HARRY - Arrived 9/12/01
Harry, who was only one week old, was rescued by the SSPCA on the morning that the other three pups (Dumbledore, Hagrid, Hermione) were moved down to our sanctuary. It is thought that he had become separated from his mother, and during his time alone he lost a lot of weight, as he was only 10kg. Usually a week old pup weighs about 25 kg, so Harry is very underweight for his age. He was also very dehydrated when he arrived here at the sanctuary.
In the wild Harry would still be suckling from his mother at this stage, so we are currently feeding him Multimilk, a special milk formula that is a good substitute for his mother´s milk. Once Harry is 2 weeks old we will start to wean him onto fish, as this is naturally the stage at which he would begin separating from his mother and catching fish himself. UPDATE 2-3-2002
Harry is being our slow pup of the season. Immediately upon his arrival at the sanctuary it was clear that he was a very feisty pup, and this has shone through during his time here, most obviously in the fact that he always does the opposite of what staff want. While most pups are desperate to get clear of the force-feeding stage, Harry seems to relish the wrestling matches that this entails between him and staff. We moved him into the weaning pool in the hope that he would grow out of this and start feeding himself in the pool, but it hasn´t worked. Now we are very slowly trying to move him on from force-feeding to hand-feeding by draining the pool at each feed and tempting him with fish. We seem to be getting there…slowly (fingers crossed). UPDATE 27-5-2002
Although we never managed to get Harry hand-feeding in the weaning pool, he did manage to start taking whole fish himself and so was moved outside. Later on however, Harry did go through a stage where rather than compete with the other pups for food he would just climb up onto the haul-out site next to where the feeder was standing and clamber over anything in his way to reach the bucket so that he would be hand-fed a fish (mad pup!). Luckily he then realised that the easier option was just to sit in the water right in front of the feeder and look cute until he got a fish thrown to him. Harry began piling on the weight and actually overtook Nimbus again in the weight gain race. He was released on the 30th of April weighing 55.5 kg. Harry surprised us at his release by racing straight into the water and rapidly swimming away. However we found him a few minutes later, he was playing in the shallows behind some rocks, he played there for about ten minutes before we left him exploring along the shoreline.
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