Honey the Great Dane

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My humans came home with a funny thing today – a little, fluffy yellow kind of bird. It’s called a duckling – they found it wandering around on the street without its mother. They were worried that it would get hurt if it walked into the part of the street where the big machines called cars move through very fast - or that it would get sick from being in the sun without any water for a long time. So they brought it home and called the Auckland SPCA (which is where Lemon is from!) for help.

Hsin-Yi named the duckling "Custard"

The SPCA said that there was a special lady human who looks after sick birds and we could take the duckling there. So before my walk, Hsin-Yi and Paul drove our big car machine to this lady and we gave her the duckling. They let me have a little sniff before we said good-bye…it was a little bit scary! It kept jumping around and making “PEEP! PEEP! PEEP!” noises – I made sure I kept my distance!

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Last year, Hsin-Yi also brought home a little sick animal which she found when we were out on our walk. It was called a hedgehog and it was not very nice because whenever I tried to sniff it and say hello, it poked me with nasty sharp prickles -

What are you??

I barked at it and tried to pick it up, to show that I wasn’t scared – even though it was hurting my mouth – but Hsin-Yi got really mad at me. She said I had to be polite and leave it alone. RRRrrrooof!! But it’s in MY house!

I'm watching you...

Hsin-Yi named him “Nicodemus”, from the cartoon The Secret of Nimh, because he had long, bony claws and a pointy nose too. Hsin-Yi was very excited and said he was very cute but I don’t know…

Nicodemus

They took him to the vet who said that hedghogs usually go to sleep around this time but Nicodemus must be sick to be out in daylight, so we had to look after him until he was better. I wasn’t sure I liked this. Lemon didn’t like him either.

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I tried to pick him up and carry him around but Hsin-Yi got really mad at me again, so I decided the best thing was to just watch him carefully. All the time.

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Nicodemus made funny noises all the time, especially when he was eating. Like a little pig – grunting and snorting. He loved to eat all the time – if Hsin-Yi put her hand in the box, he would curl up and show his prickles but if she put some cat food down, he would quickly come over and start munching!

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Nicodemus stayed with us for 4 weeks and my humans were really happy that he seemed to be getting better. His prickles were cleaner and he didn’t have dried skin falling off him and yucky little things called “mites” crawling over him. He still had to grow his fur back on his face but he was moving around a lot and did not seem so sick.

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But then suddenly, one day, he seemed to get very sick again. He was making a funny noise when he breathed and there was funny water coming out of his nose. Hsin-Yi and Paul rushed him to the vet but when they came back, Nicodemus was cold and stiff. They said that the vet had to send him to sleep because he was too sick. I didn’t understand it - he seemed so healthy! They didn’t understand either. We all went and buried Nicodemus in the garden. Paul was digging the hole and he got very upset so I tried to cheer him up by wagging my tail. Hsin-Yi said maybe it was bad luck to name him Nicodemus because the Nicodemus in the cartoon got killed in the story!

Anyway, now sometimes, Hsin-Yi takes me to the back of the garden where we buried Nicodemus to visit him. The grass has grown up again so we cannot really see the place we buried him. But we still go and say hello sometimes. Maybe he will be waiting at the Rainbow Bridge too…

RIP Nicodemus