sells toys, food, pet aides, crates, beds etc is invaluable particularly when the people who run it are generally friendly, helpful and a mine of pet related information.  The lady who ran our favorite pet shop in Astana was absolutely brilliant in this regard and I love to go into the Pets at Home warehouses in the UK – it is like a treasure trove of wonderful things for your pet.

No, the type of pet shop I hate are the ones that sell animals with absolutely no regard for their welfare and sadly they are still all too common here in Malaysia.  A friend of ours got their cats through one of these shops and they have had a variety of health problems - our little stray, Kismet, rescued from the streets was much healthier - a true indictment on the 'care' these places provide their charges.

One of the pet shops near our home sells a wide variety of exotic pets as well as puppies and kittens taken from their mothers too early and left to wait alone and un-socialised in a cage.  This is why I hate pet shops…

This poor cat has nowhere comfortable to sleep and has no place
to hide from prying eyes

 

No real enrichment for this poor chap

This ferret is practically bald

A poor environment for young pups to grow up in

Completely un-socialised a bad start in life

Poodles are clever- he must be bored stiff

Desperate for any interaction or loving contact

And marked down because no one wants him

Yes - this really is a raccoon being sold as a family pet!

These little chaps sold for £15 will probably end up being 'liberated'
into an overcrowded temple pond for 'merit'.

Click on the picture for more posts about Malaysia

Posted as part of the Eco Gites de Lenault Animal Tales Link up

Good and Evil on the Streets of Ipoh

Sometimes in life, and more often in expat settings than in the comfort of our home countries where we know how to avoid these things, we come across evidence of man's capacity for depravity.  I will never forget some of the scenes I witnessed at orphanages in West Africa, particularly once seeing a baby victim of 'JuJu' or black magic rescued from the bush where he had been strung up and left for the animals to eat.  These sights taught me from a very young age that there is true evil in the world and that there are people who lack even an ounce of compassion for life in all its beauty and variety.

The refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, the problems faced by the Rohingya, the struggles of communities in Africa against scourges such as famine and Ebola virus and countless other usually silent tragedies that cross our radar briefly before being forgotten in the hustle and bustle of our day to day existence remind us of the beast in man and its ability to visit suffering on others.

A few weeks ago I had taken our old dog to the vet for a pre-op consultation and, when leaving, we came across this crate of puppies.  They were found in a cemetery, tied into a heavy jute bag and left to suffocate and dehydrate in the heat.  Their rescuer had found them and, having washed them down with antiseptic was bringing them to the vets for a check up and inoculations. Thank goodness the puppies seemed none the worse for their ordeal and they were happy and confident enough to talk to our old dog Bessie who was desperate to take care of them.

I ran into the same man a few days later when our dog was in for her operation.  He had some more puppies with him.  He  has a soft spot for animals and is well known in the town so that people call him if they see any strays dumped.  He currently has 41 dogs in kennels in his garden.  All inoculated, all being socialised and trained and he keeps all dogs until he can find their forever home. The vet told me that he is a regular visitor.  We can't take on any more pets (although Bessie would love another puppy) but I know he is doing his best to find loving homes for every dog that comes his way.

I took a photo of the puppies, rescued from a horrible fate and starting out on a far better life than they could possibly have ever hoped for.  Our older daughter, who was with me at the time, said if the man who dumped them was a devil incarnate then the man who saved them was an angel.  These may only be puppies, the action may only be very small in the grand scheme of the problems of the world but she was very right, this picture reminds me that if there is the capacity for wickedness in us all then there is also the capacity for great good.  Something worth remembering given the depressing nature of the news at the present time.

Posted on the Animal Tales linky hosted by Eco-Gites of Lenault

Click the picture below for more posts on life in Ipoh

An Otter in Penang

A few weeks ago my father arrived to stay with us for a few weeks.  Because it is smaller and closer to our home than KL he flew into Penang airport.  We decided to make the most of it and rented an apartment (via airBNB) in Georgetown, the capital of Penang state and on Pulau Pinang island.  Georgetown was the historic centre of British trade in the region for a period of time in the 19^th Century, superseding Melaka but losing out, in the end, to Singapore.  The centre of Georgetown is a protected UNESCO world heritage site and full of wonderful old Chinese shop houses side by side with some gems from the colonial era. All in all a place to enjoy culture not wildlife.

Gurney Drive in Georgetown, not where you would
expect to enjoy a wildlife encounter!

Walking along the seafront one morning we came across a beautiful female sea-otter.  We noticed her sitting quite comfortably on some rocks no more than 5 meters from the pavement.  We did not try to get any closer for fear of scaring her  and did not even try to change the lenses or even settings on the camera for fear of losing her.  We need not have worried, she was quite happy for us to take some pictures of our encounter and stayed with us for about 5 minutes before disappearing off into the sea to hunt for fish.

An otter enjoying the colonial sites of Penang

She was completely relaxed, talking to her friend Mr. Crow

She played around on the rocks for a while

Before swimming off in search of some fish

Posted on the Animal Tales linky hosted by Eco-Gites of Lenault

Click the picture below for more posts on life in Malaysia