Size breaks a doggie's heart
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Wan-Wan has second thoughts about next door's Hippo
FOR A little dog with a big heart, this week has not been kind to my poodle pup Wan-Wan.
When my next-door neighbour Khun J adopted a puppy a month or so ago, Wan was absolutely ecstatic. Whenever Hippo, the new puppy, began squealing, Wan would respond with her own whine.
“Oh, a puppy!” I think she said. “Oh, I want to meet him! I want to play with him!”
At that time, Hippo was barely two months old and about the same size as Wan. Obviously from a soi-dog family, he was absolutely cute, with golden-brown fur accentuating his dark-brown face. I liked his tail a lot, a short little thing that curled upward on his back.
Yet Wan couldn’t meet Hippo, not until he received all his vaccinations. J wouldn’t say exactly where she got him, but it didn’t matter. Not only were those vaccinations crucial, but he really needed to be de-wormed. Internal parasites can easily be passed from dog to dog, and even, depending on the parasite, from dog to human.
At first, J didn’t understand what I was talking about. “I bathe both my dogs at least once a week,” she insisted.
Bathing doesn’t stop internal worms. They’re inside, not outside. It’s relatively easy to get rid of them. Various pills are available from your vet, even for puppies.
J and I have another issue, though. I don’t know how readers feel, but I disagree with the shampoo that J used (and still uses) on Hippo. It’s a dog shampoo, but it’s for adults, not puppies.
She feels that there’s not much difference between a pup and an adult. I tried to tell her that a puppy’s skin is much more delicate than an adult dog’s. A puppy shampoo is much more suitable.
Well, Hippo is her dog.
So we waited for Hippo to complete all his vaccinations, which took a few weeks. Meanwhile, Wan would run to our front gate whenever J took Hippo and Mee, her older dog, out for a walk. I wasn’t too happy about the dogs touching noses through the gate, but there wasn’t much I could do to stop it, especially since Wan was so happy to see the little dog.
At one point, after Hippo strolled past, Wan came inside and pulled out one of her dolls. She loves carrying these toys around, but this time, she lay down with the doll and, whining softly, began grooming it.
From what I could see, Wan wanted a puppy of her own, or at least a dog-friend.
Finally, last week, Wan and Hippo could finally meet face to face. How lovely it was to see the two small animals prancing around each other.
Except – there was a problem. In less than one month since he moved in, Hippo was no longer a small puppy. He was, in fact, a bit larger than Wan.
He’s still a puppy, of course, but Wan is not. At over eight years old, she’s elderly, or at least middle-aged.
Hippo is good-natured, but he’s a puppy who doesn’t know his own strength. When he jumped on Wan, she became frightened and ran back to the gate. The boy thought she was still playing and became even rougher.
Wan looked at me, as in “Help! I want to go inside.”
Hippo is going to grow even larger. Perhaps as he matures, he’ll learn how to control his actions. I doubt it, though. J just lets him run where he wants. She won’t train him on a leash.
As for Wan, she no longer waits for Hippo by the gate, and she no longer talks to her dolls.
