26/05/2022
Hello everyone,
It has come to our attention that there are a lot of concerns on social media about us ill-treating our animals, not feeding them, using them only for monetary purposes without a care for their welfare and specifically highlighting issues with our dogs limping and our Pomeranian wheezing and coughing and their nails not being trimmed. I guess because we’ve never directly addressed any of these on social media it made us seem like we didn’t care about how our animals are treated. But for those of you who asked us when you are there, we would have explained this to you. We take every feedback seriously, and even though we never really addressed them on reviews we would address them internally.
The reason Bui Bui is walking with a limp and Yuki and Lulu are wheezing are because of medical reasons. And I’m going to explain their medical conditions so everyone has a better idea of what is happening rather than speculating on what is actually happening.
Bui Bui, Yuki & Lulu are 11 years old. They’ve been with us since the start of WTF in 2012. We love all of them deeply (we’ve been together for 10 years!) but it’s unfortunate that all living things grow old, they age, and with age comes medical conditions which needs to be addressed, and managed. We have not ignored any of their medical conditions and are doing whatever we can to manage their conditions based on the advice from our vet. They also go for their annual vet checkups every year to see if there are any underlying medical conditions that pop up and require urgent medial intervention before it gets worse.
Bui Bui has muscle atrophy due to old age. We noticed it sometime mid last year when she suddenly started to put more pressure on her front legs than her back. She was also lying down more frequently. We initially thought it could be hip dysplasia and so we brought her to the vet for checks. It turned out to be a degeneration of muscles due to old age and so she was put on supplements for her joints and muscles in hopes that it will slow down her condition. There’s no cure for this condition. During her last visit to the vet (in April), we highlighted that her condition seems to have improved after taking her supplements that was prescribed to her, she seemed to be moving about more and would bounce over to greet us when she saw us. Our vet then suggested going for acupuncture as she noticed some owners with dogs suffering from the same condition noticed an improvement in their dog’s condition after going for acupuncture. We are in the midst of waiting for our appointment and trying this out to see if it would help improve her condition.
Yuki has mild heart murmur. We first found out about this when she suddenly started coughing and wheezing last year. We initially thought it was because of the rain as she tends to wheeze when it starts to rain. It would then come and go randomly after a few days and come back a few months later. We then decided to bring her for a checkup and she was diagnose with very mild heart murmur and put on medication. She still is taking her medication, however, when she gets overly excited, it causes her to wheeze and cough. There is no cure for this condition. However, with medication, her condition has stabilised and she is otherwise not very affected by it other than the occasional cough and wheeze. When she does have her occasional wheezing spell, we will put her in the counter with us because it helps calm her down and stop her wheezing. It is not true that we would purposely stop anyone from taking pictures or videos of her when she starts to wheeze and hide her in the counter because we don’t want any evidence of this.
It is also precisely because of this condition, that we manage her diet very carefully and also why her nails are so long sometimes. She does not like having her nails clipped. It has been this way since young (we have never ever even accidentally cut her nail bleed) it is just really puzzling why she hates it so much. She gets very agitated and struggles when we try and cut her nails. Because she is so stressed out, we usually use a treat to distract her when cutting her nails, it takes 3 people to get her nails clipped and on good days we will manage to cut 10 nails (record number of nails we managed so far) and on bad days not a single one. We also try not to prolong the nail cutting session because we are afraid it will exacerbate her wheezing condition. For this reason, sometimes her nails are very long with only 1 short one because we weren’t lucky and only managed to clip 1 or 2 nails. We will usually leave it and then try a few days later. Also as it takes speed to clip her nails, we will only clip those that are really long as we are afraid of clipping her bleed. Hence, sometimes when she's really jumpy, we wouldn't even be able to clip the long ones and will have to wait a day or 2 to try again. For those who have dogs and have accidentally clipped their bleed before you will know that the bleeding can get quite crazy.
Yuki also has a condition called luxating patella and in general terms, it means a loose kneecap which is very common in her breed. We brought her to an orthopaedic specialist who advised against surgery due to the fact that her bones are so tiny he could end up doing more damage than good. Also he mentioned that based on his observation, she wasn’t in pain and so we were advised to leave it unless it gets worse, and as a last resort he would need to fuse the kneecaps together which means she won’t be able to bend her knees after that surgery.
Lulu has very sensitive stomach and we discovered this about 4 years back. She would suddenly develop rashes and start scratching and for the longest time we couldn’t figure out what exactly she was allergic to, we would try cooking and giving her different kind of meat and veggies and then wait a few weeks to see if it subsides and if it doesn’t we would try with other kinds of food. If you have a dog with a sensitive stomach, you would know that it is very difficult to determine exactly what she is allergic to, as they could develop new allergies as they age. We were then told that we could send her blood samples to the US and they would run a test on common household detergents, food and etc so we could determine the things that she was allergic to. Turns out she is allergic to many kinds of food and certain chemicals. We have since avoided any foods that she could be allergic to and ensured our floor detergent is safe for her. However, as this list is not exhaustive, she will tend to get flareups from time to time which we have to manage with medication and trial and error. Recently, she started coughing and would sometimes choke and this usually happens after she drinks water and we discovered she has a collapsed tracheal and she is currently under medication for that as well. Other than the occasional flareups, she’s doing fine. We are monitoring the situation and if it gets any worse, we would explore other options for treating her.
To be honest, since the beginning of the year, we have made plans to retire Bui Bui, Lulu and Yuki. As their condition seems to fluctuate (some days they are totally fine) we decided to plan their retirement in stages and it’s unfortunate that we have to announce their retirement in such a way now.
For a start we will be limiting their interaction hours with guests, and we will monitor their condition to see if it is possible to retire them by the end of the year, so that people who might want to visit them can visit them for the last time. However, this is also dependant on their individual conditions. If their condition deteriorates, then their full retirement will start earlier.
With regards to us not feeding them, it is absolutely untrue. We’ve done a lot of research throughout the years and have put in a lot of effort and thought into preparing their meals everyday. They are fed human grade home cooked food twice a day consisting of veggies, meat, fruits together with supplements and vitamins. Also different dogs get different vitamins and supplements depending on their breed and age. The most complicating part of working with us is honestly preparing their dinner.
With regards to them having only 3 water bowls to drink from, please be assured that they are refilled throughout the day when the water level goes low. They are also washed throughly at the end of the day or when necessary. Our dogs drink water at different intervals and it is highly unlikely that all our dogs would be thirsty at the same time and have to fight for the bowls to drink water from.
Sure, they are old, but they are still loveable. They may not have the energy like when they were much younger but they are still the loveable dogs they have always been. Also it does seem like our dogs were abused and neglected because we never really addressed this openly. And of course, everyone has different expectations from a place they visit and we respect your opinion. If you are one of those who choose to still love them even though they are not super active, thank you for loving them even though they are older. For those who were genuinely concerned, thank you for reading through this very long post and I hope this would help address the concerns you had.
Lastly, we would like to clarify that in our 10 years of operations, we have never stopped anyone from taking pictures of our dogs, neither have we thrown anyone out of our shop (at least not to our knowledge). If any of our team members have done it to you, please drop us a message letting us know when it was, and if possible describe to us who it was, and we will get to the bottom of the matter. It was really alarming on our end reading those comments. We do acknowledge that improvements can be made in the customer service area, and we are in the midst of re-training new staff and we hope you can allow us some time to make improvements on our end.
