Dog Germs™

On Saturday night, February 14, 2009 our TAMR liaison emailed to tell us about a Malamute in a shelter in Corpus Christi. He had been at PetSmart all day Saturday and she sent some photos taken by another person in Corpus who had been looking for a rescue Mal. Amazingly, the TAMR people learned of this dog from the Doberman rescue guy who inspected our fence. From the photos he looked like the exact dog we were hoping for.

We woke up early Sunday morning and were at PetSmart in time to see the shelter volunteers walk the Malamute into the store. He was beautiful and “the little woman” wanted him as soon as she saw him. So she ran in to tell the rescue people she was interested in him. So we both met him through his cage bars and he was very affectionate toward us.

He was obviously very underweight with rib bones showing through his coat and backbone protruding like a ridge from head to tail. We also discovered that he was heartworm positive. And he was covered more completely with fleas than any dog either of us had ever seen. To top it all off he had been neutered only 2 days previous. We just couldn’t leave him in his cage. The only thing left to do was to introduce him to our Husky to see if they would get along. Well they didn’t. When we let them meet in the store they both growled at each other. But it really was a very stressful scene on a Sunday at PetSmart. Not only were there about 30 little yippy dogs all incessantly barking from their cages, but there were all kinds of dogs on leashes and a constant stream of shoppers interrupting our crucial canine first “meet and greet” mission to tell us how to raise a malamute or how to introduce dogs. Everybody in the store that day was an expert on Malamutes and general dog psychology, and to tell the truth, even I felt like biting somebody so I couldn’t blame the dogs for being a little testy. So we decided that we would just take the new dog home and introduce him to our Husky in a quiet, non-stressful environment. Worse-case scenario would be that we would get him up to weight and train him a little to make him suitable for a new home.

We lured him into the truck with a bone and when we got him home we made a little place for him in the kitchen where he could be isolated and rest. He was so very tired and so very thankful that we had rescued him from the shelter. It turns out that the shelter took him in as an “owner surrender” on Thursday. On Friday they had him neutered. On Saturday he was in the cage at PetSmart all day. The shelter volunteers said he stood up all day Saturday. On Sunday morning, when we met him his legs were weak and shaking. At home we noticed that his neutering incision didn’t look quite right. He was completely exhausted so we let him rest in the kitchen and made an appointment with our vet for the next morning. We took him on a couple of quiet walks. In the afternoon we took him for a short walk to the Bay park near our house. There he got his first look at salt water and waves. He was fascinated by the wave action and wore a very funny and inquisitive face while he tried to process what moving water was. After the afternoon walk he rolled over for us to pet his belly and we got a good look at his incision. It looked very infected and gaping with obvious discolored discharge. We couldn’t let it go overnight.

We hated to do it to him when he was so tired but we took him into our emergency animal clinic immediately. The vet said it was very good that we brought him in because indeed his incision was very infected. They had to put him under and clean out his wound. They also had to add a couple of additional stitches because the wound was too open. He went home with antibiotics, an e-collar, and a pill that killed all of his fleas within 24 hours.

He weighed 70.2 lbs and stood about 25.5″ at the shoulders. The emergency vet guessed he was probably two years old or less. She said his heart and lungs sounded very good and he was “a very athletic boy”. (The shelter thought he was around 3 years old and called him a Malamute/Husky mix. The shelter’s vet wrote on the rabies vaccine certificate that he was about 1.5 years old and a Husky). We don’t see the Husky in him ourselves. Judging by his appearance and temperament we think he is all Malamute.

So the rest of the night he slept, ate a good meal, took his medicine, and got lots of love and reassurance.

Visit the Day One Gallery for more pics.