WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
I'd post a picture of our newest dog, but she's in a protection program.
She's our dark little secret.
Last fall, we found a very small dog walking down our street -- just over six pounds with no collar or microchip. We took her to the local vet that evening and had them do a quick once-over. She was young shih-tzu without any obvious health problems. It was clear, though, that she'd either been on her own a long time, or had been neglected. One sign: They couldn't get a fecal sample. There wasn't anything there. Apparently she hadn't eaten for a good while. The vet recommended treating her for worms, anyway -- just in case -- and as he was getting her meds, we helped the tech in cutting off the largest mats. One was the size of her foot.
We asked if she looked familiar, or if anyone had come in looking for her. He hadn't heard anything, and said he was surprised since she seemed to be a great little dog.
My partner and I decided we couldn't take on another dog right now. Our two other dogs are old and cranky, we're busy, and we had lost one of our dogs earlier that year to a sudden, catastrophic illness. It hurts so much to lose them, and we weren't ready to open our hearts to another.
I looked up some rescue groups the next day and was ready to make some calls when my partner decided it might be good to keep her a little longer. Not necessarily forever, but just for a while. After all, our cranky old man terrier seemed to like her. She showed up two days before his fifth anniversary with us -- we adopted him from the humane society, a senior dog with three legs, gappy teeth, and a quietly sweet disposition.
Over the next few days we called or visited every vet in the area, posted on Craig's List, and told some of our neighbors about our find. We looked for signs on telephone polls, or anything else that might help us locate her family.
Weeks went by with no leads.
Then more weeks.
Meanwhile, she was getting healthier. We fed her puppy food to get some flesh on her frame, got her caught up on shots, and had her groomed. She was a bundle of energy, but was sweet, smart, and showed only a little bit of small dog syndrome.
She was a bright little light at a difficult time -- my partner had been diagnosed and treated for breast cancer, my father was having one health crisis after another, a friend was in hospice, there were job worries, and on top of this I was dealing with a crushing workload that I didn't keep up with very well, so I fell into a certain amount of self-loathing.
Then one of our neighbors said she looked a little like a dog that a couple of houses away, and that had been kept penned up outside.
This is when we faced a dilemma. We had found a dog that had been running loose in the street, without any identification, coat matted and dirty, and with nothing in her gut. She was also very young and had already had a litter of puppies, and still hadn't been spayed. Her eyes were irritated because her face hadn't been groomed, and she would occasionally cower if we walked up to her too quickly. And then we found out this six-pound shih-tzu -- if she was that dog -- had been kept outside.
We knew who she might belong to. We also knew what condition we'd found her in.
We struggled with this for a while, but as far as we could tell no one had been looking for her. I picked her up in plain view on the street, and no one had knocked on any doors in the neighborhood asking if they'd seen her.
She's sleeping on the back of the sofa right now, near her three-legged buddy. She's been spayed and knows the vet and the groomers well, and has put on enough weight that she now has a little belly that pokes out when she flops on her back and wiggles.
But she's still our dark little secret. We walk all of the dogs in the back yard, and when she needs to go to the vet or the park, we take her out the back door so no one can see her.
It's been about four months, and though our decision was pretty gray ethically, she came into our lives when we needed things shaken up a little. She's clean and healthy now, confident and inquisitive, but the most important thing is she's safe.