I took my foster dog Miss Lady to the pet adoption event yesterday, and she quickly found a home with a disabled woman — it seems that the woman’s first dog was a border collie named “Lady,” and so she was primed to fall in love with Miss Lady at first sight. While Miss Lady will probably miss going for walks, she will have a large fenced yard in a quiet farming community to run around in, and a sweet collie/Australian shepherd to play with. Plus, her new owner seems to already love her a lot, and promised to always give her a good home. (She had me help her buy Miss Lady a new leash, collar, pet tag, and big bag of dog food, and also get her photo taken with Santa, which seemed to show the proper willingness to give Miss Lady all the good things in life.)
After I finished helping the woman get Miss Lady settled, the adoption event leader asked me if I would consider fostering a dog named Jeep if she didn’t get adopted that day. Flushed with the success of my first fostering effort, I said yes.
So, yesterday afternoon I brought home Jeep (you can see her photo and read about her here). She was rescued from a high-kill pound on Friday by the adoption event leader. Although her rescuer thought that Jeep is a lab/border collie mix, her pricked ears and long legs remind me of a Great Dane. (I was calling her “Scooby-Do” today, and she seems to respond to it.)
Jeep seems to be less than a year old, and has a lovely glossy black coat marked by a few scars. She was quite smelly when I brought her home (even after her rescuer had given her bath), and her nails are overgrown, hinting to me that she was kept chained outside for quite a while. Some experimentation determined that she knows the commands “sit,” “shake,” “fetch,” and “drop it,” and that she LOVES playing ball. (She will chase the ball, bring it back to you, and then drop it for you to throw again – in fact, she will do this about a zillion times, as long as you keep throwing that ball.)
She also appears to have been abused, since if you move your hand quickly anywhere near her head, she cringes and shakes. She won’t go in the backyard unless I go with her, possibly fearing that she will be left out there forever. But despite how humankind has let her down, she remains very sweet and loving. She let me give her a bath, even though she didn’t much care for the experience, and would accept whatever I did to her as long as I kept telling her that she was a good girl. She follows me around the house, and wants to snuggle with I am on the couch. She wants to be loved so very badly that it almost breaks your heart.
I imagine that she was once a happy member of somebody’s family, but then she got big and wasn’t so cute anymore, was left in the backyard and smacked when she tried to get into the house. And then came the day that she was either dropped off at the pound, or found a way to escape, and was picked up by animal control and never claimed.
Right now she is napping in her crate, which is next to my computer(I left the door opened, and she entered it herself when she wanted to rest). And although I had my doubts last night, when she was jumping all over Flossie and Yodie, causing them to hide under the bed; running at full speed around the living room; and refusing to go outside, I think she is going to be okay here for a couple of weeks, which is as long as I can keep her. Hopefully we will find a new, permanent home before then. But since there are so many other deserving dogs needing homes (and many cute puppies also looking for families) the competition is fierce, and so Jeep could easily get overlooked. So, if you have any ideas of how to market Jeep, please let me know.
Oh, and while I’m discussing pet news, thanks to everyone who has bought a copy of the book, bought stuff from Amazon using the Wo’C link, or otherwise contributed to the vast World o’ Crap enterprises . Since I am on a fixed income, this helps allow me to both blog AND raise my vast army of unwanted pets that I will someday use to RULE THE WORLD! And thanks to Anntichrist Coulter for her example of kindness to both the feral cats of her neighborhood, and to the deserving humans of her acquaintance. You people are the best!