After almost 4 months of staying at my rented place with my doggy, I have been termed by a nearby lady (who is also a dog lover) as the local dog whisperer, and I think my dog, Friendster, is the most popular one around coz' he has a little fan base of other doggies that like to visit.
Well, with an adorable face like that, it's not difficult to understand why. ^_^
Here a few stories of my doggified life and some of my boy boy's regular visitors.
1) The other Lucky
My dog's original name was Lucky, but I didn't like the name as it's just too commonly used as a dog's name (I know as least 3 other dogs with the same name) so I changed it to Friendster. At the house a couple of rows from mine, there lives a black and brown female dog whom the owners also named Lucky (I never actually spoke to the owner but I've met his children and that's what they call her). The owner, however, likes to let her out of the house to roam around at night, at sometimes even during the day. So once my dog got to know her, she followed her once to my place, and after that she would come over on a pretty much daily basis, just to visit my dog. So when I walk my dog, she would just follow us, and sometimes I'd take them to the park nearby where they'd both run and play like two kids. Sometimes at night, I walk with both of them without a leash, and they would just follow me, or my dog would walk ahead and just look back every now and then to see if I'm still there.
She has a character exactly like that of my dog: Same friendly temperament, likes people, not aggressive, and overall very lovable. The only thing I don't like about her is that she loves chasing cats, and whenever she does, my dog will follow suit. If she was a stray, I definitely would have taken her in by now, but she comes over so often, I consider myself a partial owner of the dog already. I feed her my dog's food and snacks anyway. And when I'm home all day on the weekends, and she comes over, I just let her hang around the whole day at my house, and the two of them will try to jump all over my couch, in which case I banish them to the porch. Once they're in a more lazy mood, I let them sleep in the house. When I'm at work, she has another neighbour's house to go to, which is a nice Indian lady who doesn't work and her brother. They let the dog into the house, which is much better than what the actual owner does, just letting her run around by herself.
Female Lucky is officially Friendster's first girlfriend.
My two kiddos at home
But he has other girlfriends too!
2) The two Mamas and the last unadopted puppy
Nearby my house, there's a little field behind some Malay stalls, with two resident female mother dogs, who gave birth to a litter of pups each soon after I moved here, and now all of them are adopted or missing. One of the mothers is the one in the pic above, another one is her sister which looks pretty much the same except with floppy ears and completely brown. So I just call them White Mama and Brown Mama. I also like to bring Friendster to that field for his pee and poo sessions, and the two mamas just love to see him and play with him too. There are also some kind people who leave food regularly for the two mamas, including good stuff like duck and chicken meat. There's so much leftover sometimes, it just goes bad, so my dog helps himself to those when he can.
The thing about these two is that they don't trust people, so they have never let me touch them. Initially when they didn't know me, they would bark at me, but were not aggressive. So I would be playing around and picking up their puppies, and they would bark initially, but after a while, they got used to my presence. Still, at most White Mama will come close enough to me that she's only a couple of steps away, but still runs when I try to touch her. Brown Mama, however, stays so far away from me. Apparently the story is that they were born in the same area and when they were young, they saw their mother being caught by dog catchers, and the Brown Mama also got caught on the harness but managed to escape. Which explains why both of them don't trust people, not even those who feed them or me, who brings a nice friendly boy doggy for them to play with.
After most of their pups were adopted, there was still one last final black female with white paws, which nobody wanted.
Unlike the other pups, which were all quite friendly and unafraid of people, this one was just like the mothers and ran away from anyone, including me. It's very difficult to pick her up or touch her. Even a lady staying nearby who feeds them and wanted to try and catch this puppy to get her adopted could not get anywhere near her. According to the lady, not only would the puppy run away, but the mother is very protective.
Somehow or another, I managed to circumvent the mother's protection a couple of times and catch the puppy, just to cuddle it. When I heard the lady was trying to get it adopted, I purposely caught it and went to her house to try and pass it over, but she didn't hear me at the door. So I brought it home for a while and tried to contact the lady by phone, and the two mamas followed me, with White Mama whining at me to let the puppy go. When I couldn't get in touch with the lady, I had no choice but to put the puppy back, or have to deal with the White Mama whining outside my house all night.
Ever since then, the two mamas also come to visit my house every now and then to see my dog. Although they don't dare to come in, they just see him from the outside.
As for the puppy, I have not seen it for the past few days, so I don't know if it's been hiding, or it's been taken :(
3) The gay white male dog
I also heard that the two mamas were impregnated by a large white male dog who lives near me as well. The owner also sometimes let him out to roam, hence why he managed to have his way with the two mamas. Everytime I walk my dog outside his house, he starts barking like crazy, so I thought he was sometimes aggressive.
One day while I was walking Friendster at the field, the white dog was there. I was pretty nervous and tried to get my dog back, coz' I usually let him loose at the field to play with the mama dogs. But I didn't manage to do so before my white dog and Friendster has an 'encounter'.
Fortunately, the white dog was not aggressive.
Unfortunately, he could not seem to tell that my dog was male. So the white dogactually tried to hump my dog.
And the most horrifying thing for me is that my dog hardly made an effort to fight it. Friendster was mostly just standing there! I had to pull him on his leash away from the white dog, and Friendster kept going back, apparently trying to paw him away, but I'm not sure if that was what he was actually doing or he was playing with the white dog and encouraging him further.
Trying to get over the possibility that my own dog is gay, the only option I had to get my dog away from sex-crazed gay white dog was to put him up and carry him all the way back home. Unfortunately the white dog followed me too.
Ever since then, the white dog occasionally comes by my house too, hoping to get in, but not getting a chance. And now whenever I walk my dog outside his house, the white dog starts whining instead of barking.
Sigh.
4) The brown male dog
We also once met another brown male dog that was roaming at the field. Fortunately that one was friendly but not gay, so he just played with my dog. And he followed me home, and then was when 2nd Lucky was with me. Since they were friendly, I let him into the house, so the 3 of them could play, but for some reason, my dog and 2nd Lucky then started barking crazily at him, so I had to let him out and chase him away. I have not seen him since.
5) The escapee
Fortunately, those are all the visitors my dog has had so far, which is quite a lot for one dog. Hence why I call him the most popular dog on the block.
Another doggy experience I had was at the park with my two kiddos, when he met another male dog there. This one I knew lived at one of the houses near the park, coz' I walk by it often enough. And I noticed the chain was around the dog's neck, so I know the owner didn't purposely let it out but it must have escaped. I went to the house to check and make sure, and sure enough, the gate was ajar, and the lights were out, so I though the owner must be out when the dog escaped.
Fortunately, this guy is also friendly, and allowed me to pet it and grab it's chain. So I just brought it back to the house, planning to put him back in and just close the gate. Then there was this old man standing at the balcony (gave me a bit of a scare) who saw me, and I asked if that was his dog. He was thankful, saying that he couldn't get the dog back and he refused to come back into the house on his own. So I'm glad that I managed to help the old guy get his dog back.
So yes, with so many doggified experiences, I think I am getting pretty close to becoming the infamous crazy dog lady of the block. (^_^)
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