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Antonia tells us about one of her rescue operations (check out the pictures in her Fostered Puppies Gallery)
PRINCESS AND PUPS
Princess is a familiar figure in the resort of Lassi as she’s been there for quite a few summers now. She’s a medium sized, black collie cross and one of her favourite locations is the doorstep of the Pefanis office, which might be something to do with the fact that the Kosmar Holiday reps have “adopted” her.
This year, Princess fell pregnant at about the same time as Susan and her team were talking about getting her neutered. She hung around her normal places until she was due to give birth, and then disappeared. The reps and their guests were all on a mission to try and find her but couldn’t locate where she’d had her litter. Princess did start returning to the office after a while and the reps tried to follow her to see where she was going when she left, but Princess kept losing them. They eventually came to the conclusion the pups had all died, as Princess didn’t seem to be too worried about how much time she spent at the office.
One day, at the beginning of September, I got a phone call from Alison, one of the reps. A guest had been to Makris Yialos beach and had seen a very small puppy sitting in the middle of the beach without shelter or water. She asked around to see if anyone knew anything about the puppy and a local said he’d found the pup in the “middle of the road” so had picked it up and brought it to the beach with him. The lady asked what he was going to do about it and was upset when he didn’t seem concerned about the fact it had no shelter from the midday sun or water to drink. She asked him if there was a concern or charity on the island that could take the puppy and he said he didn’t know of anywhere, and he wasn’t really bothered because it wasn’t his!
The lady picked up the pup and took it to the Kosmar reps, who phoned me. Initially, I intended to advise them on how to care for it, but ended up taking it because it was so young. His face was all scrunched up like a little mole’s and he fit quite easily into two cupped hands. On closer inspection, I found he had no teeth so he was still a bottle feed baby - 4-5 times a day. He was called Kosmo, so the reps wouldn’t forget they had a legacy.
Four weeks later, I received another phone call from the Alison. Someone else from the same office had found where Princess had stashed her puppies. They were 2 months old by this time so were becoming adventurous and wandering out of the nest. People had been feeding them but unfortunately, some of their diet was ordinary milk and cat food, both of which can do more harm than good.
There were four frightened puppies in the undergrowth, and they didn’t want to come out! I managed to catch one of them before it went too far in. Two local girls took another and returned 30 minutes later without it. We don’t know what happened to it.
One English couple, who had been feeding them for two weeks, very kindly offered to help and kept returning to the nest during the night time hours, when it was quiet. With great patience, they finally managed to coax them out, and rang me to go and collect them.
In all, there were a boy and two girls. Fatboy and Silke are both black and short haired and Red is (of course!) a reddish colour with a black snout. Except for the black snout, Kosmo is identical to Red, so has to be one of Princess’s litter as well.
Princess has since been neutered and Red was offered a home in Skala with Brits within two days of being rescued. Fatboy, Silke and Kosmo are being fostered and are still waiting for someone to fall in love with them.
Check out Antonia’s other rescue tales:
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