Good Thoughts for Lenore and Chase; a Couple of Possibilities for Henry

Two things that merit a mention before Henry:

Mom is really sick. She's thought that she's had a really bad case of the flu. She went to the doctor today because she was having such intense pain in her chest that she thought it was a heart attack. It isn't - it may be pleurisy, pneumonia, or a really intense bacterial infection. We're hoping she can sleep through the night and won't have to go to the hospital tomorrow. She said it was the worst pain she'd ever felt, maybe the same as labor, but labor pains were intermittent and this was every time she breathed. Radiating pain from her chest, down her right arm. Was good to talk to her a few minutes ago - earlier tonight she couldn't talk - she was in so much pain.

My aunt Mary woke up this morning and found copious amounts of blood sprayed and soaked Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre-style all over one of the bedrooms, the hall, the kitchen, and the side of her black lab, Chase. She pressed paper towels against the bleeding ear (which had a tumor in it that he had had surgery on already 2x in the last 10 months) and it soaked through in less than a minute. After surgery #3, Chase is doing fine. At last report, sleeping on the bathroom floor because it is time for him to keep his mom company while she takes her bath.

Today's updates on Henry:

• Basset Hound Rescue of Georgia said they would help me with him if I didn't hear from his owner. Not sure what this means exactly but it sounds encouraging.
  
• A woman in a nearby town wants to meet him and see whether he would be a good fit with her other dogs - a 3-4 year old rescued basset, a 1.5 year old bought basset, and a dashchund. Also 2-3 teenage humans and two parents. Henry might just love that! We're going to meet this week, maybe tomorrow night.
• Meg wisely advised me not to get him neutered until I waited to make sure his owner never showed up (I think there's not a lot of chance of this, but she has a good point - this knowledge of having to keep a dog 2 weeks before he's considered yours may prove helpful after all)
• We walked around the apartment complex a bit this evening, and Henry found several admirers. People love the looks of him and he goes up to everyone he can see and sits and puts his face up to them so that they can love on him.
  
• I realized I've been underfeeding Henry. I've been feeding him about 2x what I feed Maggie (he's 70 lbs. and underweight, she's 45 lbs. and not). But according to the bag, he needs to be getting 2-3x that (yeah, I know, bags lie, but his ribs are seriously poking out), so tonight I gave him 2-3 cups of food, and Maggie was pretty upset about the injustice. I worried that she would try to start a fight with him about his food.
  
• Henry is barking more. He and Maggie are out on the porch right now talking some trash to any dogs that dare to walk by. It's a very deep manly bark and his tail wags.
• He can get up on the sofa! I just walked into the living room and he was getting off the sofa and looking guilty. Good for him for being able to make the climb. I guess he wasn't allowed to in his last house.
  

I almost feel like he's looking for his people - I hope not - I hope I'm projecting - well of course I'm projecting. I wonder if I ought to put some flyers in the mailboxes of the houses near where I found him. No, probably not, because if he had owners who were letting him live in such a terrible state, with hookworm and with his ears so bashed up and bloody - and if these same people aren't willing at least to call Animal Control and say, my dog is missing - then, no, I shouldn't put a flyer in their mailboxes, right?

Looking Good Monday Morning

Henry's looking much better now - thought I would share a picture of him this morning. Took an hour's walk for him to do his business (average speed of 0.25 MPH), but he did it!

I was playing fetch with Maggie on the edge of the woods in the dark and she stepped on something that really hurt her paw - in the tender area in the middle of all the pads. She seems ok now, though.

A Trip to the Dog Run

I took Maggie and Henry to the dog run at Memorial Park today. It was an eventful trip over. Maggie got in the car and as soon as Henry got in, Maggie moved to the front seat, and would not renegotiate that. At a stoplight, I got out of the car to put my purse in the trunk. Maggie wanted to get out with me, and once the door was closed, Henry started moving into the front seat. I could not get him all the way back. I pushed on him hard for 5-10 minutes till he agreed to go to the back, but most of the time he just stayed there. Maggie was clearly scared of him.

At the park, Henry was either slow moving or not moving on the leash. Stubborn. Unwilling to go, except where he wanted, which was not where I wanted him to go. I dragged and cajoled him to the dog run and let him off the leash. When other dogs came up to check him out, he tucked his tail and got nervous. Ha, my big humping boy. Eventually he got a little chesty with dogs, looking like he might be about to hump, but he came away when I called him (a fluke?). I wonder if his back legs are strong enough to support him without the front ones on the ground.

He found several people to make a fuss over him, and that went well. He enjoyed a couple of cookies when he did good things. He peed and eventually pooped. When I got a little bit closer to where he was pooping he moved up 5 feet or so and continued his business. And if he pooped far away from me this morning (he probably did), it may be that he's shy, and won't ever poop on the leash. Hoo-boy - the dog run is 20 minutes away, and I don't want to repeat our morning romp through the woods.

At the end of our stay, and the reason that was the end of our stay, he went trotting off to the top of the hill and came back quickly, legs really shaking, all of him shaking. I'd seen his leg shake, but this was weird. I tried to give him cookies (because I'd called him when I saw he was coming back, and I was trying to build some sort of recall pattern - ha). He wouldn't have a cookie. I tried 3 times before we got back to the car, and he would have none of it. It scared me to see him so shaky. I couldn't figure out if he was cold (it was cold but not so cold), if his legs were overtaxed (but his whole body was shaking, and he seemed shaken a bit (I mean, he didn't even want a cookie)). We made it back to the car, though, and when we stopped in the ladies room, he went under the other stall door and got to know our fellow park-goer. When we got home, he didn't get out of the car - I had to airlift him. I think his legs were shaky. I hope we didn't overdo it for him, but who am I kidding - of course we did.

Good news is, his ear stopped bleeding overnight last night and has stayed scabbed over through today's adventures. Last night after the dripping-blood phase, I squirted a lot of the powder the vet gave me right onto the cut, and today there's a solid scab there that has lasted all day. That feels good. Progress.

I missed my favorite Sunday show (This Week) this morning, so I fired up the video on the computer. As soon as I did, Henry woke up from his collapsed state, sighed, and relocated. He started by going into the kitchen, then relocated into the guest bedroom. Sometime Saturday, when he was feeling better, I lay down on the floor with him and rubbed his belly and said nice things to him. And he sat there for a minute or two, then got up and went about 8 feet away, just inside the door to my bedroom, where he could rest unmolested.

He still does his helicopter-wagging of his tail when you talk to him.

We finally got the bathroom thing right tonight! Yippee! Number one at least. If I take him out and stay out about 10 times as long as I need to with Maggie and bring him back upstairs, he'll come back up. But tonight he wouldn't come in. I was using the extenda leash with him so I don't have to tug at him so much and he can have a little more independence. So we went back downstairs (took a cookie to get him to tackle stairs again - his legs are really tired). Walked. And walked. And stood. And cajoled. And walked. But eventually, in a dark place, he found a corner to pee on. Yes it was a corner of the building. But I didn't really care at this point.

A Conversation with Animal Control

I left Maggie and Henry here for several hours today - and they did fine. Henry wouldn't do any business on our brief "bathroom break" walk before I left. I went to Kinko's and made some lost dog flyers. Then I went to the pet store to put up a flyer and buy him a collar and id tag, and to return the dog bed that neither he nor Maggie stepped into. After this morning, I saw how easy it would be for him to get away and I thought he needed some identification (not attached to the harness - that comes off too easily).

I put flyers up at Pet Supplies Plus, EarthFare (the regional Whole Foods), Jittery Joe's, Espresso Royale (coffee shop downtown), and Animal Control. Also had a really disturbing conversation at Animal Control. The girl behind the desk (an articulate senior at the journalism school) told me that if you keep a dog for two weeks he's your dog, legally. I was surprised to hear that, but didn't really think too much of it.

She told me that if I wanted to find Henry a home, I should bring Henry there, and he would likely be adopted quickly. He would be something unique, she said, since he wasn't a mutt or a pitt bull. I said, but he could get put down, right? She said, no, for lost dogs we give them 5-7 days so that their owners can find them. Owner surrenders - they get put down very quickly. She said I could file an application as a "last resort" adopter. Then they would call me if no one else adopted him before they euthanized him. No, she corrected herself, I'd have to call them. Could I ever put Henry in a cage there? That's so much to put a dog through.

When she was taking information about him for their database, she asked me if he was neutered. I said no, but he was about to be. From the parking lot, I had just made an appointment with the Humane Society's spay-neuter clinic for Tuesday. She said, he's not even your dog, and you're going to have him neutered? This seemed foreign to her. It made me doubt my plan. If I brought him there, she said, the adopter would pay for him to be neutered. (They certainly should have to take some responsibility - I liked that). She also said, though, that if I did have him neutered, he'd be a quick sale (or something like that), because people could just leave with him that day, rather than having to wait for him to be neutered, and that would make him more likely to be adopted.

If I were going to bring him, Friday would be the best day, because Saturday and Sunday there were tons of people there and he would probably get adopted. Never bring a dog on a Tuesday as an owner surrender, because it will probably just be put down on Wednesday, which is the day they're closed to the public, and the day they do the euthanasia. If I brought him in before I'd had him two weeks, he would be considered a lost dog. After that, an owner surrender. I could just tell them I'd found him more recently, but if I told them I'd had them for two weeks - or if they knew that (and I'd printed the date I found him on the flyer in front of her), he'd be an owner surrender and be put down quickly. The whole conversation had me upset for a while. The idiocy of putting down a dog they think is adoptable because of some arbitrary category! I hope she doesn't understand the practice fully, specifically that they would make an exception in the case of a dog who wasn't really an owner-surrender. But I'm not so sure. How does a system so overloaded and flawed encourage someone to bring a dog into it?

Even if there were a way to get access to their adopting public without traumatizing the dog, and even if it wouldn't be taking a spot from another dog, they have so many people who come in there and walk out with whatever dog they think is cutest. I can see them getting him home and realizing what it is to have a basset hound. That doesn't have a good outcome. Not the way people treat their pets around here.

No one has reported Henry missing, according to the Animal Control database - and they went back a couple of years.

My next stop was the area where I found him. I asked employees at the two open local businesses if they'd seen him around. I thought someone might know who be belonged to, or on the other hand that he'd lived there for 2 years. They hadn't noticed him there.

Adventures with Henry

This morning's adventure with Henry was this. He came to the bedside in the morning and he, Maggie, and I were all happy to see each other. We got dressed and went for a walk and I thought for sure he'll do his business this time (didn't pee last night after the one in my house, no poops yet). We walked around the apartment complex a bit and he seemed to get tired and maybe turned around.

As we were coming back to my place, I thought I'd take him once around the back, and he trounced down into the brush and then the woods. I'd read that bassets were very efficiently built for making fast progress through brush, and that is true. He got the scent of something. There are so many thorns back there - I dropped his leash once and regrabbed it once I got back around a more people-friendly way. The second time I dropped it he got really far away from me and thank goodness the scent of whatever he was tracking ended at some point. His harness was around just his back hips. Picked up the leash, fixed the harness, and he took off again. Got to the top of a bank and the edge of a thicket of thorns 6 feet tall. He really wanted to go in there. I had to drag him back - harness around his back hips only again. But it worked. A few other incidents along the same lines.

So, Henry can really get around. He's pretty fast when he wants to be. And of course, he is all about the nose. I knew that of course, but I hadn't seen it in action - now I understand why people don't let their bassets and beagles off the leash. I wonder if perhaps he got separated from his family because of that nose, so I think I need to put up some signs where I found him. Wow. That was a one-hour outing. He prefers to do his business in the woods (at least he peed - he may or may not have pooped - I smelled some when I caught up to him but don't know if it was his). And he almost came inside without doing his business, which could only have led to another accident in the house. We definitely have a communication gap here.

Henry Comes Back to Life

Overnight he came back to life. He is doing really well as of Saturday morning! He has a bladder of steel - didn't do any business on Friday, and Saturday he must have peed for a minute and a half straight in the morning.

He went down - and up - the stairs on his own, lured by promises of treats. He's responding to food and even stole my breaktast when I wasn't looking. A really sweet kid. He started feeling better sometime during the night and came into the bedroom. Maggie was a little more competitive with him Saturday morning, but nothing too serious.

His fur is so soft, and he wags his tail when you love on him. He also gives surprisingly slobber-free kisses. If I can't find his home (ha!) or a home for him here, my dad is going to take him (bless him!). I wish he could stay with us, though. (Maggie disagrees.)

His name is Henry. I registered him at the vet as George, a name that the vet suggested but that I was thinking, too. Then most of Friday I was thinking of him as a Dudley. Friday night, I was thinking of Barnaby, Dexter, Baxter, or Wendell - mostly Barnaby. But that's sort of poking fun at his weird look. His look is like a stuffy Englishman who's really not as dignified as he thinks he is. But this guy is too sweet to have his dignity mocked. And he's not stuffy at all. So, he's a Henry. He's just funny looking.

By the afternoon, Henry was continuing to do do better, and even exhibiting some dominant behavior. Maggie is a little afraid of him. He pushed his chest into Maggie and had that glint in his eye like he wanted a little somethin-somethin. He also did this to Marty, the little tiny rescue mix down the way. This complicates his going to my dad's. Next week he needs to get neutered. I left him alone while Maggie and I went to the park for a walk. I came back, and the wound on his ear was wide open and dripping all over my offwhite carpet. I'm not holding against him that he peed in my house, because I should have taken him out before we left (it's just that he never goes and he moves so slowly). But he almost ran to greet us when we came in and he made it down and back up the stairs without me even having to bribe him. His tail wags in a circle like a helicopter. He's learned the name I'm calling him. And he wags when I talk to him or go scratch him. Wish us luck. :-)

A Slow-Moving Basset Hound Crosses the Road

Friday on the way into work, one exit before mine, I noticed for the first time that there was an animal hospital. About a mile later, at my exit, I saw this old, slow moving basset hound crossing the road at end of the exit ramp. I've pulled the car over for stray dogs before, and usually they run, but not this guy. He let me pet him on top of the head. He was muddy and bloody, so I got a nasty Maggie-towel out of the trunk and put it on the backseat. It wasn't easy for him to get up, but he was more than willing, and he got in the car and lay down. He sniffed out the window a little but was mostly very mellow. I drove back to the animal hospital (just a regular vet) and went in to make sure they were open and could look at him, and when I came back out to the car to get him, he had dragged his muddy, bloody body up to my seat and was resting comfortably.

He came inside with me, and they kept him for the day, checking him out (heartworm-negative, no microchip, looks about 6.5 years old or but probably younger and has had a hard life, a bit arthritic, has kinds of hookworm) and giving him some basic vaccines. Poor guy - last night they carried him to my car, and he waited patiently in the car while I went two different places to get the things he needed (a harness and dog bed). Other than wagging his tail a bit when I buckled his harness on him, he was pretty nonresponsive. Maggie wasn't too threatened by him because he was just a lump. I had to carry him up the stairs (and down and back up). He's a huge basset, by the way - 70 lbs. He wouldn't eat a thing, camped out on the kitchen floor and wouldn't move, other than having a bit of water.

I think his day at the vet really took it out of him.