Willow, who was a foster of ours for like 2days sadly came back due to troubles at home shall we say. She’s gotten fat and LOVES to get on furniture, but she’s a very sweet girl.

24th and 25th

Wilbur, a very sweet boy.

Josie, a very sweet girl we should have adopted.

We said a tearful farewell to our sweetest Dobe, Jimmy, aka Butters, Jam Master Jay, Jpizzle, Jamalamadingdong on Dec. 7th.

He came to the Doberman Rescue of Colorado in 2004 with a severe case of mange. He was purchased from a pet shop with a compromised immune system. His family loved him but kept taking him to a vet that apparently had no idea what mange was. By the time they got to the rescue, their funds were depleted. After dips and medications, he was deemed fit to be adopted. He was and subsequently returned as his mange came back and his adopters couldn’t deal. He was actually on a quilt a volunteer made for the Special Needs Dobermans organization that helped raise money for his treatments. http://www.doberman911.org/cases/jimmy.html

We were Jim’s subsequent foster home and foster fail. He was just the biggest, sweetest boy. About two years after we had Jim, he started holding his back leg up, it would just dangle there. We had it looked at, xrayd etc with no outcome apart from it’s likely Wobblers and it would take a $1500 MRI to confirm. We could have opted for surgery, but it wouldn’t have solved the problem, only bought him more time. Almost 11yrs for a big dobe is a good run regardless. The foot he held started folding under. He then started having trouble getting up, fell down more, and then when one of his front ankles started giving out, we knew we were on borrowed time. Come hell or high water that dog would get up and eat. We knew we’d be able to make the call if he either couldn’t get up anymore or stopped eating. That day came.

It’ll be almost 5yrs to the day we put his demon spawn adopted brother down. I’d like to think the years since have been Jim’s best.

We were close to the big sleep decision 4 weeks ago, but selfishly canceled the appointment. Since then, Jimmy’s had anything from toast to mashed potatoes to tahini added to his meals. For every week he made it we gave him a last supper from cheeseburgers to pizza.

The last two days he won’t get up and he’ll only eat a little of human food.

We’ve had a good run and it’s is time for him to cross the rainbow bridge and join Caesar and hopefully give him the ass kicking he always needed.

My heart aches as I will miss my OG crew forever.

I present our 22nd and 23rd fosters.

We fostered Bear, who though sweet, peed on EVERY THING. He’s only my second foster I cried Uncle on. He was adopted.

We also had Duchess who was a super sweet girl we only had for 2wks before she was adopted by a sweet couple.

Tyco update!!

After having this amazing boy for over a year, he was adopted by a very sweet retired school teacher. We get hiking photo updates all the time. 🙂

Here is our latest foster, a 9yr old sweetheart.

Our latest foster, Dodger. We’ve had him for months. We love him and hate him. Reminds us of a dog we used to own…

Dodger, aka Biscuits, went to his forever home. 🙂

A proposal passed allowing anyone to own up to 8 chickens and or ducks and up to 2 goats.

No zoning, no asking the neighbors, no proving that they’ll be provided for with appropriate shelter etc.

Yes we had to take the hard road and feel that others should too. It shows determination.

There.

Gracie, who we’ve adopted. She’s all the sweetness of Caesar with none of the negatives.

Henri, a Dog de Bordeaux. Our adventures detailed below:

Monday night after getting Henry: We get the big guy home. He’s very chill. Intros go well. We feed everyone separately. Henry keeps trying to mount our foster Gracie. We take Henry downstairs with us to keep the dogs separate. He lifts his leg on the basement wall. We just assume he had to go and he doesn’t know how to ask to go out. We go back upstairs and go to bed. Henry sleeps in our room with us. He’s not allowed on any furniture. He sleeps well after playing with Gracie. At about 3:30a.m. we awake to him peeing on Gracie in her crate. We correct him by letting him outside. We then found that he’s marked a wall in the kitchen, the coffee table, the bookshelf, and the couch. I call poor Lindsay like it’s an emergency. We give Henry LOTS of Valerian and put him in his crate, which he hates and barks the rest of the morning until we let him out. I did try a kong with pb, he wasn’t interested. Classical music seemed to help, so it’s been on ever since.
 
Tuesday: After letting him out of the crate, he wins us over with his drooly sweetness. We resolve to work on the marking. Surprisingly he makes it through the day without breaking out of the crate. When Joseph gets home, we feed everyone separately. While trying to get Gracie outside so that Henry can eat, Joseph grabs her collar to lead her out of the kitchen. I’m standing there with the food. Henry lunges and snaps at Joseph. We are a bit freaked out, but decide it’s because Henry doesn’t want “his woman” messed with. And we all know if a dog really wants to attack you, it will. So it was a near miss. We take Henry for a nice walk after he eats. Joseph and I go about our evening. We go downstairs with Henry again, just as the night before. He won’t stop trying to get on the furniture. So we decide to just go back upstairs and go to bed since Henry won’t let us relax. There’s more Valerian this day too. In order to limit marking this night, we limit the water, and we keep Henry in our room with the door closed. We figure our room is easy to clean up any messes. He makes it until 1a.m. this time. As I take him out to go to the bathroom, he marks the other side of the couch. As I already have to wash everything, I look at it more like only one marking instead of the previous 6. I bring him back in to our bedroom. We get him to lay down and chew a bone a couple of times, but he won’t settle, so Joseph decided to try letting him outside again. Gracie and Jimmy weren’t in crates or anything as we had our door closed. Joseph leads him out, Jimmy was in bed, Gracie was following Joseph and Henry was behind her. Joseph opened the door to the backyard and said, “come on lets go outside”,  Gracie started to go, but Henry just looked at him. He said, “come on henry lets go”, then he barked and growled at him, lunging forward, hitting the coffee table, which I think stopped him. He said, “Henry leave it!” Henry repeatedly lunged and snapped at Joseph. He was just standing there, no shouting, hands up. As I know Henry is fine with me, I keep telling him its ok and try to get him into his crate. As we’re both shaking so badly and trying to corral dogs, Henry decides to start hounding Jimmy. Know this, Jimmy is really a cat in dog form. He wants to sleep and eat. We’re pretty sure he has Wobbler’s so he’s content to just hang out. Henry keeps chasing Jimmy around until Jimmy snaps at him to let him know that he needs to back off. This is another fight I don’t feel like breaking up. We finally get Henry in the crate, again with a lot of Valerian and cheese. He is especially pissed and breaks the plastic tray of the crate. I’m again amazed he didn’t break out. We manage to get an hour or so more of sleep. I text Lindsay to let her know that while it’s not an emergency, we’re officially over Henry and he needs to go.
 
Wednesday: Joseph and the other two dogs are taken care of, out of the house and or out of harm’s way. I let Henry out, try to feed him, he’s not been eating much at all btw. He helps me get ready, by sitting all cute like in the bathroom with me. I again dose him with Valerian and cheese and leave the barking, happy to know that he’ll be gone when I get home because Joseph will be getting him and taking him somewhere, anywhere but our house.

Henry was euthanized as he had become to unpredictable.

And Kyra or Keira, a very sweet black and tan girl.

Keira was adopted!

Since Caesar’s death, I think I’ve realized that the whole situation the night of his passing is what bothers me most. Bloat was so fast, we had to make a decision, the vet sucked, no one was answering our calls for advice and on and on.

I don’t envy anyone having to go through this. While I’d read about how to help prevent bloat, I had no idea what it looked like or how quickly you had to act and have thousands of dollars to correct the situation if caught in time. So many questions and none answered fast enough.

Nothing prepared me for signing the piece of paper saying it was OK to put him down.

I didn’t know they could let the air out of him.

I will always question the events leading up to and the actual passing of that dog.

It will all always be wrong.

If you have a dog of a breed that bloat is a possibility, get a gastropexy.