New additions to the Digby family!

Well, this is several months overdue, but maybe you heard through facebook? There’s a LOT to catch up on folks, so I hope you’re interested in our newest family members! Or just skim read.

Here’s how the idea became concrete, even though we’d decided it wasn't practical and we didn’t have the money for it:

Back in early-mid May, our friend Ashley went back home to Alabama (and Hawaii and Japan) for 10 days, bringing back her Mom with her. During that time we had the privilege to dog sit her then 3 month old Maltese puppy, Marley. He looked like a tiny clean mop head. He was soooo funny. His favorite game was then chase. I’d chase him to his bed, then he’d chase me,

I’d hide somewhere and then chase him…. How can something so small be such a bundle of energy? He was such a well-behaved, sweet puppy though. His Momma had trained him well! He didn’t even bark. I trained Marley to walk on a lead – I couldn’t believe that you have to train a dog to like going for a walk. At the beginning of the stay, Rob was dragging him around on his arse. Marley HATED it! How could he hate going for a walk?! I don’t remember that EVER being a problem with the family dogs the Whites have had. But then we took Marley to the beach with Kim and her Rhodesian ridgeback, Lola, and he saw a big dog having no problem being on a leash. I think Lola set a good example. Then I spent a few days coaxing him during short training session walks. I observed that Marley was so tiny that he couldn’t easily keep up with me, so I had to walk slower and encourage him to come where I was goi

ng so that he’d walk alongside me rather than stop behind me. He also didn’t have good depth perception. He was scared of going down stairs (he broke his leg jumping off Ashley’s bed when he was really little) and he was also scared of the grating covering the storm drains (fair enough, cos his tiny paws could easily go through that, if he didn’t jump it). So I stopped and encouraged him to go down each step, rewarding him with a lot of praise for each step. Then I showed him how to jump over the grating several times before encouraging him to jump the grating. It took maybe 3-4 days for it to become more natural to him. I praised him still for good jumps and for keeping up with me when I said “Come on, Marley” in a nice voice, but I didn’t have to encourage him as much as before and he was enjoying the walks! Ashley was pretty amazed when she came to pick him up. I knew I was going to miss the little critter!

Somehow, God knew that and during the days we had Marley, our friend Mary was out jogging and had stopped to tie up a shoelace when a small group stopped to talk to her. It was a (Korean) parent and daughter who were out walking their dog and near their dog was a little puppy. “Can you take this puppy home? We already have a dog.” Mary already has a dog of her own, but the puppy came and sat near her. It seemed friendly enough and it was beautiful, so luckily for us, she had the heart to take it home. The puppy was really skinny and had worms and parasites, so she took her to the vet for treatment and since the puppy got on so well with Mary’s dog, Pepper, Mary was happy to wait to find a good owner. She advertised on facebook and pusanweb and on the last day we had Marley, she brought the puppy to church for us to meet. Rob was instantly in love. My only hesitation was because the vet said this was going to grow into a “big dog” (which by Korean standards, would be maximum 10kg, so more like a medium sized dog) and although our apartment is family sized, this puppy was used to living on the street or playing with another dog (at Mary’s), not being couped up alone in an apartment for hours on end each day!

However we went to Mary’s the next day and took Tia home with us. Yes, we named her Tia, short for “Tiaki”, which is Maori for “to care for/to protect”. Rob wanted a name that would be special for our future home, because we intend to take Tia back to NZ with us. She’s a part of our family, we want to care for a puppy who was abandoned and show her a better life. Rob’s family always took in strays or saved dogs and cats in the USA. We also hope that she’ll grow protective of us.

We shortened Tiaki to Tia because

1) it’s easier to say and

2) because “Tiaki” sounds too much like “Teriyaki” and sadly, it is a delicacy to eat dog here in Korea (granted, not in Teriyaki sauce though.)

Our friend Jim still jokingly calls Tia “Teriyaki”. She has no idea ;P

So here’s some facts about our first pet child:

1. Tia was 2.8kg when we picked her up on May 25^th
2. She was estimated by 2 vets to have been born around the time we arrived in Korea. That is, somewhere between mid February and early March. So she was approximately 3 months old when we got her (and now she’s now roughly 5 - 6 months old).
3. This is the first time Rob or I have raised a puppy from such a young age.
4. She’s already doubled in length and height and she now weighs 5.8kg. I still pick her up and carry her like a baby to take her in the local shops with me, but she doesn’t like it so much, now she’s a teenager ;) We have an open dogbag which we use to take her on the bus and subway. (Most dogs over 5kg won’t go in a bag.) She’s well-behaved. That’s how we get away with it.
5. Tia is what most Koreans would call a “Dong-ge”, which means a mutt who eats shit off the street. Koreans on the street often ask if she’s a fox, but no, she’s definitely a dog! From our research using google images, plus what the vets and people say on the street, she maybe is part jindo ( traditional domestic Korean dog) or shiba inu (traditional domestic Japanese dog), because she has a curly tail and she is of the same colouring, especially around her face. But her frame is much slighter and she has much shorter hair to be fully either of those breeds. Her feet are also small, so we can’t imagine her getting as big as those breeds. Maybe she has a little chiuaua blood in her, as her ears are HUGE, compared to the size of her head! As she grows, her ears grow even faster J So BOTTOM LINE, she’s a Korean mutt. Some people have said to me, “Well you know, that’s actually the best-natured type of dog.” In this case, we have truly been blessed with her!
6. No, we didn’t need to train her to walk on a leash. She’s always loved it!
7. Tia is well-behaved and often timid around people (often she’s outright scared of small Korean children – particularly boys or really young ones – and elderly Korean men and women = abuse when she was on the street, we think), but around other dogs, she’s a playful warrior!
8. Tia doesn’t bark, apart from four barks on three separate occasions when I began playing (off her lead) chase with her in the park near our apartment building.
9. Tia is terrified of water! Whether it be the shower or a bath, the sea, a river, a deep puddle or heavy rain! I have soooooooooo many funny stories about this. Next time I get to speak to you, please ask about it. Every week we subject her to at least one of the “being in water” or “being near water” experiences, but she’s still quite scared. We wonder if her original owners tried to drown her in Dongnae’s river. That’s truly how scared she is of it, even though she trusts us.
10. We’ve taught her to recognize her new name, “come,” “sit,” “stay” and if we’re walking: “wait,” now we’re teaching her “down.”
11. She initially got fatter living with us, but now she’s very thin again. She’s been fussy about her food for the last month now, at times just refusing to eat it, even if that means starving for 18 hours, then eating half of what she used to eat during her last big growth spurt. I’ve been getting good advice from the internet and the vet, but I’m a little concerned that it’s been a month now and we haven’t seen any consistent improvements on this front. In spite of my concerns, she’s just as energetic and happy as she ever was and she still has a healthy coat, but people are often making the observation that she’s thin.
12. She’s just finished all of her puppy shots (I dunno about elsewhere, but here puppies get HEAPS of shots! And their ears cleaned and deworming, even if they don’t have worms…) and this week she started to lose her puppy teeth!
13. When we come back from our summer vacation, we’ll be getting her spayed. Hopefully this doesn’t change her beautiful temperament too much!
    

Tia’s been a great addition to the family, even with all of the pee-pad training and pooing inside at the beginning. Now she never poos inside and she almost never needs to use her pee-pads. We walk her 3 times a day and during the weekends up until last week, she’s mostly gone wherever we go. Wanna know why now she’s stuck at home more often? Cos Tia became a big sister last Thursday!

Here’s how it happened:

I arrived at school on Thursday afternoon to do a little printing in preparation for my 2-hour summer camp class, but I was having printer problems. The lovely Mr Hwang (the school’s computer guy) came to help me out and he had this tiny box with a tiny ginger tabby kitten in his hand. The kitten had gorgeous blue eyes, so I asked if I could hold it. He said yes. It fell asleep on my chest almost straight away. Since it was in a box, I asked if the kitten had a home. He said “No, it’s not my cat.” I said “Whose cat is it?” and he said “It’s not my cat. Some students bring it to school.” My colleagues at school don’t have the best English and I have almost no Korean, so communication is always at least somewhat limited. I eventually found out that the students had found it near their apartment building, brought it to school and left it with him. I knew Rob wanted to get a cat after our vacation….

We’d been thinking that Tia should get adjusted to other animals while she’s still young. We take her to the local dog café sometimes (see the picture above), but otherwise Koreans walking their dogs are normally sh*t-scared of Tia coming near them or their dogs, even if their dogs are bigger, older and clearly the more vicious breeds. Probably cos she looks like a fox I guess, but it’s a shame for Tia! She barely gets to play with her own kind!

I rang Rob, who said he wanted it, so we put the kitten in a bigger box with some water, then I taught my two hour class. Apparently cats don’t like being transported, because once the car started, that cat was doing everything it could to get out of the box. It made for some not-so-safe driving conditions!

We took the kitten to the vet and the vet determined it to be healthy and under two months of age (not good). We thought it was a female from looking at its genitals, but really, it’s so hard to tell with kittens! Turns out it’s a boy. At first, he hissed at Tia, probably because of her sudden movements. But once we introduced him to her bed, they hit it off. Tia was so amusing to watch that evening. It took a while of us telling her to wait and her looking bemused, trying to work out how she could play with this little thing. He’d eat his formula and she’d sit there, watching him licking his paws clean and the expression on her face was “What is he doing? How long is this going to take until we can play?” Even now, he tries to suckle her, even though she produces no milk. She generally lets him, or gets up and moves if we’re coming towards them, because we take him off her and put him right in front of his cat bowl, where the formula and solid food is. Yes, he eats solids too. We have to spray him with the water gun to deter him from eating from Tia’s food bowl. And when we’ve gone out and left them at home alone, we’ve had to punish Tia for eating all of the cat’s food. We made it quite clear that food was NOT for her.

On day 3, I really felt for Tia – new older sister syndrome – I remember it well. This is where (not that you’re spoiled, BUT) you’re used to being an only child and then along comes a little sibling, who you love. But after a while you begin to realise how few perks there are: you get less attention, you have all of this responsibility all of a sudden and you’re being told off and punished a lot more all of a sudden because of it! Poor Tia, because she’s a dog, she responds to a telling off, but of course, Ginga keeps on truckin’ like nothing’s happened! Just like a little sister or brother, eh?! As you can see though, they still are good family friends.

Anyway, we’ve called the kitten Ginga, for several reasons:

1. the kitten is a ginger colour and kiwis never pronounce ‘r’s on the ends of their words (right, Shannon?!)
2. ginga rhymes with ninja, which is, of course, what every kitten is! Rob loves calling him the ginga ninja!
3. In Korean, 진자 (said “gin-ja”) means “REALLY?!”, which is what every student and teacher are going to be saying when they hear Shannon Teacher took home a stray kitten brought to school by some of our students!

So far Ginga’s settled in well. It’s made a difference getting him kitty litter. He naturally runs under the couch, but we catch him and put him in his box and then he’s fine. At night he naturally goes straight there. He’s peed in Tia’s bed a little, which Tia doesn’t like and now we’ve gotten him his own bed, which he’s beginning to use more and more, since we’re taking away Tia’s bed as much as possible. He knows where the water bowl is. He plays boisterously as a kitten should (no claws when he’s pouncing on Tia though) and sleeps a LOT.

We need to get him a scratching post, because as of today, he’s started really scratching at things. We should probably clip his claws again too, but he’s getting his first shots at the vet’s on Wednesday, so maybe we’ll watch him do it one more time. This is the first cat I’ve ever had and the first little kitten Rob’s ever had. His family always got stray adult cats, rather than young kittens.

I’m glad he’s getting his first shots so early. That means we can get him neutered – hopefully before he gets the teenage urges to mark his territory in our apartment!

The only things that shows what a young baby he is, is that he CANNOT remember where his food is. If we’re here, he’ll meow and meow and meow until we put him directly in front of the food bowl. If he’s sitting on Rob when he’s not sleeping, Rob’s taking him to his food bowl or water bowl or the kitty litter box every five minutes. Good training for when we have kids, eh?! ;P