A Busy Week

It has been a full week up at the Lodges with dogs moving, an adoption, a failed adoption, and so much more. To begin the week, a couple was coming to meet Sophie. For several weeks now, we have all been working under the impression that she was getting adopted and would be going home with these people. Then, two days before they were to arrive, we received word that the husband isn't exactly on board with the whole idea, much to the wife's surprise (allegedly). As we learn more, the adoption that we were all thinking was a done deal is turning into a steaming pile of nothing. By the day of their arrival, we knew that Sophie would not be going home with them, but the woman still wanted to come up and meet her. The whole thing had gone from a near certain adoption to a sleepover with a possible foster to adopt to a brief meet and greet. The butt-munch husband (who apparently celebrated when their last dog died a year ago) refused to even get out of the car to meet Sophie - what an ass face! (More colorful insults come to mind, but my Grama reads this sometimes.) Not exactly the best way to start off the week, but things got better. Oreo's new mom had come to meet him a little over a week ago and she fell in love with him and signed the papers before she left, but she had a few business trips coming up so she wasn't going to be able to come back to take him home to Las Vegas until Feb 14, but then she called on Wednesday and said that her business trip had been cancelled and she would be at BF to take him home on Thursday. So Oreo has gone to his forever home, hooray!!!
I also learned this week that the woman that is interested in Tasha is also interested in a dog named Bramble from a different area of Dogtown and she will make her decision on which one to adopt when she comes next weekend. Tasha went to the vet on Monday for a physical and blood draw and to check her joints (sometimes she walks a little stiffly), Sarah, one of the dog vet techs, discovered a couple of weeks ago that, according to her chart, Tasha has never been see by a vet at BF. Anytime anything has needed to be done, one of the techs has done it, so when this application came up, we decided that it would be a very good idea to get her into the clinic before she possibly leaves to make sure there aren't any pending issues. Dr Mike was able to listen to her heart - that was it, she was not happy about people messing with her and she was letting us all know. Dr Mike decided that it would be better to sedate her and do x-rays and a physical and blood work while she was under, so they sedated her the following day first thing in the morning and did all the stuff she wouldn't let them do the day before. The thing with Tasha, and other feisty dogs like her, is that they tend to require a bit more sedative and your more relaxed, easy going dogs. They started her off on a higher dose than an average 43 pound dog would need and had to give her even more because she continued to fight them after the sedative had taken effect. She even woke up for a minute just after her x-rays while Sarah was up to her elbows in developing x-rays and couldn't get to her, fortunately after a brief survey of the room, Tasha laid back down and dozed off again. They gave her a reversal late morning on Tuesday and she was still looking very stoned and wobbly by quittin' time so I just took her home for the night, again (I had taken her the night before so she wouldn't drink water over night before her sedation). The following day as soon as she got out of the car in front of the clinic, she vomited right in front of one of the vets, so they decided that some pepsid might be a good idea for a few days until her tummy gets to feeling better. She was not too interested in food all day Wednesday and when I put her back in her run for a while with some food and her run mate locked outside she started acting very strange, growling while she was on her bed and then charging and snapping at the door to the outside part of the run. I didn't feel comfortable leaving her in the run for the night, so I took her home for a third night. I talked to Megan last night and she said that she was finally eating better and not acting so tired and stoned. I will make sure to find out what kind of sedative they used on her and see if we can note in her chart to try something different in the future. It wasn't until I got her back up to BF on Thursday morning that she was really starting to act mostly like herself again. Fortunately, all her x-rays were good and nothing else has come up from the physical. I need to double check on the blood work to make sure that everything was good with it, but I should think they would have let us know if there was anything to be concerned about.
I am very happy to report that our little Marge has been moved over to the Garden in Dogtown Heights. She is an extremely sweet and cute black lab/shar pei mix and being at the Garden means that she will be seen by a great many more volunteers and visitors than she was at the Lodges. We can only hope that one of them will take her home finally, she has been at BF for years. I was really sad to see her go, as was everyone at the Lodges, but this means a much greater potential for adoption, so I am very happy for her, too. So now, Jerry Lee is back with us in Marge's old run. He was living in a group for a while at Octagons 1 and 2, but there were some fights in the run after he was added (not all of them involving him) and they felt that the dynamics in the group had been thrown out of whack when he joined them so he was pulled out and sent back to us. I am sad that he isn't in the group anymore and a little annoyed that he got pulled because from the sounds of what I heard, there was another dog in the group that was involved in each of the three fights, but I am also very happy to have him back with us up at the Lodges. I really want to investigate further why it is that he is still a red collar when he hasn't so much as growled at anybody since he arrived at BF. Because of his need for daily eye drops, we have done far more with him than many of the green collars would tolerate and he has never shown even the slightest hint of aggression.
And finally, I had to include this video that Sarah sent to me, it is an amazing clip of a dog being rescued by another dog. As you watch people driving past the wounded dog, it just raises the question, once again, of why it is that when people behave badly we call them animals and when they behave compassionately they are called humane.

Have a great week everyone!