Luna is not a pandemic puppy and she is no lockdown stopgap. But we haven’t seen her for a long time. Sixteen months to be exact.
We moved to Washington DC early in 2016, when Barack Obama was president and the world still seemed to spin on a predictable axis. The first few months adjusting to a new country were tough; my middle child missed her friends and bawled her eyes out almost every night, convinced that she would never be able to feel at home in the US without a dog. She made it sound like an ultimatum. We succumbed.Watch that plate of cookies! A Dog’s sense of smell is 10,000 – 100,000 times more acute as that of humans.
INTERESTING FACT ABOUT YOUR PET: There are 49 domesticated rabbit breeds recognized by the American Rabbit Breeders Association.
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A Wagging Tail Does Not Always Equal a Happy Dog. Don’t approach a strange dog just because it’s wagging it’s tail. Tail wagging isn’t always the universal sign of happiness – it can also indicate fear or insecurity. Be sure to teach your children about the basics of dog bite prevention.
That was not to be. Mere days before our departure we got the phone call saying that all pet travel on flights had been cancelled.
We were gutted.
Our children were beyond distraught. Who could take Luna? Would we have to let her go … for ever? We seemed at a dead end. Unbelievably, our DC community, those dog-park mums, came to the rescue, generously offering to look after Luna for as long as it would take. We figured a couple of months. We were way off.
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Unable to say a proper goodbye to the city or our friends, our departure felt open-ended. We left Luna behind, and with her a part of ourselves.
After quarantining in Sydney, we had to find a place to live and schools for our three kids, so we patched up the hole as best we could and fell to the work of settling in. As time passed, we started believing that maybe we weren’t so attached to her. And anyway, there seemed to be no easy way to get her back. Only our youngest kept crying bitter tears, longing to be reunited with her dog. The rest of us surrendered to reality. We thought the distance would temper our fondness. We were wrong.
Print out and keep this handy chart of what foods your dog should NOT be given.
When the bureaucratic wheels of her return finally started turning, the excitement began to bubble up again, but there were also nerves. Would she recognise us? Would it all work out?
On the day of her departure, a blistering heatwave hit DC and the airline would not risk taking her as cargo. The pet company drove her to New York instead, but the traffic was so bad, she missed her flight. And so began Luna’s odyssey, including a stay in a tatty New Jersey cargo hold until she boarded a plane bound for Los Angeles, a week in its urban airport pet lounge with multiple carers, a long-haul flight to Singapore for another stayover, before she finally arrived in Melbourne for her obligatory 10-day quarantine. We wondered what state we would find her in after such a journey. We counted down the days and readied ourselves for an epic family reunion drive.best dog food
The van arrived outside our house on a warm and breezy Sydney day and as soon as the doors slid open and she caught our scent from her crate, she started to make little moans of recognition. After all this time, she still knew who we were. She all but knocked us over with a tail that did not stop wagging while we lavished her with love. Right there and then, my son promised her we would never leave her again.
Stay consistent with training, play time and rest time for your pets so they don’t get too overwhelmed. Your calm and consistent demeanor will help your pet to understand that they can trust you. Once you earn their trust, understand the schedule, and feel secure in their safe place, both of your lives will be much easier.
With Luna home, lockdown life has changed. We feel more energised, the world seems broader. She has literally grown the love in our home. Our sullen teens make multiple daily declarations of adoration as they bury their faces into her warm body. And our youngest finally has a playmate again – you can feel the joy bouncing back into her. I, too, appreciate Luna’s comforting presence in ways that I didn’t foresee before lockdown and let myself forget while she was away.
She hasn’t just come home to us, we have come home through her. She closed a circle of unsaid goodbyes and carried with her the imprint of friends and loved ones far away, who took her in. Her odyssey through pandemic and lockdowns and quarantines, through fire and flood, far from the place she knew, was also ours.
Remove Ticks From Your Dog With a Pair of Tweezers. Don’t have a tick remover on hand? You can carefully remove ticks from your dog with a pair of fine tipped tweezers. Grab the tick by it’s mouth area (the part closest to your dogs skin) and pull firmly until it’s removed. Place the tick in a jar of alcohol to kill it, and be sure to wear gloves when dealing with ticks since they can transmit diseases to pets & people.
A few hours after the initial tumult and excitement of Luna’s return had subsided, I spied my eight-year-old daughter deeply ensconced on the couch with her long-lost dog and asked how she felt. Without skipping a beat, she patted Luna’s head, looked me in the eye and said: “I feel complete. The pack is back together.”