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Oh goodness!! Let's see, we've got 3 chis, a chi mix, a rottie, a rat terrier, and a shepherd. Oh, and my daughter is only 16 so we've got her chi in the house with us at least another 2 years. Kind of running out of room for another 100+ pound dog!! LOL!!
I did tell hubby if we didn't have so many dogs of our own though, I'd definitely have kept her. She's an incredible dog!
Luna was from a litter brought up to New England from North Carolina. They were in a kill shelter. We wanted the right dog for so, so long. Finally we saw her and her litter mates on Petfinder in January 2008.
We went to get her February 9, 2008 when she was a few months old. We drove from our home in Vermont to Hinsdale, NH which is near Brattleboro (the trip was about 1.2 hours I think).
She was the only black and white pointer/lab looker in the group. The rest of the puppies were black labs.
Here she is as a little puppy:
And a more recent photo:
I also have a photo in my profile.
She's a sweetie. I urge anyone who CAN to rescue and save a life.
Whisper is one of our four dogs, two rescues and two strays. My wife had always wanted a Great Dane (puppy) and spent many weeks researching the top breeders in the country but the more she looked the more she kept coming back to the shelters. Whisper was an 18 month old surrender and we found her at a shelter in Clouquet, Mn. She was removed by the authorities from a bad situation and was rescued by the Animal Shelter. At the time her name was Precious, my wife picked out the name because Whisper is completely deaf.
The first time we took her to the vet, he took one look at her and asked if she was deaf. Evidently the different eye colors and mostly white coat is indicative of that condition in Great Danes. She is a little bit on the small side, responds pretty well to hand signals and is a bit of a ninny.
We have a big fenced yard and walk her and her buds every day unless it get's below zero. As we live out in the country on a pretty deserted road, we let her run a bit on our walks and she can flat out fly. If I could ever get a picture of her running, you would see a huge smile on her face while she runs up ahead, slams on the brakes, spins around and runs past us and will repeat this several times.
I've told a lot of the story elsewhere on the forum, but I'll tell it again cuz I like it.
I was driving past the shelter one night around 9pm, saw a cat carrier out in front of the nightdrop boxes. Thought it was probably a dead animal dropped off but worried it might be kittens (I was trying to finish up my cat rescue stint at that point, as I prepared to move across the state, and wanted nothing less than to be saddled with more). I mulled it over as I ran my errand and decided it was only right to check. The shelter was in a horrible neighborhood with stray animals frequently running loose (not to mention thuggish people, drug deals, etc) and would not be safe for any animal small enough to fit in that carrier.
So I pulled into the parking lot and took a peek. It was a shivering dog crammed into the smallish cat carrier, and all the other nightdrop boxes were locked and/or occupied. I felt terrible but then had to think over 1) what could I do with a dog, I was in the middle of moving and 2) would it be considered theft if I took it off the shelter property?
I called my friend, an animal control officer in a neighboring (more progressive, AC-wise) city and asked her advice. She said if it wasn't over their threshold the dog wasn't theirs, but that I could call the police, knowing they had a key to one nightdrop box kept locked specifically for police use. So I called, they took the report. I waited for an hour in the parking lot. No show. Meanwhile I had taken the dog into my car and out of the carrier and discovered she had patches of hair missing, was thin, and collapsed onto her belly. I thought I maybe should take her to the emergency vet for euthanasia. I took her home to get a better look, figuring that if she didn't need emergency care that I could bring her back to the shelter in the morning.
I bathed her, suspected mange (and knew exactly what that particular shelter does immediately to dogs with suspected mange from past experience), discovered she could stand just fine, she was just terrified. Didn't take her to the shelter the next morning, though I did leave the report of the found dog. I did take her to the vet, and named her "Nervous Nelly" for the paperwork. No mange, spay scar felt. I was confused - this person spayed their dog, or got her from a shelter or rescue who did, and then treat her this way? I called around to various friends I knew in the dog rescue world and got several interested groups. Poodle Rescue seemed like the best bet and I arranged for them to evaluate her after her mandatory stray-period listing at the shelter was up.
In the meantime she was sleeping in my bed (ooh, you should have seen her eyes light up when she first caught sight of the bed!), learning after several days of attempts to walk on a leash and pee more than once every 36 hours, eat, etc. The evaluation came and Poodle Rescue was happy to take her if I would meet the foster home half way (a 2 hour drive for me). No problem. We met, I handed over the dog misty-eyed, told them I'd take her back in a second if there turned out to be behavioral or medical issues they couldn't work with, and went home to brood about this great dog I'd just handed over.
Got several calls from the wonderful foster home... first that everything was ok... a few hours later that she was pacing the yard looking for a way out... next day she's growling at them and crying all night, etc, etc. After a few days she suggested "You know what you said about keeping her, I wonder if she might be happier that way". I felt tremendously guilty for having earned this scared dog's trust and then handed her over (keep in mind I was an old pro at fostering - 100s of cats had been through my home and gone on to adoption so I'm not normally a sentimental softy), and I was moving to my own home where no one could tell me whether or not I could have a dog, so the answer was simple. I drove the 2 hours back that weekend and picked her up!
When I got her back I knew I had somewhat destroyed her by "abandoning" her again. The dog had separation anxiety like I couldn't believe. Even just taking a shower, with her on the bathroom floor immediately outside the bathtub, she would howl and whine when the curtain blocked her view of me. Housebreaking accidents right and left. Sheer panic when I was out of her sight completely. So I took her everywhere with me for the few days as I put together my move, got her to the vet again, got her some separation anxiety meds, etc.
She rode in the car with the cats and me and the fish to our new home and moved in. She continued to have separation issues but did pretty well with her crate (with some blips). Housebreaking was an issue - she seemed to believe that carpet was as good as grass. So I pulled out all the carpeting and changed the floor. Our new home is wide open with unlimited outdoors opportunities, so she became a little hiker/desert walker/mountain explorer with me. We found an abandoned kitten on one of our neighborhood walks and she wrested care of him from me, becoming quite upset if I ever let him squeal.
On Christmas Eve I noticed blood. I called the vet when they opened on the 26th, and brought her in for evaluation. She was in heat. Not spayed after all. That cleared up some of my confusion about the previous owners. Likely she'd had puppies very recently before I found her, explaining her hairloss, thinness, and baggy nipples. They spayed her for me immediately.
In January I attempted to leave her for less than 24 hours at boarding place in someone's home. She wouldn't come out of her crate, pooped in it, panicked when they tried to pull her out to clean it up, and she bit someone.
I enrolled her in basic doggy obedience school, unable to find anything specific to fearful dogs around here. She's doing very well in her class and graduates next Saturday. We're studying hard for her final exam and one thing she's working on is letting others in class touch her and talk to her.
She's got issues - housetraining is still something I have to sort of control. She will not tell me when she has to go out, I just have to remember to watch the clock and bring her out with a command to go. I can't let her be petted by others yet, she's not trustworthy. I'm afraid to take her for grooming anymore (despite the fact that went twice before the boarding incident and had no trouble). But in our little home she is a happy, impy, regular little dog. She likes chewing bones (as well as Mom's glasses), pulling things out from cupboards, stealing garbage and compost, chasing cats good-naturedly, and you should see her dance when that leash comes out. Thinking back to when I first had her and she would collapse on her belly when I tried to walk her, it's just the most wonderful thing to have such an exuberant girl around.
Nelly will never, ever be abandoned again, no matter how badly she behaves. I cannot believe how anyone, no matter how frustrated they were with her, could have ever left her the way they did knowing how desperate she is to be with the one she loves. It crushes my heart to think of how she felt in that little cat carrier that night in the dark and I feel very lucky to have been the one to found such a loving little dog. Anyway, too bad for the bozos who did it. I can't even imagine what my life would be if I'd decided to drive on and let the police take care of it (nor not) that night in July.
Wow! Some of you have some wonderful rescue stories. Posts like this remind me that there are good-hearted, caring individuals out there.
Tonka is our rescue. Unfortunately we don't know too much about his history, though we believe he may be a hunting dog that got lost from his pack, or possibly dumped by a hunter. He really is not interested in hunting at all, so maybe he lost his job due to poor performance. He is from northern MD.
If that's true, the hunter's loss is our gain! We adopted him from BREW Beagles in the DC area on August 11, 2001. He is very special to us, and I can hardly imagine what life was like before we adopted him.
Here are some photos:
The last photo is his first ever trip to the beach - we were in Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. He didn't care about the water, but he sure liked the sand! We had to fill in the hole before we left. Goofy dog!
We rescued our little Lola from our local kill shelter about a year or so ago. We went in on a whim (we weren't technically in the market for a dog) as we were coming back home from my boyfriends parents house. Went in and saw sooooo many beautiful dogs! There was a giant Husky that was just stunning but my old house didn't have a fenced yard so we didn't want to subject such a large dog to living in a house .
We asked the volunteer if we could look at a few dogs but they COULD'NT be pit bulls or even look like pits, since our neighbors are ridiculous and will call the cops on any dog that looks even remotely like a pit bull. They kept bringing out 100lb + pits and we told them that they couldn't be over 50 lbs and that they absolutely could not look like a pit.
I think the shelter lady finally got frustrated and said 'well, there is this dog, but she's kind of mean and she's due to be put down tomorrow'. What the hell, bring her out!
She was about 25 lbs, a black pit mix who was missing half her hair and was absolutely emaciated. She immediately crawled into my boyfriends lap (he was sitting on a bench) and laid down on him. 2 days later, we went to pick her up The volunteer said she had been in a few times as she was an escape artist and kept running away from her old owner. He obviously neglected her as she had multiple skin irritations, was about 20 lbs underweight and looked absolutely horrible.
6 months later after finding out she has a severe allergy to wheat which was causing her hair to fall out, she is a great size (all 38 lbs of her!) recently received her Canine Good Citizen certificate and is an absolutely lovely little dog! She doesn't bark, she doesn't dig, she doesn't beg and doesn't shed. What more could you want??
I don't have a a great story like the rest of you - just that I had in mind a smaller dog, but that went out the window when I met my sweet pit mix at the shelter. She was found as a stray. As soon as I got close to her, she was on my lap, licking my face. I'm still amazed at her indiscriminant love of people despite being abandoned.
First weekend home (5 months old)
http://photos-a.ll.facebook.com/photos-ll-snc1/v399/208/61/511316012/n511316012_2154448_3178.jpg (broken link)
Giving up on getting me out of bed:
http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs036.snc1/2665_73167936012_511316012_2711232_2313743_n.jpg (broken link)
"Oh hi! Did you say something?"
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs036.snc1/2665_73167956012_511316012_2711235_4310719_n.jpg (broken link)
Did someone say "BALL?!"
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2065/208/61/511316012/n511316012_2495595_8103.jpg (broken link)
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You have a gorgeous furfamily!
It's great to save a life!!
The volunteer said she had been in a few times as she was an escape artist and kept running away from her old owner. He obviously neglected her as she had multiple skin irritations, was about 20 lbs underweight and looked absolutely horrible. 
