New Fosters

The Saturday before last was an amazing day.  The rescue group I volunteer with had eleven dogs adopted!  And even more importantly, we had two brand new foster volunteers join the group.  This means we'll be able to save more dogs! 

When we get new foster homes, we try to give them a dog that is already in one of our foster homes and ready for adoption.  This is because when we get in new dogs, we don't always know much about them.  Some of them will be heartworm positive or have other health issues that will require long-term care.  Others have issues like ear mites and worms that can be contagious to other pets so they have to be quarantined.  Plus the dogs may have behavior issues that will need to be worked with, and often new volunteers don't want to take in a dog that they quickly learn is pushy with other dogs, or doesn't like kids, or screams when unhappy.  Since we want to keep our new volunteers, we prefer to give them dogs that have already been evaluated and fully vetted and that we know will be a good fit for their home.  That way they have a good experience and keep coming back!   

Since I somehow always seem to have plenty of foster dogs around, I often end up moving one of my foster dogs to new foster homes.  Or in the case of the past few weeks, I moved three of my dogs to new foster homes!  Both Bogey the shy dog (now called Brody) and Lucky the deaf dog went to a volunteer who is new to fostering but absolutely wonderful with training and socializing dogs.  I've shared a few of their pictures on my Facebook page and they are both doing great!  Also Louie my shy but perfect foster dog went to another foster home where he is being spoiled rotten. 

There's one other thing you should know about new foster homes.  They have uncanny luck in getting their fosters adopted.  Even dogs that have been around for several months suddenly become adopted once going to a new foster home.  It is wonderful!  In this case, both Lucky and Louie have been adopted in the past week!  This means I was able to send out two more foster dogs to those foster homes!  I've also taken in several new dogs, and one new cat, so here's a quick update.

Hoppy is a three-legged cat who was turned into a shelter when his family said they no longer had time for him.  He is very sweet and loving, and he was adopted three weeks after I brought him home!

Josie is a female English Foxhound or Treeing Walker Coonhound mix (your choice).  She was left behind in the parking lot of a vet's office.  One of the vet techs rescued her and she went to another relatively new foster home.  She had a bit too much energy for them, and since they had no other pets for her to play with, we moved her to my house so she could have some other dogs to keep her busy.  My back yard is basically like a dog park with new dogs being introduced often, so she always has someone new to play with.  Right now she loves running and playing with Jax and Lacey.   

 
Since Josie's foster family was willing to take another dog, they took home Gemma the deaf pit bull mix.  And since Moose the Great Dane and all five of Lacey's puppies were adopted, that gave me room to take in a few new dogs.  So stay tuned for more new fosters, coming soon!

Catching Up

Between the holidays and recovering from a cold, I have fallen way behind. So here's a quick update on everyone, and going forward I will do my best to keep up with new pictures and stories!

When I last posted, I had ten dogs at my house. As of right now, I still have ten, but not the same ten! I still have Lacey and her five puppies, now named Nike (chocolate female), Puma (smallest black female), Buster Brown (black male), Teva (yellow female), and Avia (largest black female). The puppies continue to be brilliant and extremely advanced for their age of less than five weeks old! They already have distinct personalities. Nike is the most vocal and demanding - she's like the big sister to the rest. Puma is the quiet one, content to sit back and watch what is going on. Buster Brown is the sweet one who is the most affectionate of the bunch. Teva is the adorable one who likes to be in the middle of whatever is going on, and Avia is the hungry one who is always first to the food bowl! The pups are growing quickly and new pictures will be coming soon.

Ziggy is still at my house. He's almost completely destroyed his bachelor pad, including destuffing the dog bed, finding and eating several dewormer pills (20 times the dose he should have had - of course it had no effect on him), and managing to burn out every lightbulb except one. I'm not sure how he pulled that last one off, but I'm sure it was something he did. He received a wonderful Christmas gift from Blueberry's human, and I'll tell you all about it as soon as I download the pictures off of my camera.

Lucky the deaf dog is also still at my house. He actually went out on a trial adoption. It lasted a week, which is seven days longer than I expected. He was returned for wanting to eat the bird, among other things. Poor Lucky isn't having the best luck. Fortunately the bird was uninjured.

Allie the extremely energetic Akita mix was also adopted. She's currently on day 5 of the trial period. This is 5 days longer than I expected! If there is any dog out there that needs a home (besides Ziggy), Allie is the one. So I am praying that this trial adoption works out... and I'm considering changing my phone number just to be sure. Just kidding.

Natasha the extremely-obsessed-with-me Poodle mix also is out on a trial adoption. She has a lot better chance of success, but being that she's in a home where I don't live, there's no guarantee. This is the dog that has gone to two different homes for at least three weeks each, then come back to me and never even looked back at her previous caretaker. And yet if I take two steps away from her at an adoption event, she goes nuts. It's kind of scary.

On the other hand, Libby the deaf JRT sees me at an adoption event and looks right through me.  She's still at another foster home, where her foster mom reports she gets the same treatment.  This does not make it easy for Libby to get adopted since she ignores anyone and everyone equally, but at least it makes me feel better that it isn't just me that she treats this way.  And it sort of balances out Natasha's behavior. 

Trooper the Black Lab I found on the side of the road is back at my house now too.  He's recovered from his broken spine due to being hit by a car, and he is now available for adoption.  Trooper is a good dog and gets along with everyone except Lucky, so currently I have to keep Ziggy, Lucky, and Trooper apart from each other at all times. 

The only other dog that Trooper didn't get along with was another deaf white dog named Ozzie.  I temporarily fostered him for a few days, and Trooper and Ozzie became mortal enemies during this time.  Ozzie is a Westie mix we think, and he's the cutest little dog who is a typical terrier and willing to take on dogs three times his size.  He is now back in his original foster home and I have to admit I miss the little guy!  He is available for adoption and hopefully will find a forever home soon! 

I also have another male foster dog named Jax.  Jax was adopted out as a puppy and recently returned because he didn't do well with children.  Since Ozzie also didn't like Jax, Jax came to my house instead of going back to his original foster home.  I really like Jax - he's friendly and well-behaved and happy and easygoing and smart.  He gets along with all the other dogs too.  I'm going to take his picture one of these days and get him up on the website so he can get adopted.  Sometime soon. 

As if these five adults and five puppies weren't enough, I recently received some sad news that two of my previous foster dogs are being returned.  The first is Nosey, the blind Beagle puppy I fostered in October.  The family who adopted him have to move out of state into an apartment that doesn't allow dogs, so Nosey, now named Radar, will be coming back to me sometime soon.  The other return is Bogey, the very shy dog.  He has been in a foster-to-adopt situation for two months but the foster family finally decided that another dog would be a better fit for their home. So Bogey returns on Saturday.  In an ironic twist, I just realized that the same blog post where I introduced Bogey last February, I also announced Allie's original adoption.  Now I'm announcing Bogey's return and Allie's second potential adoption almost one year after that original post. 

If you've managed to read this far, thanks for hanging in there, and I promise to provide shorter posts in the future, along with more pictures.  You're welcome. 

How I Entertain Myself with A Sleepy Dog

I am easily entertained.  For example, I recently walked into the room and saw this:

Lucky was sleeping soundly.  I then did what I do almost every time one of my deaf dogs is sleeping. I did a hearing test, by yelling loudly and clapping my hands to see if they would wake up. In case you're wondering, Lucky is still deaf.


Next I got my camera out and took a few dozen pictures from every angle.  It was fun. 

I also took several close ups.  

Then I decided to cover him up with the blanket.  That woke him up, so I took a few more pictures.

Then he decided to go get a drink.  He didn't remove the blanket.  I guess he was cold. 

 Then he wanted to go outside, so I took the blanket off of him and that ended my entertainment with a sleepy dog. 

Jill and Lucky

Jill the Beagle has been adopted!  A few weeks ago one of the All Paws volunteers dressed Jill up in a Halloween costume.  Then I took pictures of her looking extremely sad and depressed. 

Jill always looked sad and depressed at adoption events - even when she wasn't wearing a costume.  It usually got her a lot of sympathy, and last week it even got her a new home!  Someone who was at PetSmart to get their other Beagle and Beagle-mix dog groomed walked by and saw Belle staring at everyone with her sad and depressed look.  She came over and visited Belle, and then took Belle to meet her dogs.  Everyone got along great, and by the end of the day, Belle had a new home! 

My other exciting news is that I finally got Lucky to look at the camera!  It took weeks of work, and thousands of pictures, but I got a decent picture of him!  Okay, it didn't really take weeks of work, and I may have exaggerated about the thousands of pictures.  It took around 10 or 12 pictures, and I just used a zoom lens and stood on the other side of the yard, but hey, at least he has a recent picture that I can put on the website now!

Lucky Gets His Picture Taken

In order to find a home for a foster dog, you need a good picture of the dog. Many times people will be looking on websites when they’re thinking about adopting, and when someone is faced with pictures of several hundred dogs looking for homes, they will usually skip over the pictures that are blurry, too far away, or otherwise unattractive. I’m not a good photographer by any means, so I usually have to take dozens of pictures just to get a usable one. In Lucky’s case, his online listing still has pictures taken at the shelter he was in before I got him, even though they were taken when he was much younger, just because I have yet to get any good pictures of him. It’s not due to a lack of trying. It’s not even due to camera shyness on his part. I believe it’s due to his idea of a great big joke.

Deaf dogs can be a challenge to take pictures of sometimes, because you can’t make noises to get them to look at the camera. But after taking a few dozen pictures of Lucky while waving at him to get his attention, I finally realized he was only looking intently at the ground whenever I held up the camera and waved.


"I'll just pretend to be sniffing this blade of grass."



"Here she comes with that camera again.  Time for more sniffing."

 Some dogs will sniff the ground as a distraction when they are nervous.  This is called "displacement behavior" and basically they ignore whatever is happening that is making them nervous and focus on sniffing the ground, or another behavior instead.  But I didn't think that's what Lucky was doing.  He showed no other signs of being nervous or unsure, and seemed to think it was a game to look down whenever I tried to get his attention. 

I decided perhaps an action shot would be a better choice. But somehow he managed to run around the yard, playing with Sophie the St. Bernard, without ever once showing his face to the camera.

"Let's run THIS direction!"


In fact, he’d turn practically in mid-air, just to run the opposite direction when he saw me with the camera.


"Here she comes!  Reverse!  Reverse!"

 Finally I realized what was going on.  Like many deaf dogs, Lucky had learned that looking away from a person was a great way to be able to do whatever he wanted without getting in trouble.  After all, he couldn't "hear" me if he didn't see me giving him a hand sign to stop playing, so as long as he didn't look at me, he could keep playing!

I generally don't have this problem with deaf dogs, because I teach them to look at me often - basically to "check in" with me so we don't have this problem.  Usually a dog that is acting this way is one who has been made to do things he didn't want too often, and didn't get enough rewards for doing good things.  So I teach them by giving them big rewards when they do look at me.  Treats, attention, petting, whatever they enjoy, and then I send them right back to what they were enjoying doing in the first place.  This way they learn to look for me on a regular basis when playing with another dog, or before digging in the garden, or whatever else they might be doing.  And mostly they get rewarded and get sent back to continue, but those times when play time is over, or the digging is starting, it's easy to get their attention and redirect them to something else.  Lucky probably didn't know this in his first home, and it may have contributed to why his original owner gave him up - because they got tired of constantly trying to get Lucky's attention and make him do things.  So I'm going to be teaching Lucky that being obedient and "checking in" pays off, but in the meantime, he may not want to look at me when he's doing something fun and fears he'll be forced to stop. 

WARNING: The following photos may be offensive to some. View at your own risk.


So at this point I just waited for him to get tired.  When he was standing in the middle of the yard, alone, with nowhere to hide, I tried again to take his picture. As I waited for the camera to auto-focus, then snapped the picture, this is what I ended up with:

"Excuse me, a little privacy here please?"

Hey, at least he’s finally looking at the camera. I waited a few minutes and decided to try again. Once again, I caught him looking at the camera, but once again it was not quite a pose I could send in to the pet adoption websites.


"That's right, this is MY ball!"

 At this point I gave up and decided that perhaps a video would be a better choice. At first Lucky did his best to run out of the camera range, but then Sophie told him to stop running and start behaving. He tried to convince her that running would be more fun, but eventually he realized she would not change her mind, so he gave up and walked away.

I may never get a good picture of Lucky, but I will keep trying!

Lucky Is Tall

I’m going to show you this picture, and ask you to ignore the obvious fact that I did NOT clean my windows before I took this picture.

I’d like to claim that the grass in the backyard only looks brown in the picture because of the dirt. Not because of the extreme heat and the fact that I’m too lazy to water it. I mean I’m conserving water, which is also why I haven’t washed my windows yet this week. Let’s go with that. Actually, if you don’t mind, let’s ignore all those things and talk about the dog looking in the window, assuming you can see him through the dirt. Notice how tall he is? That’s Lucky the Great Dane mix, and he always stands on his back feet like that to look in the window. It looks like he’s about to turn the doorknob with his paw and just walk right in. However, that pathetic look in his eyes is due to the fact that he hasn’t yet figured out how to actually turn the doorknob with his paw. He doesn’t like having to wait on me to get to the door when he wants to come inside. So he stands there on his back two feet, and looks at me with that pathetic look. And if I don’t get to the door quickly enough, he barks, while still standing on two feet. Oh yes, Lucky the deaf dog does love to bark. Then, when I open the door, he promptly races around the room as though it’s his own personal ice skating rink. He loves to go sliding across the laminate floor, and then crashing into whatever piece of furniture or human or other dog gets into his way. Then he’ll pick up his favorite sterilized bone and throw it and go skating across the floor after it again. He’s kind of strange, this Lucky dog.


Lucky and I have been attending agility classes for a few weeks now, and he’s become a bit of a class clown. His favorite obstacle is the tunnel. He’ll run through it at top speed, then go racing in circles around the room after he comes out the other side, as if he is so excited he can’t control himself. He makes everyone laugh. I am hoping this silly, happy goofball of a dog gets a home soon. Then I can go back to only having nose prints on the bottom half of my windows.

Introducing Lucky

Lucky started out as a stray in southern Indiana. He was taken in by a great rescue there, and eventually even made his way through a prison dog-training program, where he earned his Canine Good Citizen certification. Lucky is believed to be a Great Dane/Catahoula Leopard Dog mix. He is around two years old, and he is deaf. 

Lucky


Lucky reminds me a lot of Remi my Great Dane, and I can definitely see the Great Dane in his behavior as well as his looks. If you’re not familiar with Great Danes, think Scooby Do and Marmaduke. They are large, goofy, and maybe not quite as intelligent as some other dog breeds (that sounds nicer than “dumb as a box of rocks”, which is what has been said about Remi a time or two). They’re also easy-going, and although they can be protective, they aren’t really the bravest dogs around. For example, Lucky stepped on a cat toy made out of a pipe cleaner and immediately sprang back in fear and cautiously sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t dangerous. While not a fearful dog by any means, let’s just say he’s easily surprised.

Unlike most of the deaf dogs I’ve fostered, Lucky doesn’t often “check in” with me. This is probably more due to his past than anything else. If his first owners didn’t know (or care) that he was deaf, they would not have tried to communicate with him using signs, so he would not see any need to pay attention to them. I think he’s probably started to finally learn that he can communicate with people while at his prison training program. He lived in a cell with an inmate for several months, and learned many basic commands. Now he’s living in a house instead of a cell, but he’s once again learning that by paying attention to people, good things can happen.


He's also learned that looking away means he can ignore signs!

 Lucky gets along well with the other dogs. He has a lot of energy, and loves to run and play. He seems a bit over-interested in cats, so he’ll be looking for a home without any feline friends. While we’re waiting for his forever home to come along, Lucky will continue to go to training classes and tonight he starts his first agility class.  Lucky is going to be very lucky once he has a forever home!