BELLA'S RELEASE / BEACH INTRODUCTION
During the past 10 days while Bella's been in quarantine, I've had a few phone calls from the facility to talk about her. Not that anything was wrong with her, it's just she was in a defense mode and nobody could touch her. This made their job incredible difficult, they needed to scan her chip and do an external parasite check. As the days went by they kept me informed and said that the one handler was able to start feeding her treats out of his hand, but that was the extent of getting near her or even trying to touch her.
So we arranged for the Official Government Veterinarian to be there the day I was going to pick her up and to do those tests with my help. I drove out the facility on Sunday and it felt like I was entering a maximum security prison. There were other people there fetching their animals. The staff had all the animals waiting to be picked up and Bella was nowhere in sight. The guy told me she was still in the area where they hold the animals. I had to hang around for half an hour until the Vet showed up, then we got onto a golf cart and drove through some more security doors/check points to another part of the facility where all the animals are kept. Very high tech with camera's everywhere and automated gates with ID scanners to let staff in and out. Inside the building there were dogs barking but all in their own individual cells. The building was temperature controlled and each cell had heated floors. We walked over to where Bella was and the Vet called her name, she came out with her ears back and not looking very happy until she saw me. That was the moment when she dropped her defenses and just went crazy, I unlatched the door and she jumped onto me and would not stop kissed me. She was so happy to see me.
We took her into the laboratory/room where the vet does his test, I picked her up and put her on the table and he did all what he needed to do. He said she was a different dog, from what she had been without me there. I cannot describe how happy I was to have her back in my arms and to see her ecstatic seeing me. It must be so hard for animals not knowing what's going on....
From there we got into the Nissan Patrol and drove south back to Nicole's family in Geelong for Nicole's afternoon birthday celebration. After that I wanted to get her to the beach so that she could stretch her legs, have a good run and just be free after being confined in quarantine for the past 10 days. As she loves water so much I was interested in seeing how she would take to the ocean and the salt water.
Need I say any more, she loved it......
We would spend the next couple days watching the sun rises and going for long walks along the beaches. I wanted to her get used to being free again before getting in the Patrol and heading north to our next destination Sydney.
Stay tuned for the next blog.....
