My Boy

Update : A few of you have asked how long it will be before my boy can join us in Hong Kong. Well, unfortuantely, the Canary Islands are classified as rabies-infected and Hong Kong is rabies-free. Therefore to land my pets from Tenerife, would mean four months of quarantine here, even though they have had their rabies vaccinations every year.

The alternative, and the one I am currently exercising is to have them travel to the UK on the EU Pet Passport scheme. This involves a six-month process in Tenerife whereby they do blood tests and repeat them until they are given a clean bill of health. They can then land in the UK without quarantine. However, to travel to Hong Kong after that, they have to have been in the UK for a further six months before they gain quarantine-free status on entering Hong Kong. While Rhona has bought into the six months in Tenerife (it started in August), I will have to find them a loving home for the six months in the UK, from February to August. Basically I'm looking at just under a year right now.

The option, for quarantine in Hong Kong, worries me as I've never put an animal through that and I'm not sure how they would survive it. I'd visit every day, of course, but it would probably break all our hearts, having to walk away every day for four months. I've also heard that the quarantine kennels in Hong Kong are not the nicest places, so the 12-month route does seem to be the best for the two boys.

This picture says it all, when I think about how my boy misses me, and I miss him.

He's no longer allowed on the sofa (Rhona's b/f thinks it's not right - I however have a different take on things). This was the second day we were there, enjoying the apartment without Rhona and her parasitic partner. Steve and I sat on the sofa and right away, Lupo climbed up between us, settled down like this and promptly fell into a long, deep sleep. I swear there's a smile on his face in that picture. This wasn't about him trying to come between Steve and I as, later that day, he positioned himself towards Steve and snuggled into him, sharing his love with both of us. Not to be outdone, you can see Toffee jockeying for a place and the late Sai-Loh already settled along my left thigh (his rear end is visible next to Toffee's head).

I saw in Lupo at that moment, an intense sense of peace, safety and comfort. He was home again, his real home, and I swear he was smiling. Rhona can say what she wants about animals not belonging on furniture - and that is a new thing she has bought into since the boyfriend came into her life, before then Lupo even had his own armchair as a bed instead of a thin blanket on the hard floor. When this dog, supposedly trained to keep off the furniture, climbed up without hesitation, to be close to me like this, that is his heart speaking. And his heart speaks so clearly to me, as it has always done.

He and Steve took to each other right away and I'm so happy about that. I can't wait to have Lupo with us. And on the furniture if that's where he feels most loved.