WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!

AWWWWWWWWW!!!

This adorable little munchkin is the latest addition to the Pourtauborde family. He is also the source of many sleepless nights for Xav and I.

Three weeks ago, Xav and I decided to go puppy-hunting. Nearly every house in our neighbourhood has a dog (some, even up to three!!), and after the dog-bite incident, I really felt like I needed my own kick-ass dog (I got nipped by a neighbour’s dog while on an evening walk). We were looking for a proper breed, like Labradors (Xav’s favourite) or Golden Retrievers (my favourite), but they are difficult to get here. The popular dog breeds on this island are all of a vicious temperament – Rottweiler, Dobermann, Pitbull.

I didn’t want a dog that could later become aggressive or vicious, though Xav maintains that it is the dog owners that turn the dogs vicious and that with proper training, all dogs are nice creatures – yep, even mean-looking Dobermanns! Anyway, we looked through the ads, and all only had the above-mentioned breeds. So, we tried to look for puppies in pet shops instead.

Can you believe that there is no pet shop in Tahiti that sells dogs or puppies?!? We learned this from one store that told us to look for puppies in veterinary clinics. In Malaysia, you wouldn’t even think to look there! We tried a number of vets, and they didn’t have anything for us. We took down some numbers from the ads posted there though and also left our number in case anything came up.

We nearly had one puppy – a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix – but we were too late as the last two were given away already. One lady even had seven puppies, all of which were given away within two days – for an island with only 180,000 population, it is amazing how quickly these puppies were adopted!

Last Saturday morning, we received a call to look at two puppies – here the breed is called berger tahitien, which simply means a mongrel from Tahiti :D We rushed over excitedly, and though they were cute, they were simply not screaming, ‘Take me home with you!’. Xav found it a bit disconcerting that I didn’t twist his arm to bring home one of those two puppies. I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t feel that enthusiastic about them – let’s just call it a sixth sense.

We went home a little grumpy, and he called up another lady whose ad we had seen in all the veterinary clinics from Papeete all the way to Punauuia (a good 15 km stretch!). We expressed our interest and she invited us over later that evening.

We had no trouble finding her house, and our arrival was cheerfully greeted by a loping dog – the mama – who sniffed curiously at us, wagged her tail in welcome, and proudly led us to her pups. Xav and I followed her and her owner into the garden.

Lo and behold! There sat four plump bundles of joy, waddling after our feet and bumping into everything all over the place. Mama apparently had 12 puppies more than a month ago – the owner kept 6 and the rest had to be put to sleep at the vet’s advice. We spotted two black and brown male, short-furred pups – one dark black and the other a softer, black-grey ball of fur. Another two were female pups – small in size but just as cute. All of a sudden, the owner lifted a fifth puppy! – this hefty-looking sleepy fella from behind her vases.

Almost immediately, I fell in love with him! He was SOOOO adorable, all plump, sleepy, furry, colourful, with floppy ears and big paws. This little guy was five weeks old only, and yet, he was tough, and according to the owner, the leader of the litter. If I had any doubts about that last statement, I only need to look at the size difference – he was literally bigger and taller than all the other pups. Mama was one-eighth Labrador and papa was half German Shepherd, so it wasn’t a surprise to see that he’d taken on the colours and fur of the German Shepherd and the size of both types of dogs.

With some hesitation (because we felt like taking all five home actually!), we finally decided on this fifth puppy. We dropped by Carrefour on the way home to pick up some puppy chow, toys and collar, and then returned home excitedly to play with our little one.

Xav and I argued all the way home about naming this furball. We needed a name that was both French and English, especially in pronunciation. I liked Zeus – it sounded smart and royal, but the way Xav pronounced it was so French, so we canned that name! (in all probability, Xav will argue that I mispronounced it :P). We wanted a short name with two syllables and not something that was common or popular.

There is this thing in France (we just discovered that it was French, and not something other countries did) where each year, an alphabet will be selected for the names of dogs. Since our pup was born in 2005, the alphabet was ‘A’. We looked at a long list of really weird names, and we settled on ‘Alto’. It was certainly pronounced the same way in English and French, it was short with two syllables, and it represents the lowest voice and is important in making the harmony of the music.

So Alto it is.

Since then, all our focus has been on Alto. We made a cute ‘kennel’ for him out of an unused small cupboard-like cabinet, we created all sorts of toys (we made one out of tying the ends of socks together), and literally just showered him with love and attention. Every other day, Xav and I read up on the internet on how to train puppies to pee-poop in the right place, to stop them whining, etc etc. We gave him a bath, since he had those little hopping fleas. We played with him (truly, having a pup is good exercise!) and we took him to the beach.



Socialization is a key thing to prevent dogs from becoming fearful and aggressive. Since we didn’t know many different people / animals (children, women, men, puppies, dogs, cats, etc) with whom / which we could socialize Alto, Xav and I have decided to make the beach as a place for Alto to do this effectively.

At the beach last week he met a Rottweiler, who was gentle and curious. The one-year old (he’s huge isn’t he?) dog sniffed Alto thoroughly while Alto just sniffed back politely. We read that training puppies is best in the first four to six months of its life – after this, it would be rather difficult to re-train him. Though Alto was only five weeks, Xav and I have already started to train him on things that matter, like pee-poop, not barking or whining, not biting too vigorously, etc.

Xav fenced a certain area of our huge garden as Alto’s pee-poop place, and so far, Alto has been going there for all his little business (which is getting bigger as the days go by!). Since Saturday though, Xav and I have not been sleeping well. Every night except last night, Alto had been whining and giving short little gruffy barks, for a variety of reasons from wanting us to bring him to pee-poop to playing with him at 4am!

Xav and I took turns seeing to his needs, and we are trying to devise strategies (with Alto, we need strategies more than just simple ways!) of keeping Alto asleep during the night. We kept him from sleeping too much during the day, played with him a lot (which means we get tired and sweaty too) and fed him a lot a little later at night. Last night, for whatever reason, he did not wake us up until close to 6am. Even then, he only whined a small whine for a valid reason – he had wanted to pee on the grass and his long leash was entangled, which prevented him from reaching the grassy area.

He was so good that we rewarded him by bringing him into our bedroom, which, in doggy lingo, is the ultimate reward for ultimate good behaviour! Right now, he is banned from coming into the house as he pee-ed on the floor when he wasn’t being observed. We want to give him a few days to forget he did that, before allowing him limited entry into our house again.

Life has been tremendously exciting and rewarding with Alto’s presence in the house. Xav and I don’t get much free time to be alone together, as Alto goes ape when Xav comes home from work, forcing Xav to play with him all the time. During the day, I play with him, leaving me rather tired and drained by the time Xav comes home. I manage dinner and then fall asleep watching TV! It’s like we have a baby, for God’s sake! Definitely good training for us, at least, if and when the real baby comes (not for this year, at least, people, so don’t ask!).

People say that a dog is a man’s best friend, but for Xav and I, Alto is definitely more – he is family! :D