My friend Leonora, the owner of little Samson (a best friend of my dog Woody), was starting to look for a second dog. It’s been over a year since her last older dog died, and she’s just starting to look for a suitable new family member. Candidates must be gentle and dog-friendly enough to live with 4.8 pound Samson, whose legs are like chopsticks, so we frequent the local shelter, which unfortunately is currently overrun with dogs. oops.
I have lived in this town for 14 years and volunteered at the shelter, and had the privilege of visiting and working with the dogs when the shelter was closed to the public. So Leonora and I could hang out in the adoption area on the weekends while she was off work and take out any dogs we liked.
I wanted to show her the two puppies I found. If my 14 year old Otto had passed away, I would have adopted one of them myself. They both have that irresistibly scruffy face like Otto, and they look like they’re going to be a little smaller than Otto, which I hope my next dog will be like. As we spent the final stages of our puppy’s life together, I couldn’t take him home. I just can’t. But I was so tempted.
Leonora spent a lot of time with the puppies and some time with a smaller puppy. Over the past few years we have learned that Samson can hold his own with very young puppies, effectively training them when they are young not to step on him or knock him over; if they do If you do, he will act very ferocious, scaring them but not hurting them. As they grew far beyond Samson’s size, they became increasingly wary of him! Therefore, getting a very small puppy may be the best way to raise a Samson-safe friend. In contrast, older pups may not respect his ferocious behavior since it comes in such a small package. For this reason, along with all the other work involved in raising a puppy, including house training and puppy daycare, Leonora gave up on the idea of adopting a puppy this time around.Since she lives alone and works full time (and is very small
Samson could work with her, but the second dog couldn’t), and she wasn’t keen on the idea. Plus, puppies are always up for adoption quickly; she wants to help an older dog get out of a shelter.
I later learned that the two puppies that had so attracted me were transferred to a shelter in the San Francisco Bay Area where there were far fewer dogs. I’m so happy; they will be adopted in the heat of the moment.
Consider adopting an adult dog
We didn’t see the right dog, but we saw a dog that needed help. There was a female Great Pyrenees dog, about 18 months old, stuck in the back of the kennel, refusing to make eye contact with us. We looked at her cage card. She was adopted two months ago, but was recently returned to the shelter due to—I’m not making this up—hair loss. Do not make jokes! ! Pyrenees! There was a stream of hard, dry poop in her otherwise dry kennel. She “held it.” No wonder she looked so miserable.
I went into her kennel, but she was petrified and wouldn’t come near me—or even look for me. However, she didn’t send any aggressive signals to me either. I scratched her chest and she came closer to me. I put a leash around her head and she immediately walked to the kennel door. She knew that meant I would take her out.
As the Peel ran outside and made his escape, he peed for about a few minutes and then had several huge poops. No wonder the poor baby looks so miserable inside!
It was the Saturday morning of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, so the shelter was closed to the public for three days in a row. Staff will clean and feed, but the dogs will not be out on those days. I texted the shelter manager and asked if we could take Pyrenees home for the weekend, and she happily agreed. Most of the fences at my house are only four feet high, and Leonora has a six-foot chain-link fence, so she agreed to hold the dog on the weekends. The dog’s name was supposedly “Pearl,” but she didn’t seem to know any other words, so we started calling her Delilah (you know, go with Samson!).
She is a strange girl with some strange fears and worries. She happily jumped into the car, but then couldn’t get out. At first, we practically dragged and pushed her in and out of the house. She doesn’t like walking through doorways. She chooses to sleep in Leonora’s bathroom. The first night she stayed, she didn’t move from where we put a big blanket for her; the second night, she went into the bathroom and slept between the toilet and shower.
On Tuesday morning, neither of us could bear to take this large, shedding dog back to the shelter. Shelter staff have contacted Pyrenees rescues and they are working to find her a foster or adoptive home, but for now, Leonora is fostering her in hopes of getting her out more and more Closed behavioral shell.
Training another rehomed dog
While all this was going on, another friend of mine adopted a dog – rehoming from Craigslist – but had to travel for most of February. When she arranged the adoption, I told her I could take care of the new dog until she came back. So she had the dog for over two weeks before I went to take care of it, and every day that went by my friend became more convinced that she had adopted the wrong dog. This Maltese/Poodle mix (also about 18 months old, duh) barks a lot, isn’t housetrained, has separation anxiety, and chases her older cat. And returning the dog is not an option. oops! I told her not to rush into any decisions and to just let me spend some time with the dog; with some training on her collar it would be easier for us to find another home for this little cutie.
Sophie understands house training well, but if you’re not careful, she’ll secretly pee indoors. And her separation anxiety isn’t severe; my efforts are just to slowly increase the amount of time I leave her alone, and she’s improving. I work a lot on visibility and “drop it” so whoever she ends up with will have reliable tools to get her out of whatever she’s barking at and back.
Five dogs left, six dogs came back
Given the exercise needs of our two adolescent dogs, Leonora and I often walked together. Sophie is pretty good at being off leash considering she has mild separation anxiety (I like to joke that the problem with separation anxious dogs is that you can’t leave them, but on the other hand, they can never leave you!). She loves running with my older dog Woody, jumping in the tall grass in our local clearing and looks so adorable.
We’re not letting Delilah off the hook. Pyrenees Rescue warns us that no matter how attached a Pyrenean may seem to be to you, given the chance, they tend to run away and never look back. Since it’s still a challenge to get Delilah to look at us when we say her name (she can do that just fine without distractions, but in an open space, forget it), we let her Stand in long queues.
Last weekend, an hour before sunset, Leonora and I took all five of our dogs (mine: Otto, Woody, and Sophie, and Leonora’s Samson and Delilah ) took a short, slow, smelly walk through part of our local “wildlife reserve”. Areas we don’t often walk in.” All of our dogs, except Delilah, are off leash. As we were almost back to Leonora’s car, we heard a dog barking at us – although at first we had no idea where the barking was coming from. We were out on the trail at this time of night and there were coyotes barking at us and looking at us, so Leonora picked up little Samson and I quickly called Sophie over to me and retied Her belt. A minute later, the barker emerged: a pudgy (probably) cattle dog mix, bursting out from under the trees and prowling like a castaway on a desert island who had just spotted a boat on the beach. Like a boat. . She is wary of all our dogs but comes up to me in a frantic way, “Oh my dog, I’m so happy to see you, thank you, thank you, thank you, I thought I was going to be hungry” Die here!”
With Leonora’s hands clasped, little Samson in her arms, and giant Delilah on a leash, I let her go ahead so I could try to assess the stray dog’s condition.
This wild enthusiasm frightened little Sophie – she wanted to get away from the whirling dervish – so I untied her leash and put a loop around the castaway’s neck to try to stop her from twisting and jumping. She instantly turned into a wild horse at the end of the noose: “What the hell? Do you want to kill me? Help! Someone! Help! I’m going to die!”
I squatted down with food in my hands. “Hey, man, it’s okay! Look! Food!” But the puppy was convinced she was about to be murdered. I let go of the leash – and she immediately came to life. “Thank you, thank you! Friend! Thank you!”
Considering how obese she is, I wonder if she has puppies under the tree. She was so close to the ground that I couldn’t tell if she was nursing. I walked back to the tree where she had been. The grass in the area was squashed and it looked like she had been hanging out there for a while, with torn fast food bags and wrappers scattered around. Did she search the trash cans in the area and take the bag back to her hiding place? Or was she abandoned there with a bag of food? have nothing to say.
Given that we already had a car full of dogs – the small dog was in the front seat with us, the big dog took up the entire backseat, and my two sons were in the spacious “back seat” of the Leonora SUV – I was worried Could we (or should we even try) to bring Drifter into the car, especially since she’s clearly not been on a leash before.I decided not to make She walked with us to see if she would follow us for the short walk back to the car, or back to her tree. Not only did she follow, but she easily jumped into the car, squatting on the passenger side floor and stepping on my feet. Okay, so we don’t have to worry about coyotes eating her, but where do we put her? I texted the shelter manager and asked if I could bring her in and put her in an outdoor pen where local law enforcement officers sometimes take dogs they capture after hours. Thankfully, she said yes even though the shelter was packed.
At the shelter, I photographed the dog and placed it in an outdoor enclosure with food, water, and a blanket. When I got home I posted her picture on every local “lost and found” website I knew and made a “found dog” flyer to send back the next day to the area where we found her.
The next morning, when a shelter worker texted me that my desert island dog was a neutered boy, not a girl, I had to cross out the “female” part of the flyer. oops! His whole body was blurred and he was hanging low on the ground! But despite being neutered, there is no microchip. ah!
I heard that some places in China are short of dogs for adoption? If that’s you, please let me know! We have too many here.