The “Prince” of our street lives across from us. He’s a little black dog owned by an Excellency and he clearly thinks he owns the entire world. The Excellency has a pack of dogs, all larger than the little “Prince”, but he’s absolutely the alpha.

After Crystal’s traumatic dog fight experience under our gate we took a number of measures to keep other dogs out and Leena in. These were successful with one exception. The little “Prince” continued to squeeze in under the gate. He is romantically interested in Leena – which is very comical considering their size difference – but he also steals her food, defecates and urinates in our courtyard. Because of this, and because he growls at them, the girls have taken to insults(!) – calling him Little Doggie Bozo.

Two years ago, our housekeeper accidentally let Leena out and she disappeared for several days. When we finally got her back she was sick and it turned out that she’d acquired a tick borne disease. It took a heavy treatment course to cure her.

Leena hasn’t gotten out in a long time except for on walks with us. Yet, last week, when I took her to veterinary I learned that she had somehow acquired a new tick borne disease. She takes regular anti-tick/anti-flea medication, so the tick that infected her died for it, but that still managed to infect her.

Now how did the tick get to her? Well, there’s one obvious culprit. Little Doggie Bozo had been around a lot in the proceeding weeks because Leena was in “ghost heat”. Leena is neutered but, every now and then, she clearly is interested in and attracts male attention.

Crystal has been nervous about Little Doggie Bozo for awhile because he growls at the girls and has a Napoleon complex. We’ve also been nervous because, while Leena doesn’t start dog fights, she would kill another dog on the defensive. If Little Doggie Bozo were to bite one of the girls, we fear that Leena might kill him in response. We don’t want our girls getting bit, we don’t want Leena to kill our neighbor’s dog, and we don’t want our neighbor’s dog giving Leena ticks. Especially with a baby on the way.

Last weekend, I put some fencing up along the bottom of our gate to keep Little Doggie Bozo and other unwelcome visitors, like the larger street rats, from entering our courtyard so freely. Leena has been our protector, keeping the rats from reaching our house or washing machine – like they did at the old house, but it’s not really good for her to eat them. The old office dog, Lucy, almost died from parasites after eating rats there. It took her over a year to recover and she lives with Pou Cheang now, since her presence was discouraging cats from hanging out at the office.