In our fourth installment of ‘Spirit of Adoption’, we wanted to share a moving story about two lucky Singapore Specials who were unwell and injured – but still managed to find their furever homes in Australia!
“Our history with adoption goes back to 2000, when we adopted 2 cats from the SPCA. Sophie and Cleo lived long, happy lives and passed at 16 and 19 years old. Previously, we adopted a dog called Heng, who had to have his hind leg amputated due to injuries. Although he was very tramutised and scared, he was such a smart, kind doggie. Day by day, he slowly started to open up and get more confident. It took almost a year before he was brave enough to go out for a walk.
We moved to Australia in 2015, and all of our “fur” kids came with us. We thought that it might be good to Heng to have another dog in the house and since we still felt a strong connection to Singapore we started to look on the websites for another dog to adopt. Seeing the transformation that happened with our “hard to adopt” Heng, we knew we want to find another dog that was being passed by.
We were visiting Singapore for my husband’s birthday, so we contacted SOSD and asked about hard to adopt dogs that we could meet when we were in town. We visited SOSD and Kieran introduced us to Sarah (now Swee). She had been in the shelter for 2 years and was extremely scared and just cowered in the corner shaking when we tried to pet her. She also had an injured front leg which was bent and she couldn’t walk on it. So, it is no wonder that she was not being adopted. Even though she was terrified, she reminded us of Heng when we first met him.
We also went to visit ASD and met Lipton, a 10 year old, 3 legged dog that had been in the shelter for 8 years. He was sweet dog but since he was shy and lost a leg, he was also always passed up for adoption. We thought both dogs needed loving homes, but then had a hard decision as we only intended to adopt one dog.
After many long discussions about which dog we felt needed a home more, we could not decide and realised the only thing to do was to adopt both dogs! It took a few months for them to go through all of the tests to prepare for their trip to Australia. A few weeks before they flew out, Kieran from SOSD fostered both Lipton and Swee at her house so they could get to meet each other before they flew to their new home in Australia.
The one thing we learned from Heng is that we needed to let the dogs come out of their shell in their own time. Our job is just to give them healthy food and lots of love and patience. Lipton was the first to start to transform, he started to be less scared and also started to go for short walks. We found out that he had a cataract and was probably blind in one eye which explained why he would sometimes trip over things. But even with this, you have never met a more loving, happy dog that is always smiling! He is the first one to come out and greet us when we get home with his huge smile and his tail wagging so much he almost falls over.
It has been a year and Swee is slowly coming out of her shell. She is still very scared and likes to be in the “safety zone” of her dog bed. She is too scared to go out for walks, but we have a nice grass patio and from day 1, she learned how to use the doggie door to go out for her bathroom trips.
All of the doggies get on well together and after spending years on the streets and then in the shelter, they are just very happy to have the peace and quiet of a comfy home to take their long naps. I am probably biased, but I think stray dogs have a much stronger bond to their humans as they have known what it is like to be hungry, lonely and scared.
We have learned so much from our 3 Singapore Specials. Each one has their own personality and is taking different paths to come out of their shell, but they have brought so much happiness not just to us, but to those around us. Every time we go out for a walk, people are just amazed at how well our 3 legged doggies get around and how happy they are. Everyone says how lucky the dogs are that we adopted them, but we feel like we are the lucky ones to have them in our family.” – Cara
Thanks Cara for giving all three three-legged doggies a home they can finally call their own. We can’t agree with you more. With lots of love and patience, dogs can learn to slowly open up in their own time.
If you are keen to give our dogs a happily ever after, please write into bit.ly/sosdadoptform
