Our most recent foster beagle, Pax, was adopted this past weekend to a wonderful home in the western suburbs. Pax was the easiest dog we've ever had, and happyhappyhappy all the time. Young At Heart Pet Rescue, the group we foster for that saves adult/senior dogs and cats, did a "Super Senior Save" last week where they took in 13 dogs and cats from one shelter at one time. This is an open door shelter which basically means they take whatever comes in and have to euthanize when there's no room at the inn.
Surprisingly there were no beagles or beagle mixes there at the time of the Save, but there was this beautiful, sweet, starving dog Filbert. The best guess is that he's a hound/doberman mix. Originally the guess was that he's 8 years old, but the doctor who checked him out and has been observing him for a week now thinks he may be only 5 or 6. The owners brought him in, said he was sick and to put him down. The shelter manager fed him a bowl of food which of course he gobbled, told the people to leave the dog and never get another one. If he's sick neither he nor his blood work shows it.
He weighed 32 pounds when brought in, gained 3 in one week so when we got him to foster starting tonight, he is already up to 35. He needs to gain about 10 more pounds, which he should do within a month if we're any good at all at this fattening-up gig (pretty unfamiliar turf for beagle people!), so he can be neutered. Then he'll be available for adoption to a new forever home, where he will be FED, for crying out loud, and loved and cherished.
So, here is a recap of day (night) 1 with Filbert.
He wasn't sure about getting into the car so I had to kind of shove him in. But once there he was pretty good; a bit curious and moved around some, but not bad at all.
His first short walk before going into the house or yard was just a couple of blocks in the neighborhood. He was VERY gentle on leash, matching my pace and kind of hesitating to be sure I wanted him to move forward. Showed no sign of knowing any commands, but didn't pull at all.
In the yard he was curious and checked the whole place out, but came to me now and then. In the house he was antsy for the first hour or two, walking around and not standing still or sitting down. I fed him outside, figuring I'll get to know him better and can decide if we can feed him with the other dogs or not. I gave him a big bowl of two dry and one canned types of food, which he ate heartily! Before that when I put water in a bowl, he was so excited about me having a bowl of something in my hand that he jumped up and made me spill some! Poor thing.
At one point I didn't see him for a couple of minutes and went to check things out to find that he had grabbed a plum off the counter and was happily noshing away! Stone fruit pits contain a substance that is TOXIC to dogs so I said "no" and "leave it" and pulled him up by the collar a bit, and he readily let it go and allowed me to take it away. He ate about half of it but had not swallowed the pit yet, yay! But it was a good reminder that he is SUPER HUNGRY and has longer legs and a much longer body that we're used to, which means he can reach all kinds of things we thing are out of bounds. YIKES.
Mostly this evening he has curled up on a tiny rug on the floor at the bottom of the stairs in the living room. He somehow loops his long legs and full body into an unexpectedly small ball of dog. We did discover that he had urinated on a garbage can in the laundry room. Hmm. Maybe a smell enticed him or he just had to go and doesn't know what to do to tell us. Sure hope it's not that he's not house trained. That would be a drag that we've never had to deal with really. Fingers crossed on that.
Oh, also, all the dogs were fine with him and vice versa. Katie howled her super loud screech a couple of times, Emily shrieked at him twice when he dared to get too close to her on the bed, and Amos completely ignored his very existence. Our former foster and current house guest Twister seemed a bit more intrigued. The two of them almost started to play, and they have both hung out on that darned rug at the same time. If only I could get a photo of that...
0 comments:
Post a Comment