How Luke Came Home

SUMMARY: Poor neglected puppy.

Here's the description of Luke from his rescue home, posted April 29. Boost had just died 5 days before and I streaked past any dog-available posts on Facebook, so didn't even read it then.

 

Luke is an 11 month old McNab boy (possibly a cross) who gets along well with dogs of all sizes and personalities. He is willing to concede to a more assertive dog without any contention. He's very good at independent play with a toy but loves to tug and fetch for you.

Luke is a small guy (16") who weighs about 22 pounds. He has good basic skills, crates, hearty appetite, food motivated. Busy body. Very interested in exploring his surroundings. Luke is very athletic, agile and quick. Luke does well with cats; sniffs and curious without any aggression but will chase if they run. It's a youngster thing!

Luke loves to cuddle and wants to please. He's a quick learner and would make an amazing agility dog. He is neutered and ready for a new home.

Sorry about the airplane ears...this was a quick photo when he arrived...he's a happy boy who adores people and wants to interact and play. Ears are always erect (except when you point a camera at thim). Better photo tomorrow.

The better photo didn't arrive until May 7 -- and Bam! he just hit me hard.

New photo of Luke our McNab cross boy. Yes...those ears are that big. He's about 20 pounds...25 max. 16" boy. Good skills and crates, reliable off lead and eager to please. Clicker trained. Ready to rock and roll.

I wasn't sure at all that I was ready for another dog. But I was ready for a playmate for Chip, if that was possible, and also one who'd have the enthusiasm to play with me (like Amber or Jake or Tika or Boost) for more than a few minutes (like Chip does; like Remington did).  But, still, grieving hard.

BUT I kept looking and looking and looking and looking at this dog's photo and description and photo.  For four days, I examined my own motives and ability to incorporate a young, active dog into my life and into Chip's life--which had become rather sedate--BUT I kept looking and looking and looking.

On May 11 I called about him. She said, oh, he went to his new home this morning; a couple who want a dog to run with and be their companion.  I felt...  a little relieved, a little more disappointed.

We talked for a bit about what I might want in a dog (or not want). And, at her request, I sent her a rambling list of my thoughts at that moment.

On the afternoon of the very next day, May 12, I got this email:

The family has decided he’s too much of a puppy for them right now. So he’s coming back. Are you still interested in him?

I said "Yes!" and we were off and running!

Schedules didn't mesh--I left messages and finally spoke to her on May 15--the night before my week-long trip to DisneyWorld.  She said that she had a couple of other good performance homes interested in him, too, but she'd wait for me. I felt great relief!

Schedules and my health aligned 3 weeks after that, and I drove the 3-4 hours to Somerset and, on June 6 I met him in the evening; on June 7 Chip met him; finally, I decided for sure to take him home (with her making it clear that, if it didn't work out with Chip or any other reason, he always had a place to go back to).

His brief backstory is: First owner (not sure where he came from before that) mostly worked and left him at home and would send him off to The Trainer periodically to be trained, then mostly neglect him at home again. Eventually he just landed at The Trainer's place, and from there into the rescue home with a dozen other dogs.  So he knows some things, but not very well. Poor guy.

Rescue says that some of his issues and his training were much worse when he arrived, and of course she had him for over a month to work on some things.

Anyway, here we are on June 9, his second morning here with me, and boy oh boy are we really off and running!

Sad Ending for Rescue Belle

SUMMARY: To close the loop.

I guess I'm glad that the beautiful dog I almost fostered didn't end up here on May 23 or 24. Here's the final word, posted on June 2:

I'm sorry to say that Belle lost her fight this afternoon :( The last blood test showed that she was in complete organ failure. I'm eternally grateful to and comforted by her foster home who showed her more love and respect than she had ever known before. They loved her so much that they've paid for her to be cremated so they can keep her close by them in the only real home she ever knew.

We don't know for sure [whether the abscess on her face was the problem or a symptom of another problem] because the vet didn't get a chance to do any more tests. He was concerned about cancer and leptospirosis, but we will never know now. Whatever it was it took her very quickly because her organs shut down in a matter of 36 hours. The abscess was definitely a big part of it, her whole body had become infected from it and she wouldn't eat because of the pain in her mouth. She was totally emaciated and had giardia on top of that. She just didn't stand a chance of fighting anything off, and I also think when the emergency vets over the holiday weekend treated her, her liver just couldn't cope with the influx of drugs.

The Foster That Involved A Whole Lot of Activity But Nothing Really Happened

SUMMARY: Quite a rollicking tale in which I did almost nothing at all.

I try, but it's hard not to have dogs who are my favorites. First there was Amber, my first dog on my own, and amazingly special to me. Then, a couple of years after she died, there was Remington, who became perhaps my favorite to date.


So perhaps you might understand why, when this came up on my facebook page last Friday as "Foster home urgently needed!" from a local rescue organization, I had to get in touch.

Her description: "Belle is a beautiful, young female Shepherd mix. Like the majority of shelter dogs, she is shy at first, but with a little attention, she warms up and is friendly. She is slightly dominant, but not aggressive. She is kenneled with a friendly pittie and they get along fine."

I thought, "Hmm, maybe it's time for another big yella dog in my life again!" 

I've never fostered a dog before, so wasn't sure what was involved, but it seemed like that might be a good way to get to know the dog and decide whether she was for me. I sent email to the rescue and went to bed, got up early Saturday morning and went off to clean creeks. When I got home, there was email AND a phone message, saying, please get back to us ASAP because we have a ride for her this morning but they'll only be there from about 8:30 for a couple of hours.

So I left voice mail and email messages back saying, guess I missed the window, but give me a call if something changes. (Bakersfield is 4 hours from here, so it's not a trivial thing to pick her up and get her here.)

That afternoon, I got a phone call saying that they might have another ride for her if I was still interested.  Turns out that Belle has only one eye. I said that that probably wouldn't work for dog agility, so I wasn't a likely adopter, but I'd be interested in finding out what's involved in fostering her. We had a long conversation in which I was pretty cautious and also pointed out that I had to consult my renter, as well.

Yeah, it's my house, my life, but he lives here, too, and takes care of the dogs when I'm not home. I convinced him that I was very serious and sure, I'd owe him some big favors to be named later. I felt like I was trading baseball players with another team.

Meanwhile, they reposted the rescue with this message: "Belle is a young female Border Collie x Shep cross. She only has one eye, is very sweet but scared in the shelter and they're going to put her down. Another rescue is willing to sponsor her if anyone could foster her. They will pay her vet bills if anyone can help her. She is in Wasco shelter outside Bakersfield. We have a ride for her up to the Bay Area. Time is very very short for this beautiful girl so if you can foster or know someone who can foster, please let us know as soon as possible."

So I called back to say OK, and they thought that they might have a ride for her on monday or tuesday. So I casually started dogproofing the house a bit. (My dogs are really very good about knowing what's theirs, but who knows about some other dog.)

Then I got another message that they actually had a ride for her on Sunday if I could take her, and I said, um, sure, and got a little more serious in thinking about where I'd put a dog whom they didn't even know whether she was housebroken or ANYTHING. And thinking about what training I could do for her if she needed training. Like that.

Then Sunday I got an email that there had been a mix-up at the shelter and another rescue group had gotten her so they wouldn't need me after all.

So I went out for a few hours with my seester and her husby to the movies and lunch and shopping at REI, and while we were out, we made definite plans to go out of town for Memorial weekend.

When I got home, there was another message that it turns out that the other rescue group didn't have a place for her and was going to bring her up here after all. I called back and said, um, ok, but I just made plans to go out of town next weekend, so I could keep her for a few days but not through next weekend, and she said that's fine.

Then when they got her up to a vet up here to check her out, it turned out that there's an abscess on her face that the vet wanted to look at and keep her overnight, so they wouldn't need me until monday. (I wonder whether that had anything to do with her eye. Dunno. Didn't ask.) But the good news was they also had someone who was interested in possibly adopting her, so I might not have to keep her for very long.

I said I'd be working at my client site monday during the day, so could they bring her over her in the evening? And we made plans for how we'd take all the dogs (mine and Belle) to the nearby park to introduce them, and had some discussions on what would happen if for some reason Belle did NOT play nicely with my dogs, and like that again. And I might have to have her for only one night because the potential adopter wanted to meet her on Tuesday evening, so I added those dates to my calendar.

I started thinking about what I'd do with her at night (my dogs sleep on my bed) and what I'd use for a crate (i have soft crates and they might not work for a dog who's not thoroughly crate trained) and where I could put the x-pen instead, and so on.

Monday at work, I got another email saying that the vet still didn't like the look of the abscess so he was going to keep her for another night, and then she was going to meet her potential adopter Tuesday night, so they didn't need me after all at all.

And that was that.

I haven't checked whether she really was placed, or her health status, or anything else.

I sure spent a lot of time on the phone and in email and in various conversations for something that never actually happened! But she did say that, if I hadn't offered to foster her, they wouldn't have been able to get her out of the pound, so in fact I did a huge good deed without having ever to do anything else other than offer.

And then we had to cancel our planned out-of-town trip due to serious illness in seester's husby's family. Ah, well, at least my peaceful life with the Merle Girls continues.

Choosing a Dog

SUMMARY: There are so many ways to go about it, and so few of them have anything to do with anything but what feels right.

One fun thing about participating in the dog-agility blogging community is seeing recurring themes that transcend geographical location, breed of dog, general drift of a specific blog site, and so on.

Such as: Choosing your next dog. Here are some recent discussions on this topic in other dog-agility blogs:

• Training Journal for D&J
• Elite forces of fuzzy destruction

Here's how I've chosen my dogs:

• Amber: One night, coming home from the swing shift, I caught a prowler looking in my apartment window. It terrified me. The next morning, co-workers announced that their German Shepherd and their Golden Retriever were pregnant and they'd have puppies in a few weeks. Those were 2 of the breeds I thought I might want some day (Collie being the other). (Ah! Research!) I'd never heard of puppy testing. Puppies were just something that you picked one of and took home. So I did. Of the litter, four were black, but two were the same beautiful blonde as my family's mixed-breed dog, and I picked one for my own. I no longer remember how I chose one over the other; I did agonize for a while over whether to take BOTH.
• Sheba the Wonder-Husky: When I got married, I figured that my spouse needed a dog of his own. He thought Siberian Huskies were beautiful. I read a little about them in my dog books and agreed that they were beautiful. (Ah! Research!) So I haunted the humane society for several weeks, rejecting a variety of Siberians for a variety of reasons (should I have been suspicious that there were so many stray huskies?). Then I found one with a sign on her run saying something like "Lone Star is a sweet, wonderful, delightful dog. We have already held her two weeks past her euthanasia date because she really needs to go home with someone. Please help." (I have no idea where she'd been hiding during my previous trips.) She did indeed seem to be the sweetest, gentlest, calmest, most beautiful dog in the universe. My new spouse agreed, we took her home, and renamed her Sheba.
• Remington the Squirrelhund: Two years after Amber died, I had decided that I finally was ready for another dog. But now, 15 years after her birth, I knew a lot more about dogs. I did a lot of reading. We went to dog shows and talked to the breeders and owners of several breeds that we were interested in. I narrowed it down to probably Australian Shepherd or Border Collie (mind you, this was before I had ever heard of dog agility). Then, one day, we went to a pet store to buy food on sale, and NARF was having an adoption fair for their rescues, and I found Remington, and he looked just like Amber, and he went home with us right then. (Ah! Research!)
• Jake the SemiDachshund: He had belonged to a fellow club member who was also my obedience instructor, and Remington and Jake had been on a team together at a USDAA trial. For some reason I really liked him. (Ah! Research!) When he became available for adoption (this story is quite shortened for this post), our husky was barely on her dying legs and my spouse didn't want three dogs and felt it wasn't fair to an old, ailing dog to have a new dog in the house. I kept stalling Jake's current foster home and, finally, the inevitable happened and our 17-year-old husky died. Jake came home with me the following week.
• Tika: Remington was getting old. Jake was getting older. It was time to start looking for another dog to start training as my next agility dog. Rem was never big on tug of war or fetch, and I knew that I wanted a dog who liked those things. I wanted one with drive and intelligence for agility. I wanted one who would snuggle. I had recently divorced and was living in a rental. An agility acquaintance was fostering a beautiful Kelpie mix that I would have taken home with me, but the landlord was an idiot and I didn't want to risk anything by bringing in a third dog. But, with this discussion, the acquaintance became a friend and she kept me in mind as she got other foster dogs. She showed me two or three other dogs over the next few months, which I rejected. Shortly after I moved into my own home, she introduced me to Tika, who loved to tug, would stop immediately to snuggle, was a gorgeous blue merle (which I've wanted since I was a kid), an Australian Shepherd-type dog (see research before Remington came home), and yet different enough from standard Aussies to appeal to me (I liked the shorter-haired, longer-legged ones). I think it was the blue merle as much as anything that kept drawing me to her, because she barked barked barked barked BARKED, at anything and everything. Well--the friend made progress on that, and a couple of months after I first saw her, I finally decided to bring her home on a trial basis. She never left.
• Boost: OK, REALLY long story. Read it here.

Another Happy Rehomed Dog

SUMMARY: Celebrity dog watch.

Neil Gaiman (the writer--like there's any other Neil Gaiman) got a dog. (Thanks, Keith, for the info.)