It’s been a year now since Sweetie (now Georgia) came into our lives. The sad news is that she’s still waiting for her forever home, BUT there’s lots of good news from her life.<\/p>\n
Some of you may recall that this pretty little girl was found wandering alone last November in South Carolina. She was scared, skinny, and needed a good flea treatment — all of which were provided by her rescuer (Mary Lou Seymour), who also got her spayed, microchipped, and updated on vaccinations. But Georgia had two strikes against her: she is deaf, and she was heartworm positive. After several attempts to place Georgia in rescues and forever homes in her home state, it was decided that maybe she’d be better off with a rescue that is familiar with her breed, so with the help of many folks (including a number of you who read Claire’s blog), the money was raised and she flew to Oregon on April 1.<\/p>\n
After a two-week stay with Claire, I picked up Georgia on April 15 and we prepared to start her heartworm treatment. This isn’t a project to be taken lightly. It involves some serious money and medication: three deep intramuscular shots that require the dog to be sedated as they are deep and painful, and about 12 weeks of minimal exercise while the worms are dying, decomposing, and being shed through the bloodstream. Then regularly repeated blood tests to ensure that she is heartworm-free. Thanks to so many of you who contributed, on January 20 Georgia will have her final blood test, and we have every reason to believe that she’ll be HW-negative. Her x-rays showed no damage to her heart and we expect her to live a full, normal life.<\/p>\n
Since late April, Georgia has been in the care of a wonderful pair of foster dads. They both work full time and they’re not “dog wonks” like so many of us who work in rescue, but they ARE loving, gentle people and they’ve done wonders with Georgia (in fact they’re responsible for her name change as they said after the first few days that even though she wasn’t from that state, she still is a little “Georgia peach”). Just being in one home with a regular schedule and knowing what to expect each day has gone a long way to helping Georgia settle down and start building some confidence in herself and her world.<\/p>\n
She rides quietly in the car these days, instead of lunging and barking at passing vehicles; she walks well on leash; she’s well-behaved (if not 100% comfortable) out in public — even places like Lowe’s and PetCo. She allows strangers to pet her but doesn’t linger and will hide behind her person. Rusti and Ted have faced some challenges with Georgia — her excitability when she sees a stranger near “her” yard — but they’ve persevered. While she’ll still bark, she doesn’t become hysterical and they can get her back to them to settle down. <\/p>\n
She’s not had her walk today; it’s cold, wet, and strong winds here this morning. Nothing I want to walk in, but she’s laying quietly by my feet — alert every time I get up, hoping we’re going to DO SOMETHING, but basically accepting of the fact that we’re just hanging out.<\/p>\n
The most noticeable change, to me, is that while she’s still a very typical “velcro” cattle dog, she is not as demanding of physical contact, petting\/reassurance as she was the day I received her from Claire. She does want to have me in her sight, but if she’s confined to another room, as long as she can see me, she’ll settle down and even sleep. If she’s being left home, she crates well and is fine in there until we return; and she crates at night (although the first couple of nights were a little rough), but her preference would be to sleep on the bed. A poor second would be a crate in the bedroom.<\/p>\n
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