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My mom's friend's adult daughter is back in town for the holiday's with her Great Dane. All of his ribs are showing. My mom asked if the dog had a medical condition to appear so shockingly malnourished? They said no and just gave my mom a dirty look. We have a neighbor with a Great Dane and he looks absolutely nothing like this dog. On a recent vacation, we adopted a dog from a kill animal shelter (with cages and cages of animals who suffered horrible abuse) and this pooch looks like he came from this place.
A little background on the pet's owner - she's an unkempt 350 lb+ adult woman and her parents pay her mortgage because she can't handle life on her own.
My mom won't call animal control on her friend's daughter, she says I'm stirring up trouble with the friendship. I want to. Am I out of line?
Last edited by MyScreenName; 12-23-2014 at 09:51 AM..
My mom's friend's adult daughter is back in town for the holiday's with her Great Dane. All of his ribs are showing. My mom asked if the dog had a medical condition to appear so shockingly malnourished? They said no and just gave my mom a dirty look. We have a neighbor with a Great Dane and he looks absolutely nothing like this dog. On a recent vacation, we adopted a dog from kill animal shelter (with cages and cages of animals who suffered horrible abuse) and this pooch looks like he came from this place.
A little background on the pet's owner - she's an unkempt 350 lb+ adult woman and her parents pay her mortgage because she can't handle life on her own.
My mom won't call animal control on her friend's daughter, but I want to. Am I out of line?
My mom's friend's adult daughter is back in town for the holiday's with her Great Dane. All of his ribs are showing. My mom asked if the dog had a medical condition to appear so shockingly malnourished? They said no and just gave my mom a dirty look. We have a neighbor with a Great Dane and he looks absolutely nothing like this dog. On a recent vacation, we adopted a dog from a kill animal shelter (with cages and cages of animals who suffered horrible abuse) and this pooch looks like he came from this place.
A little background on the pet's owner - she's an unkempt 350 lb+ adult woman and her parents pay her mortgage because she can't handle life on her own.
My mom won't call animal control on her friend's daughter, she says I'm stirring up trouble with the friendship. I want to. Am I out of line?
Did you take pictures? That might be the best way to handle it - send the photos to animal control and let them make the judgment maybe? In my experience the acceptable weight range for a dog can be pretty wide. And sometimes you can slip outside that acceptable weight range pretty quickly, especially if it's a young dog going through a growth spurt.
My friends and I have intervened with other friends who have taken too much weight off their dogs, but only after we've seen a sustained issue. Many of my friends do dog sports, so a very active weekend for a dog with a fast metabolism can sometimes cause it to drop weight at an alarming rate if the owner isn't monitoring them very closely. If you've only seen the dog for one day of its life, you may have just caught him during a weight swing.
And my uncle had a Great Dane, and if I recall correctly, it was sometimes very hard to keep weight on it. But I could be wrong about that - other Great Dane owners?
first, find out the age of the dne, great danes are NOTORIOUS for "gangly teen" stange between the age of about 1 yr and 2 1/2 yrs old they are neer impossible to keep weight on...they grow UP and are so busy growing UP that they don't have anything to grow OUT with...
generally by about 3 yrs they start to fill back out again
but during that 1-3yr span they need to be fed high calorie (satin balls were origionally created for putting weight on teen danes!) and even then they can look like walking skeletons for a while...
people ask the same bout my parents 1 yr old GSD all the time...
"oh my god shes so skinny"
and she is...
but shes perfectly healthy, vet checks and blood work came up clear, fecals are good...shes on grain free...shes just got a super high metabolisim (were now switching her to raw and suplimening with satin balls an dhoping thatll support her growth better)
and as someone who constantly hears "OMG hes so skinny" in reguars to my PERFECTLY weighted creties...it can be very frustrating...you can only explain "no hes the perfect weight for his build" or "she is but her metabolism is so fast were just trying t keep up" or "shes going through a growth spurt" so many times before it starts getting frustrating.
instead how does the dog look OTHERWISE...other than being skinny does it look Sick, is his coat nice and shiney or dull and dry, is he dirty, are his nails realy overgrown (not just a little...that happens, but very logn?), does he seem lethargic or overly shy, or skittish,
mabe instead approach the subject of "wow he must be going through a growth spurt, I heard good things about satin balls or dogs who have a hard time gaining weight, hes so handsom" make it less confrontational, you may get better and less defensive reaction.
IF you realy feel the dog is being actually abused (not just skinny but dirty/unkept/ect) then file a report with animal control...but please TALK to her FIRST, in a none confrottional kind of way because once animal control gets involved it can get messy even if hes actually being taken care of they could still make her life miserable...
I raise rabbits for meat, I occasionally sell a real nice baby to pay for feed for my other rabbits...ive never had a problem, until 1 ladytried to ransom me (she wanted to "abused" rabbits for free and wanted e to pay vet bills (which she couldn't provide me copies or proof of) when I said "return the rabbits and ill refund or provide copies of the vet report" she called animal control who came, thankfully the guy was nice, but still clueless (he told me if I need a sweate on my rbabits need sweaters...I MAKE sweaters out of my angoras wool LOL!, they ARE wearing sweaters) but I kept my mouth shut and he was quie content with our setup...however simply based n the rabbits needing sweaters comment, a more "house rabbit" ac officer who belives all bunnies should live inside COULD have cause serious issues for my very small setup that provides healthy hormone/medication soy and corn free meat for me and my dogs...
so PLEASE be sure before hand, talk to her as a human being...I sense disdain for this woman in your typing alone, focusing on her weight and "cant handle her own life"....
and im sure that could easily come across when your talking to her so, take a breath...
ive met and worked with some SUPER skinny danes who are perfectly healthy and well loved that animal control would happily of called abuse cases simply because they were gangly teens...
There is one other possibility for extremely skinny dogs, something that I recently learned about and it turned out that a beautiful young shepherd that belonged to the Treasurer of our humane society had the condition and none of the vets had figured out the correct diagnosis. I just happened to meet a woman who runs a website about the issue, got some brochures and brought them to the next meeting. J's dog has now put on about 12 pounds and is doing great.
My mom's friend's adult daughter is back in town for the holiday's with her Great Dane. All of his ribs are showing. My mom asked if the dog had a medical condition to appear so shockingly malnourished? They said no and just gave my mom a dirty look. We have a neighbor with a Great Dane and he looks absolutely nothing like this dog. On a recent vacation, we adopted a dog from a kill animal shelter (with cages and cages of animals who suffered horrible abuse) and this pooch looks like he came from this place.
A little background on the pet's owner - she's an unkempt 350 lb+ adult woman and her parents pay her mortgage because she can't handle life on her own.
My mom won't call animal control on her friend's daughter, she says I'm stirring up trouble with the friendship. I want to. Am I out of line?
since you felt the need to mention the owner is so fat; maybe she's eating the dog's food.
Zugor, good catch, that's one of the things we considere for my parents GSD but her numbers were normal. (its very common in GSD's
After J found out about this condition and had the vet run the specific test for this the dog's numbers came in within the normal range but they decided to go ahead and start the treatment anyway and as I said before she's put on about 12 pounds and is well on her way to being a healthy dog with a glossy coat and a new spring in her step too. Who knows, maybe the test isn't so great or maybe what's normal for most dogs just isn't for some.
I do know that it was rather disappointing for J that none of the three vets that she took her dog to considered this as a possible condition and I've personally used two of them and consider them both to be excellent vets with great clinical skills (even if one does not have the best bedside manner). We also let our local animal control officers know about this so that if they do get called about a dog in bad shape they will at least find out if the owner is a neglectful one or if the dog may have a medical issue that the owner doesn't know about and they can tell them.
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