We are fostering three puppies over Christmas. One of which we will keep. This isn’t as much of a surprise as it might be. We had decided earlier this year that we’d keep a look out for another large dog.
[[shhhh – Whisper so Basil can’t hear]] We want to have a large dog and don’t want to be in the position of ‘replacing’ Basil so we thought we’d keep a look out for one that could join Basil rather than replace him [[
I’m in regular contact with the people who we have adopted the kittens, Pirata and Fragel from. They are not a dog home, they are a welfare organisation that cares for animals through a team of fosterers while they find homes. There is a dog pound in Badajoz – however it is a terrible place. Really, REALLY horrible. Animals are killed after three weeks and they are not cared for during this time. There was an expose in the paper recently and they reported that many of the poor animals die through ill treatment before their three weeks is up. Some animal welfare people went in and rescued some healthy animals. Five puppies have been rescued from the dog pound and they needed a home urgently. Two have been fostered elsewhere and we are going to adopt one and foster two others. They are four weeks old so obviously cannot fend for themselves.
They are a cross between a Spanish mastin and a Griffon (dog, not dragon). The father is the mastin – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Mastiff and the mother is the griffon – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehaired_Pointing_Griffon. I’m not sure how they will turn out, but we think they’ll be like big fuzzy mastins (which is what we are hoping for – we’d actually spoken about how we’d like a cross between a poodle and mastin, although admittedly I think that this would raise an eyebrow locally)
Here are some pics of ‘Grifona’ and the pups, I am not sure which we’ll be getting:
Needless to say, we are currently arguing over names. Ian is refusing TwinkleToes and I am refusing FluffyBaps….