Category: Animals & Wildlife

Thursday afternoon I drove all the way to Ahmadi so that I could take Geo our pet dog to the International Veterinary Hospital. I read from peoples comments on my site that IVH was the best veterinary hospital in Kuwait and I now believe that to be true.

I used to take our previous family dog to the vet in Shuwaikh near the Friday Market. That place was really dirty and I never felt comfortable there neither did my dog. But then again my dog never felt comfortable leaving the house and he “hated” strangers. Still, when my dog got sick that hospital really didn’t do anything and we finally had to put our dog to sleep. Since I didn’t want the same thing to happen to Geo I decided to take him to the best vet in Kuwait and all signs pointed to IVH.

Driving out to Ahmadi from my home in Salmiya took 30 minutes. The map on their website was very easy to follow and we never got lost. When we arrived to the hospital it was like arriving to a ranch in Arizona or somewhere in the Australian outback, it didn’t look anything like your usual Kuwait. To get to the hospital you have to drive off the main road down a paved path surrounded by desert bushes on the side and very little if any buildings around. You then come in through a large gate where you find two signs, one pointing to the emergency entrance and the other towards the visitors parking. We parked in the very clean and very spaced out parking lot and walked towards the main hospital building. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous the place was, there was green grass everywhere, large palm trees, no trash and everything looked really good, better then our hospitals!

We walked into the hospital and told the employees that we had an appointment and then we took a seat while we waited for our turn. The waiting room was very cozy, the benches had cushions on them and their were tons of magazines to read. Their were 4 other dogs in the waiting room with us, 3 labrador puppies and one Japanese breed. Geo spent most of his time playing with the Japanese dog which was very cute. When Geo finally got bored we took him back outside to play on the grass where he met another dog and started to play with him. Finally around 15 minutes later it was our turn to go in.

The vet was a very nice friendly guy and Geo ended up liking him a lot. When the vet asked us what we were feeding the dog, we told him raw meat… to our surprise the vet didn’t try to convince us it was not good for him like most vets would do. Instead, he turned out to know about the raw meat diet and how its the best diet for Geo. He started asking us if Geo was getting all his vitamins and proteins and what else we were feeding him. We told him we were also giving Geo raw eggs twice a week, One large yogurt spoon twice a week and brown toast with honey once a week. We also told him Geo wasn’t getting any Vitamin A or B since he wasn’t eating any of his vegetables, so he gave us some vitamins to give to Geo once a day until he started eating his vegetables. The vet then started asking us questions about how we were treating him and how the toilet training was going and he started giving us advice and tips which we already new about. And thats what I liked about the vet, he was telling me stuff I already knew, but the thing is I had to research my ass off to find out and learn all this stuff from various websites, breeders and people with different opinions. Its not stuff you learn at vet school but stuff you learn with experience after years of raising dogs yourself and this vet knew all the best methods and techniques and that gave me a lot of confidence in him. My previous dogs vet never asked me any thing and never gave me any kind of tips. This vet on the other hand was giving me a lot of tips and telling me all the right stuff. He’s amazing, he knows what he is talking about and I could have a decent conversation with him about my dog. We told the vet we wanted to start Geo on worming and he agreed and gave him the medicine. Finally we were done and we walked out thanking the vet. Our bill? KD12.500 and that included KD7 for the visit, KD1 for the worming medicine and KD4.5 for the vitamins. Not bad at all. I scanned the full price list and I have it linked at the end of this post for those of you that are interested.

Once we left the vets office we decided to walk around outside and discover the hospital more. We past by their pet shop which was pretty cool and had a ton of stuff. We also past by the agility course which looked like something Geo would really enjoy once he grows up. Finally we let Geo run around a bit on the grass before we decided to head back home.

I was really impressed with the hospital and I feel a lot more better knowing something like that exists in Kuwait. The only downside to the place is the location but I couldn’t find anything else and thats why I am going to give this hospital a 4.5 out of 5.

Click here to view pictures of the hospital
Click here to view the prices at the hospital
Click here for the IVH website

We had no clue where the hamster was so to find him we decided to put 3 nuts bunched up together in every room and close all the doors. If we went into a room and found the nuts missing it would mean our hamster would be in that room. We did our rounds every 1 hour going room to room checking to see if any of the nuts were missing to no avail. Finally at around 12AM I decided to do my final round check before I went to sleep. While looking around downstairs for our hamster Nat yells that she found the hamster upstairs. Turns out she went into the bedroom to get ready to sleep and the hamster was just sitting there in the corner. When he saw her he got up as if he was glad he was found. We put him back in his cage and he spent like 5 minutes drinking water. I have no clue how he got up to the bedroom from downstairs where his cage was. Also the bedroom is the coldest room in the house since we have two windows open there and its windy and raining outside so I think he was glad to be back in his warm cage. Tomorrow I am going to get some steel wires and use those to tie his door closed although I doubt after this he would ever want to leave his cage again. I am so glad we found him.

Only a few days before our dog Geo is set to arrive our hamster has gone missing. He managed to escape from his cage and now is somewhere in our two floor apartment. We have laid out nuts for him all over the house and we are now waiting for him to come out from hiding…

Update: So far our hamsters disappearance is looking like a crossover of the tv shows Prison Break and CSI. The way our hamster escaped is just unbelievable and now we are trying to find him or traces of him using flashlights. We need to find him before our dog arrives or else there is a chance he might get eaten or something.

I just got back to the office after doing the import papers for my puppy Geo who is coming next month. I got to the ministry at 8:15AM and I was done with all my papers by 9, and this includes getting lost for 20 minutes trying to find the second place I had to go to. I have to say this was the quickest paperwork I have ever done.

Thanks to Nibaqs help, I was able to find the Public Authority for Agriculture and Fisheries Resources in Rabya on google maps. Once I got inside though it was super confusing. Too many signs and all in Arabic and all pointing to places I have no clue what they are about. I drove in a bit and then decided to stop at one of the dozens of shack like buildings spread out all over the place. I can’t believe how lucky I was because the shack I went into turned out to be the right one! There was a guy sitting at the reception desk, I went up to him and showed him my dogs health certificate and told him I wanted to import my dog. He went into his boss and came back out telling me I needed to go to the “seegil”. I had no clue what it was so the guy offered to come with me. We drove in my car a few buildings away and went into another shack, we told the guy at the desk there I wanted to import a dog, he took out a paper, filled it in and gave it to us. I then drove back to the first shack I went into, the boss signed the paper and told me I had to go to Rai behind Landmark and get the final import paper from there. And that was it!

I drove to Rai and got lost finding the place, finally I spoke to Nibaq on the phone and he told me where the place was but told me I would have problem finding parking. I got to the place and guess what, the parking was empty, I parked right in front of the main gate and went in. It took 10 minutes worth of paper work at this second place, some kind of government animal health center and I was done. The whole thing also cost me just one stamp worth KD2!

Such a weird experience, it felt tooo easy…

One of Nats friends here in Lebanon has a Great Dane called Hugo. He looks like a motherfucker.

My sister who is babysitting our pet hamster posted about her yesterday and she included a video of our hamster running around in her ball. She looks like a pinball machine gone haywire. [Link]

O….K…… [Link]

I got an email from the Belgian Shepherd breeder in Belgium yesterday. He sent me pictures of the puppies and also had some new updates. Turns out he won’t ship us the puppy when they are 7 weeks old, he will ship it to us once it turns 12 weeks old. I think that means I would get the dog mid February which seems too far away. His reason was that he called the Kuwaiti Embassy and they told him the dog needs certain shots before they would let it into the country and he needs to do them before the dog can be shipped. Anyway I have to say, this has to be the ugliest puppy I have seen so far!

Click here for larger puppy picture

Well me and Nat finally decided on the Belgian Shepherd. I am in contact with an amazing breeder in Belgium and he agreed (after asking me like a zillion questions) on selling me a puppy. One of his dogs just had a new litter and he sent me this picture of the puppies with the mother. They were 1 day old in this picture and they all look like little rats.. cute rats. He will send me the puppy after January 14th since they need to be with the mother for the first 8 weeks. Until then I will hopefully be getting more pictures of the dogs and when I do I will post them here.

I recently upgraded my hamsters home by doubling its size but ever since I did that my hamster has been acting strange. He shits where he sleeps, he stores his food where he pees and has been trying to destroy his only source of water for the past two days. He’s fucked in the head or something..

After driving around Jabriya yesterday street by street trying to find a pet shop and after driving all the way to Fintas even trying to find a place that sells dog, thanks to BusyNow it turns out there was a pet shop just 2 minutes from my house! I past passed by it tonight, its called My Puppy. Its located near Al-Shaab Amusement park behind Texas Chicken. The place had 6 puppies on display which were placed in tiny little cages. One dog, a 6 month old Dogo Argentina was in a cage so tiny he couldn’t stand up or move around. While I was there he didn’t move or bark, he was just lying there depressed. There was a very active 2 month old Cocker Spaniel (not in the picture) who was very playful when we took him out of the cage but was all dirty and stinky. They were all dirty and stinky, the whole place stunk. The pet shop also had a large Iguana in a cage and some mice and crickets for sale. The place was depressing and watching the puppies scream for help from their tiny cages begging take them with us was sad. This place should be shut down, its animal cruelty. Oh and the guy who works there I don’t know where he is from but he neither spoke English nor Arabic.

Whenever you ask anyone if they know of a pet shop they tell you there is one in Jabriya. Well it turns out the Jabriya pet shop is nothing but an urban legend. Tonight I went to Jabriya and drove into every street and every back road trying to find the pet shop. After around an hour I found one called Blue Bird, turned out it had closed ages ago (maybe even years ago) and nothing else. On a positive note I found out the location of Papa John’s Pizza in Jabriya.

Yesterday I mentioned I saw a kid with a puppy and when I asked him where he got it from he said Amazon.com. He told me it cost KD50 for the dog and KD100 shipping.

I tried to find dogs on Amazon and wasn’t able to find any. I guess the kid found an external link (like an advert) on Amazon but actually purchased the dog from another US based website. I also emailed Aramex to see if they shipped animals and I got the following reply:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for contacting us via email regarding your below request.

Kindly note that pets can not be shipped via express. Live Animals shipping is complicated and requires special documents and laboratories tests at both origin and destinations before being shipped.

Please accept our apology for not being able to help you much with your request.

Kindest Regards

So I guess the kid had the dog shipped directly to Kuwait. I should have gotten more information from him…

After yesterdays post on Larry I decided to find other options quickly. I called up the guy who has the British Bulldog and I will be meeting with him today to check out his puppies. I was reading up on the Bulldog and it seems we have things in common, we both hate excercising and we both enjoy lying on the couch all day. So the Bulldog seems more compatible with my lifestyle then a German Shepherd. But the Bulldog is a small dog and I am looking for something alot bigger.

My first choice would be a Belgium Shepherd (pictured above) and yesterday night I contacted 3 different breeders to see if I could purchase one directly off them and have them ship it to Kuwait. Two of the breeders are in Belgium so it hopefully is possible to have them ship me a dog to Kuwait.

I also called my cousin up asking if he knew anyone that sold dogs, he told me there was a shop in Jabriya that only sold dogs and that there is a dog school after the Fintas bridge that also sold dogs. So tonight I am going to pass by both and see what they have.

I checked the Paws Kuwait website and found a young German Shepherd which is looking for a home but sadly its a female and I am not interested in getting a female dog.

Finally a friend of mine told me his friends dog just had puppies and is looking to give the pups away. He doesn’t know what breed they are but will call me today and tell me.

So hopefully I will find a dog that I want that will cost me alot less then KD1000.

The owner of Larry emailed me his pictures of when he was still in Germany. So everyone, meet Larry Von Billberg (thats his full name).