Matilda Has A Tumour

Look at those trusting and loyal eyes,  it's sad what she had to go through...

Over the past few months, Matilda has been to the vet twice, and initially we thought her anal glands were infected. She had scooted on her rear a lot, so we thought her anal glands needed to be expressed. On both occasions she recovered after topical medication and antibiotics, so we didn't think much about it.

This time, she started scooting again, and her anus became red and swollen. Matilda's foster promptly sent her to the vet who diagnosed a tumour, and recommended immediate removal of the mass for biopsy. We had wanted to raise the $700 vet fee first, but the tumour was so massive that the vet advised us not to wait. Hence, we went ahead with the procedure, and the kind vet allowed us to pay later. The vet bill includes consultation, surgery and biopsy.

The tumour on the left of her anus 

The tumour has been removed, and it measured approximately 7.5cm in length and 3cm in width. It's a big mass, and a worrying health risk. We are waiting for the results, and praying that the tumour is benign.

Matilda was given local anesthesia during her surgery, and she was really brave at the clinic. We would be very grateful if you can support Matilda with her vet bills. You may email hopedogrescue@singnet.com.sg for details.

After surgery, Matilda couldn't wait to leave the vet clinic 

We wish someone can provide sweet Matilda a home too. It has been 3 years, and she's still waiting.  Matilda is HDB approved, and extremely sweet, fun, playful and affectionate once she warms up to you.

Written by : Meiling

Alliance for Betterment of Community Day (ABCD) - HokkienButton Award

It was a bittersweet moment as the award was announced and Fiona made her way up the stage to give her acceptance speech. Button was awarded the Public Welfare Ambassador award posthumously. Sweet because this award was a pat on the back for a job well done. Bitter because the one that it was awarded to is no longer with us and was not able to go up on stage to receive her well-deserved belly rub.

L to R : Ms Ms Sun Xueling (Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs & Ministry of National Development), Fiona and Mr  Tan Cheng Gay (陈精毅), president of Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan: 

Alliance for Betterment of Community Day (ABCD) is an annual event jointly organised by Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan, Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan, Kowloon Club and Jiangsu Association (Singapore). This year's event had a theme of “Charity for one and all” to promote the spirit of kindness and hopes to encourage charitable acts across communities. As part of this event, people were invited to submit stories of their experience in carrying out community work with values-driven social impact, of which 8 would be selected to receive a cash award of $5,000 each to help with their social causes.

All winners in every way 

A video of Button's work as a pet therapy dog at Assisi Hospice was submitted which was not only selected as 1 of the 8 winners of the cash award, but also specially mentioned by 1 of the judges, Ms Ellen Lee, as 1 of the more special ways in which charity is shown to the elderly.

Left photo is when Button was first found

Button passed away from pancreatitis this April 2018, a mere 23 months after her adoption. Though she was not able to receive her award personally, we believed that she was up there on stage with Fiona, wagging her tail and feeling all pleased with herself because that was just the dog she was in life. That a senior rescue such as Button could pay it forward to society despite her humble beginnings, she deserved to be smug. HOPE, too, is extremely proud of Button. Humans, caught up in the daily grind and only focused on the rat race, can stand to learn much from a dog like Button but the main takeaway from this award is that you are never too old (or too furry) to be charitable to those around you.

Button at work as a pet therapy dog at Assisi Hospice with one of her favourite patients, Aunty Rosie. 

This was Button. Be like Button. Do not let charity stop with you. Keep paying it forward and work towards making this a better place for all in out community, humans and furry friends alike.

Special needs dogs, SiDa and Harper, undergoing training to be pet therapy dogs as well. 

Written by : Sam

5 Reasons You Should Adopt A Dog

​After many rounds of discussions with your family, you’ve finally decided it’s time. You finally have the time, money and space to open your home to a little furry friend. But before you head to the nearest  pet shop, have you considered adopting a dog instead?

SiDa (special needs dog)

Here are five compelling reasons why you should adopt (not shop).

1. It’s cheaper

A purebred puppy at a pet shop can cost upwards of $800 or more.  

Adopting a dog from HOPE Dog Rescue costs $350, which is about the cost of sterilising the dog. Not only does the adoption fee cover the cost of sterilisation, it also includes the microchip and vaccinations. In addition, the fee also includes blood tests to check liver and kidney functions, as well as check for heartworm and tick fever.

Adora *HDB Approved 

2. The dog is probably already trained

Apart from having all its health checks done, a pre-owned dog also means it’s more likely to already be toilet trained and obedience trained, and he / she may have been socialised in a home environment. That means you’re less likely to have to deal with accidents in the house, or struggle with things like teaching your dog how to walk with a leash.

Churros

3. You won’t be supporting unethical breeders

Many of the dogs you see in pet shops come from breeders, many of which may have unethical methods of ensuring the dogs breed as often as possible. Not only is this cruel for the dogs, it also means that many purebred dogs have a higher incidence of genetic disease. You’re more likely to have a healthier and hardier mixed breed dog than a  purebred one from a puppy mill.

Chester

4. By adopting, you’re giving other dogs a chance to be saved

Animal welfare shelters are often operating at full capacity, and it can be hard to take in more dogs (as much as we really want to!). By opening your heart and home to a dog, you’re helping to free up space in the shelter and giving other dogs a chance to be saved.

Cody

5. You’re giving the dog a second chance at life

This is probably the most important point of all. Many dogs in animal  welfare shelters come with a terrible backstory – they were either neglected, abused or abandoned … or all of the above. However, their sad pasts do not diminish their capacity to love and be loved. When  you take a dog in and shower it with affection, you can be assured your love will be returned in spades!

Matilda *HDB Approved

Email hopedogrescue@singnet.com.sg and tell us your requirements. We will try our best to match a dog for you.

Harper 

Written by: Vanessa

Stray Feeding & Animal Welfare

For the past decade, we have been making weekly rounds to a certain industrial estate, befriending not just the stray dogs, but also the humans in the area. 

Pui Pui and her fav worker, Yongyhurt (Pui Pui is SiDa's friend)

For the dogs, we not only make sure that their bellies are filled at least once a week, but we also check on their health and welfare. To help manage the population of strays, we also try and sterilize as many of the dogs as we can catch. To date, we have sterilized more than 500 dogs and helped or rescued just as many. We try and re-home as many of the dogs as we can or place them in foster homes if there are willing fosters. Sida, Harper, Cody and Mathilda are some of our long-time residents but we are still holding on to hope that they will find their forever homes some day. However, there are still more dogs that need homes than there are adopters and fosters combined, so we have little choice but return most of the dogs to their usual haunts.

We go the routes less traveled to feed the forgotten

Each week, we require 40kg of food (cooked or canned food) to feed & distribute

This is where our friendship with the workers in the factories come into play. Over the years, we have befriended and been touched by the kindness of many of the workers. Yongyhurt, who was Sida's caretaker prior to her accident and still remains her favourite human even to this day. Mr Aziz, who played a vital role in Matthieu’s and Harper's rescue, and Uncle Ahmad - both are Muslims but still care greatly for the dogs in their compounds, looking out for their welfare and acting as intermediaries between the dogs and other workers. The Myanmar worker who insisted that we take his $10 to help the dogs. These are but some of the friends we have made over the last 10 years. This friendship was not fast to form. When we first started, some of the workers were not only hostile towards the dogs, but to us as well. But we persevered in befriending them, offering them help with the dogs, and donating clothes to them. Now they are some of our greatest allies. They care for the dogs during the week and alert us if there are any dogs that require our immediate help or if any of the dogs are captured by AVA. They even wait for us on Saturday nights to get food or medication for the dogs on their compounds. 

Uncle Ahmad receiving a gift from us, for his contribution to caring for the strays 

It has been an amazing journey and we have made many friends along the way. It has not been easy but we are very passionate about our work and so will continue doing this for as long as we are able. 

Uncle Nittiya who cares for the dogs in his factory

There are many ways that you can join us in our mission to help our strays. If you have a car (and a driver's licence!), you can be a driver on Saturday nights from 8-11pm. We need drivers to collect and distribute dog and cat food to the workers. If you can't drive, you can volunteer to be a stray feeder. If you are not free on Saturday nights, you can offer to cook for the strays. If you can't cook, you can sponsor the canned food which we mix in with the cooked food. Any help will be greatly appreciated by the dogs (and us) as it may be the only decent meal that they get to enjoy all week!

To be a volunteer driver, please fill out this volunteer form. 

To buy cat or dog canned food for the street dogs, you may purchase from
your regular supplier order through them, or use our pet food suppliers.


PET HQ
Call: 6265 8510 / 9661 6103 (Peggy)
Nature's Gift Canned Food (700g) - any flavour will do, the strays are not
fussy.

OR

REIN BIOTECH SERVICES PTE LTD
Click here for more detail.

Written by : Sam

All About Adora

There are many among us who love taking on challenges – running a 42km marathon, climbing a high mountain, or taking advanced classes to master a skill – the more difficult it is, the more joy and satisfaction derived! Well, would you consider adopting a dog as one of the biggest challenges in your life? You should, when it comes to the case of Adora!

She is a tough nut to crack, and what we have to say probably makes Adora sound like a veritable monster (and that's definitely not our intention). We could sugar-coat things and call her “quirky” or “unique” and “temperamental”. But in the case of Adora, we have had enough experience to say affirmatively that she is one of the most difficult rescues we have dealt with.

By sharing these true-grit aspects of Adora, we are fully aware it presents challenges that may deter people from taking the next step. 

Every time when we say she bites, potential adopters back off. Frankly speaking, Adora is a great challenge that requires plenty of time, patience and determination to overcome.

The story of how Adora came to us is as tumultuous as can be expected. 

Saved by a kind hearted lady who saw her collapsed on the floor near the brink of death, in terrible pain and a state of severe malnutrition. What really broke our hearts was the vet’s remarks when she was rushed in for emergency treatment: “She has such sad eyes – it’s like she has never known happiness before.” (Do read on for Adora’s heart-rending rescue here)

Life on the streets is a harsh reality for our rescues and we have seen many in all states of despair and devastation. For Adora, we have helped her to heal physically, but it is evident that her mental state still requires some care and attention. It’s been two years since we took her in and we’ve probably tried every trick in the book to help her get over her past experiences; unfortunately we just can't seem to rehabilitate her. Despite our best efforts, she still does not get along with other dogs. Adora is also prone to biting new people she meets, with a history of biting volunteers who help out with us. 

Sudden movements can also startle her enough for her to bare her teeth.

Every time Adora acts up, we can’t help but have this unthinkable thought run through our heads - should we put her down? Then you might ask: Why did we bother to save her in the first place? The answer is simply because we believe in the power of HOPE and that we sincerely thought that we could successfully rehome her. Now we are finding ourselves increasingly at our wits end as we are faced with harsh reality – we neither have the time, expertise or funds to rehabilitate Adora.

Do we regret saving her? To be brutally honest, on some particularly bad days, we do. And other days we find ourselves thinking that nobody might ever give her a chance. Adora means "beloved one" in Latin – a beautiful and well-meaning name that we fervently hope will be lived up to, when she finally finds her fur-ever home.

With all that being said, we do have a handful of regular volunteers who are able to bathe her, pat her and wipe her paws. This means that it is not impossible to gain her trust ­ it just takes more time and plenty of patience. In our observations, with weekly visits from our volunteers over a few sessions, Adora was entirely able to settle in and accept them. We do see a spark, a glimmer of hope for dear Adora. 

She has come a long way since her rescue and what she really needs is a patient, experienced and committed owner, who can look past her brusqueness and kindly take a chance on her.

We are looking for someone who can rise up to the challenge; a person whom she can trust to overcome her fear and to teach her the way to love and show affection. Potential adopters must be VERY patient, willing to put in time for training and most importantly of all, be able to love her for who she is. Somewhere out there, we hope that there is a kind soul who can take on and overcome this challenge, for we are sure the sense of achievement will be super sweet!

Please get in touch with us at hopedogrescue@singnet.com.sg if you feel a connection with dear Adora and would love to get to know her better!


Written by: Wee Yen

St. Joseph's Home - Animal Assisted Therapy

Just because they are special-needs dogs doesn't mean that there is nothing they can do to give back to society. It just means that what they give back is something a little special that only they can give.

SiDa & Harper

It was Sida's first visit to St Joseph's home as a therapy dog but Harper is already an old pro at this. Both of them did very well as expected, bringing smiles to all at the home, patient and staff alike.

SiDa working her charm on the residents and they relate well to her as they too, are wheelchair users. 

SiDa makes an excellent therapy dog as she loves people and affection 

Therapy animals are a source of joy and comfort to the people who need them. Special-needs therapy animals like Harper and SiDa can give even more than that. Many of the elderly at St Joseph's home are wheelchair users. Seeing how our own wheelie-users, Harper and SiDa, still have that lust for life can help bring that same spark of life back into their eyes, more so than any other dog.

Harper keeping an elderly resident company

Special-needs dogs don't think they are special needs. They live and love the way all dogs do - like there is only one life to be lived to the fullest. This is the lesson that they teach and it is one that people like those in St Joseph's home can take to heart. It does not matter if you are old or in a wheelchair. Life is for the living so wheel yourself out there and smell the roses. And if you find yourself struggling at times, Harper and SiDa will be there, rolling right by your side, reminding you that you are not alone.

Harper, proud and delighted to be bringing joy to the residents 

The amazing dogs who volunteer once a month with their owners. (L to R : Lassy, Happy, SiDa, Harper, River & Ollie in front)

Written by: Sam

Feed Our Strays - Appeal for Food Donation

Our food bank is running low.

Every Saturday, for the past decade, our dedicated volunteers have been distributing canned food and feeding the strays in factories and construction sites in a particular industrial estate.

We really need your help to continue with our stray feeding sessions. Life can be hard, but it's even tougher for our strays who are exposed to the elements. The least we can do is fill their bellies.

And, while we are not a cat rescue group, we do ask that you send us some cat food too. We've come across stray cats during our feeding sessions, so we try to do our part to help them too. Although these poor cats will eat the dog food as well because they are often starving.

You may contact our pet food shop partners and order through them, or use your own pet food suppliers.

PET HQ

Call: 6265 8510 / 9661 6103 (Peggy)

Nature's Gift Canned Food (700g) - any flavour will do, the strays are not fussy.

OR

REIN BIOTECH SERVICES PTE LTD

Click here for more detail.

It is only with your support that we can continue our rescue work. Thank you!

Written by: Cindy

Why Kopi?

We had our previous dog for 15 years, so we were very sad when he passed on. But we did miss having a dog, so we started looking at various adoption sites.  We knew what we were looking for – an older dog, good with children, who really needed a home.  

We saw Kopi on the Hope Dog Rescue site, he’d been rescued from a factory, and thought he was a very handsome dog and his profile fitted what we needed, so we arranged to meet up.  

An extremely handsome Kopi 

He was a charmer from the off, easy going and relaxed when our children made a fuss of him and we knew we would want to adopt him so we arranged a proper home visit.  

Don't I look good in black? 

We're sure Kopi could learn to live with such comfort 

When he came to our house he was immediately at home, visiting all the rooms and enjoying a sniff round the garden, so we went ahead and signed the papers and notified AVA that Kopi was our dog.  

Watching squirrels

That's a lovely drawing of me, by my sister

Now, some months later, Kopi has really settled down with us. His easy going personality and intelligence shine through. He absolutely loves his soft bed and being wrapped in a blanket, but also baking himself in the sun on our drive and going for walks, but mostly coming back to our house.  

Playing hide and seek!

Snuggling during a thunderstorm - he loves anything soft!

We look forward to many happy years with our handsome Singapore Special.

Finally, a family of my own 

Written by: Suzy (Kopi's mommy)