A Home Is Found

[JC filling in for Sherman again] Good news! DINKH has found his furever home. A fellow I know through one of my hobbies was interested in the DINKHster, and on Thursday, April 21st he headed to his new home.

DINKH didn't seem too concerned about all the goings on. We loaded up in the station wagin and headed out to meet up with William at the Forsyth County Jail that evening. Introductions were made, and after a little while of socializing and passing along all his info, DINKH had no hesitation about leaping into the back of an unfamiliar car. William's wife and 2 kids couldn't make it, but he was well received at home. DINKH has formally been renamed 'Tango', a name which I think is quite excellent (even though he'll always be DINKH to us).

Also good news, DINKH will be receiving top notch heartworm care. He started 30 days of Doxycycline, an antibiotic. It turns out that heartworms, which are a parasite, have a parasite inside of them. The Doxycycline kills off the parasite, which in turn weakens the heartworm. After the Doxy regimen, an injection of Immiticide is given. 30 days later, two more injections are given, 24 hours apart. For 60 days from the first injection, DINKH will have to have an absolute minimum of activity, and remain crated most of the time. This because while the heartworms are dying, there is a risk of them breaking up and causing a pulmonary embolism. What's desired is that the worms slowly decay and are eliminated through urination. This is going to be a bummer of a time for DINKH.

However miserable he is for 60 days, it's a small price to pay for killing those creepy heartworms and giving him the normal life span of a healthy dog. There is some risk associated with the procedure, but DINKH is otherwise healthy, and the vet felt really good about how he handled the anesthesia when he had his harbls removed.

On the home front, Sherman does seem to miss DINKH. They had gotten pretty tight, and enjoyed charging around the house playing (which as I mentioned before, usually meant DINKH putting his mouth around Sherm's neck and "winning"). When we got back from handling DINKH over, we went upstairs, let Sherman out, and he went racing back to the bedroom waiting for DINKH to be let out of his crate. No DINKH! Very sad, guess we'll have to foster a GSD to keep Sherm company :)

In one of those many examples of the "small world" syndrome we run into, it turns out Meghan used to work at a Banfield veterinary clinic at a Petsmart. I was telling the DINKH story to my dental hygienist and had gotten to the part about describing Meghan's outgoing nature when Marla (the hygienist) says "Was her name Meghan Seabolt?". When Marla had gotten her boxer, they went to Petsmart for a basic checkup and ended up liking Meghan so much they stayed with her. Indeed, a small world!

Next time, we'll be back to our regular Sherman programming, and we'll find out how Sherm did after a day at the Camp Woof doggy day care center.

*woof*

Cones Of Shame

(If you're just coming in on this, you may want to read part I or Part II).

Sherman has graciously allowed me to write the text for the Story Of DINKH. He'll return to his regular dictorial (What? Oh. Sherman says that's supposed to be dictation) in the next posts.

As mentioned in part II, DINKH had a meeting with Dr. Knife and lost his doghood. And you may recall from an earlier posting where Sherman mentioned nearly losing his pee-pee. Seeing as we have NO interest in that happening again, we made sure to acquire a Cone of Shame, otherwise known as an Elizbethan Collar, or e-collar. This one above came from Petsmart. DINKH was relatively tolerant of it, but still managed to reach his incision and lick at it. Not badly, but we didn't want ANY of that action going on.

Friday on my way in to work I stopped at a pet supply store and picked up the Pro Collar. It's an inflatable style and supposed to be better all the way around. For $28, it damn well ought to be. See picture below.

As you can see, it basically looks like DINKH ran into a tire inner tube and lost. He seems to be tolerant of it as well, but I think he can still manage to reach "down there". Fortunately, he hasn't really shown that much interest in licking his incision, and most of the time he's close to Cindy or myself, so we can stop him. The longer he goes without messing with it, the better. Inspections several times a day show that it's healing well.

We're now up to Saturday night, about 10pm. Things are going well, everyone mostly gets along with only the very occasional border skirmish. Sherman tries to get DINKH to play, but we have to put a stop to that until DINKH's 7 to 10 day healing period is over.

The big decision now is what to do with him. Cindy and I both have grown rather fond of him, and Sherman has a playmate that can keep up with him. I do know that if my friend does take him, he'll have a good home, so I'm not really worried about that aspect of it. DINKH learns fast, seems to like to please, and I think with some training would be a stellar dog. Did I mention we're both fond of him? :)

One thing I forgot to mention in an earlier post is how much this dog can PEE! I swear that his bladder is actually a gateway into another galaxy comprised entirely of pee. We live on 2.2 acres, and I'd swear that in the first 2 days this dog marked each and every tree on property at least twice. Where as Sherman will whiz once on his outing, DINKH goes from tree to bush to tree to tree to... you get the idea. Seriously, half his internal body space must be devoted to his bladder.

That brings the Story of DINKH up to date. Sherman will let you know in a post in a few days where DINKH winds up. Sherman The Self-Centered Dog would also like to remind everyone that this blog is about >him< but since it's a fellow GSD that we're talking about, he's granting the space and bandwidth.

Until next time, on behalf of the Wren pack (Sherman, Makeeta, Moon, JC, Cindy and for now, DINKH), best wishes to all our doggy and human friends out there.

*woof*

DINKH Moves In

(If you're just tuning in, read part I first, where we first meet DINKH).

It's now March 31st, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with this dog. We have Sherman (of course), Makeeta (a Shiloh Shepherd, about 10 years old), and Moon (the 1000 year-old Golden Retriever). We don't need 4 dogs. Space is tight, and it's more food, vetting, flea & tick dip, and time. However, being the sucker I am for GSD's, I'm sure not going to turn him out in to the street, or dump him at the pound.

Since Sherman last posted, we've gotten involved somewhat with Canine Pet Rescue, a rescue group that handles mostly GSDs and the occasional mini-Australian Shepherd. We've run transport for several dogs now, picking one up in Anderson, SC, a pair of mini's up in Chattanooga, TN, and I've run a couple pregnant females from the Dekalb County Animal Shelter to the rescue facility. I give CPR a call, and basically, because he's a middle-aged dog, he's HW+ and may have ACL damage, he's not a good candidate for placement. I do get him into the vet the group uses for his rabies and bordetella vaccines, and a fecal float. Turns out the ACL damage may just be a sprain as the limp seems to be lessening quite a bit.

At this point we now have about $75 in him. He's still HW+, still un-neutered, and still not sure what's going to happen. We've started letting our dogs near him while he's in the crate, and over the next couple days make introductions in the garage. He and Sherman play, and play hard. It's good to watch Sherman find a buddy that'll play like he does. Makeeta will occasionally, but only when the mood strikes her. Moon does not play. Ever.

Over the next couple days, Cindy starts bringing him upstairs while I'm at work, only letting one dog at a him interact with him. He explores the house, getting to know the area.

Poor DINKH sleeps in his crate in the basement while everyone else is upstairs. There's some whining when everyone leaves him for the night, but he settles down. Nonetheless, I feel bad for him. Here he is, a lonely guy, isolated from a pack that likes him. I think it's on Thursday, April 7th that I decide he should stay the night upstairs, in a crate in the bedroom. Sherman and I head to bed, bringing DINKH in. Sherman doesn't seem to mind that he's in the same room. "Screw it," I think, "I'm going to leave him out unless there's a problem." DINKH hops up on to the bed, and sacks out for the night. As far as he's concerned, he's home.

Our Facebook friends laugh at us, telling us "Congratulations on your new dog!". "No, " we say, "he's just waiting to find a furever home". And in fact, one fellow that I shoot with on the weekends, a cop with Forsyth county, is interested in meeting him. He and his little girl have just had their tonsils out, so there's a recovery period before they're ready to really meet and greet with DINKH. Plus, I'd like to finish vetting him out as much as possible to make him more desirable for adoption.

We're now up to Thursday, March 14th. DINKH sleeps in the bedroom, pals around with the other dogs, and generally is living the sweet life. But his big adventure today is to get neutered ("Hey, guys, guess what! I'm going to the vet to get tutored!"). I've called around and Hall County Animal Shelter is the cheapest place going at $50. While he's there he's also going to get microchipped. At $20, it's a no-brainer. Tags may get lost, microchips can't.

DINKH gets picked up at 4:30pm, and I spend a little quality time chatting with Dr. Meghan Seabolt (is that a cool name or what?). There is a possibility that we may be able to get shelter pricing on fixing DINKH's heartworm issue. Doing it through our regular vet is $800+, and the Atlanta Humane Society (which seems incapable of having a human answer the phone or returning voicemal) is about $655. In any case, NOT treating it is NOT an option.

In what may be one of the smaller mysteries in life, after his surgery, DINKH has a green line tattooed near his missing harbls. "What's the green line for?" I ask. "To indicate he's been neutered." is the reply. "..." I say. Yea. I'm pretty sure you can tell if your MALE dog is missing his harbls or not. Females, I can understand. Ah, the logic of bureaucracy.

On to part III for the conclusion.

An Intruder Upon My Property!

Yes, that's not me! This is DINKH (his name is all caps, which will be explained later). I realize I have not posted anything new in almost 8 months. I blame my human, who hasn't seen fit to keep the world updated with the exciting adventures in my life. OTOH, there really hasn't been that much excitement until about 3 weeks ago. Since dictating is kind of slow, I'm going to let JC do the reporting here, since he knows all the facts anyway.

[JC here. Thanks, Sherm!] On March 28th this year, Cindy (Sherm's other human) was taking Makeeta out for her morning walk, when she felt like she was being watched. Looking up at the back porch (image), she saw a pair of eyes staring at her. Her first reaction was "What is Sherman doing on the back porch?" followed by "That's not Sherman...". She proceeded to take Makeeta in through the front door, put her up, then come and find me. We look out the back door, and here's this mostly German Shepherd Dog curled up on the doormat in front of the door.

I go out through the front door, around the side, and at the corner I kneel down and cluck to the dog. He pops up, trots over and licks my hand. I see that he has a collar but no tags, and he's also limping on his back right leg a little. I call the office and tell them I'm going to be a little late coming in...

Grabbing a leash, I load him into the Shermobile (the 1993 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon), and carry him up to a local vet. We go in, and the receptionist tells us that the doctor is in surgery and won't be out for an hour, and a visit is $50. Apparently they have no rescue/stray pricing policies, which I consider pretty lame. The receptionist gets out the microchip scanner and runs it over him, but comes up with nothing. She offers to take a picture and put it on Facebook, so we do that. Checking later, I find that you have to 'friend' them to be able to *see* their pictures, so really, what's the point? You'd think a business would have a more public profile. Oh well.

Giving a call to our regular vet (Chateau Animal Hospital), they say they can see him any time. I swing back by the house to pick up Cindy and we motor out to CAH. Dr. Betteker checks him out, and believes him to have a damaged anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), but otherwise appears healthy. Age is estimated to be about 3 years, and oh yes, he's un-neutered. Oh a whim, I have him run a heartworm test, which comes up positive, to my dismay. Checkout cost is about $36, which is the office visit and heartworm check. I consider that quite acceptable. When they ask for his name, I tell them it's DINKH -- Dammit, I'm Not Keeping Him.

We have a couple crates available to house him in, so we bring one down to the basement. It's large enough for a few hours at a time, but not for extended living. I make a call to a friend ours, and on Tuesday night borrow a crate large enough for a small horse. Or at least a Great Dane... DINKH is installed into basement living quarters while we figure out what to do.

On the 29th I put an ad on CraigsList, with the closing sentence: "If this is your dog, email me and identify exactly what his collar looks like, and why I should give him back to you at all.". Why anyone has a 3 year old GSD with no tags, no chip, un-neutered and HW+ doesn't deserve to have this dog back. He's a super nice dog who deserves far better.

This post is getting a little long, so see part II for the rest of the story.

A Fellow GSD Needs Your Help!

Human friends, a fellow GSD needs your help. The picture above is not me, but a German Shepherd named Indy (short for Independence). Indy was hit by a car on I-285 (a large circular road that humans drive far too fast on that circles Atlanta) on July 3rd, 2010.

She was rescued and rushed to the vet, who did some fantastic work on her. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is expensive. I don't know if the labor was donated, but there's materials cost, medication, food and other things that add up. Canine Pet Rescue is trying to raise $2000 by August 3rd to offset the costs (which are going to run a lot more than $2000!).

Please help Indy by donating. The website for donating is here. You can send money by mail, or if you have a credit card or Paypal, you can use that. At this time, they're at about 88% of their goal. Every little bit helps, so please help Indy and donate just a little. $5 isn't much to you, but it adds up quick to help out a great German Shepherd.

If you're on Facebook, search for 'Canine Pet Rescue', and friend them. They're good people!

*woof*

My Two Year Anniversary!

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of me joining the Wren pack. In spite of nothing really interesting happening in the last few months, it's been a good 2 years. I spent a grueling 2 weeks at Camp Diana learning "manners", I've had encounters with chipmunks, stood in the middle of a busy street in the dark, tried to take a ride in a Fedex truck, met a lot of really nice people, walked around the shores of Lake Lanier, and in general have been pretty much living the good life.

I'm still working on playing nice with other dogs when I'm on the leash. A couple months ago JC, Cindy and I went over to Camp Diana's house so JC could replace some electrical outlets. I got turned loose in the backyard with a couple others dogs, and mostly had a good time. We played a little, and I tried to climb the fence (I was looking for JC), but I got busted. Apparently *someone* was keeping an eye on me from an upper bedroom window, and saw it all. Ooops!

It's been pretty hot and humid in the afternoons, so I've not been taking JC to the park for our evening walks. I'm looking forward to the cooler weather so we can resume that. I enjoy meeting the people, and I need to exercise my human so he doesn't get fat.

This weekend I saw some email that JC received about a 5 month old GSD that "looks just like me" (pictures, sometimes slow). JC has occasionally shopped the idea of another GSD in the house, but the rest of us are not so much in favor. Cindy claims the next dog should be her pick (since I picked JC), and she wants a Bernese Mountain Dog. Personally, I don't think we need any dogs that outweigh me by 50 pounds! So it looks like the current pack structure will be the status quo for a while, which is fine with me.

Well, that's about it for now. Since it's my anniversary, it means I can (pretty much) do what I want. I think I'll take a nap, go bother Moon, steal the towel from the bathroom, snooze a little, get Makeeta to play, relocate some shoes from the laundry room, take a pre-going-out-in-the-afternoon nap, and then wait for JC to get home. For those in-between times in my busy agenda, I shall chew my Nylabone.

*woof*

P.S. -- The picture below is my opinion of BP.

A Bad Starter; My Mighty Jaws

This is my car. I inherited it from Anvil, who was JC's dog prior to me. The story goes that JC had a '98 Dodge Durango that Anvil used to ride in. When he was 12 or so, he got to where he couldn't jump into it any more. So JC sold the Durango and bought the '93 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon you see here.

Sometime in late November or early December something called the 'starter' stopped... well... 'starting' and the car wouldn't go. It's been so cold and/or wet outside the last few months that JC couldn't (or wouldn't) work on it. So I've been a pup without wheels (although I did get to ride in the Impreza, which is rare).

Finally, last weekend the weather was decent enough for JC to get to work on getting my ride back on the road. I was stationed outside on my long lead so I could supervise. It took him about 3 hours to get the old starter out, and I heard a lot of words I don't think I'm supposed to repeat. I dunno how many times he crawled under the car, and then back out, but I think it was at least thirty.

After getting the starter thingie out, he took it up to the auto parts store where they tested it, only to find out it wasn't busted. I don't think JC was too happy. He came back home with a replacement one (something about they're cheap enough, and with this much effort, he wasn't going to put the old one back in, since who knew when it might actually fail). He turned the key, and it still didn't start. Lots more words I won't repeat (I kinda went and laid under the Impreza at this point). So then he took the battery up to the auto parts store and tested it, and it was good, but had some corrosion on one of the terminals (now I'm just repeating what I heard, because I really don't know what half of this stuff means).

He returned, installed the battery, and yay! my car started. He let it idle for about 15 minutes, and it seemed to run OK. So I hopped in the car, as I thought it would be a good idea to take it for a test drive. JC backed off the parking pad, put it in forward, and it died. Uh-oh. It didn't sputter or anything, just went instantly dead. He tried to start it again, and there was this clicky-clicky sound like before, but it didn't start. I hopped out, and he attached my lead back to the Impreza so I wouldn't get underfoot while he tried to figure out what went wrong.

He poked around under the hood for a couple minutes, tried it again, and it started. I don't think he was really happy about this, because he didn't do anything. It just started working again. So he put it in gear and pulled up the driveway. Without me! Was he going somewhere without me?!? That's not gonna happen!

I decided I should catch him before he left, so I used my super-sharp teeth, and cut myself loose. [jc: Exhibit A by the guilty party shown here] Then he backed back down the driveway, saw what I did, and I think he started to panic (you might remember what happened when I stood in the middle of the street at night). He jumped out, opened the back door of the car, and called for me, and I came flying around and jumped in. Heck, I wasn't really gonna go anywhere, I wanted to test drive my car!

After he finished fussing at me (something about getting run over and something else about destroying a perfectly good 15' lead), we went for a cruise, and everything seemed fine, but he was a little concerned about the unexplained stoppage. It was nice to get out, sit in the front seat, and check out the goings on in the area. It was about 60 degrees out, and there were lots of people on motorcycles. We got back, and he decided before taking the car anywhere again, he'd check a few more things over the next weekend.

Yesterday (a week after he replaced the starter), he checked everything over and spent an hour under the car pulling the wires off the starter and cleaning all the connections a second time. After he took it for a test drive (without me!), he proclaimed it 'Safe For Sherman' (I like the sound of that), and we're ready to rock'n'ride again. Tomorrow we're supposed to go to the park after he makes an apple pie.

So it looks like I'm a dog with wheels again, and we'll be able to hit the parks (it's started to warm up, which I suspect is more the reason than the car. He'd really let me ride in the Impreza, even if it does mean he has to pick up the fur I leave behind).

Now if I could just get over these wintertime itchies and scratchies, everything would be cool.

*woof*

[jc: Net result was 5 hours and $48 replacing a starter that wasn't bad due to a misleading diagnoses. Headlights were bright, battery voltage was good, a 60 amp battery booster didn't help, so the evidence seemed to indicate a bad starter solenoid. The only saving grace is the old starter did sound a little rough, but who knows if it would fail in a month or 10 more years. At least it wasn't a $300 part. I did however, have to grind down a box wrench to fit the one of the three bolts on the brace that keeps the starter from being easily removed... Always something.]