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Booker Da Brindle-Boxer Steele

  • Intake: 09/18/2017
  • From: Newport Animal Control
    (held there since early July)
  • Age: 1 year (approx.)
  • Weight: approx. 75 lbs

This fit young fellow is energetic, adventurous and up for anything. He’s ready to join your active lifestyle.

Among his favorite things are peeing on inanimate objects, truck riding, and playing with friends. He dislikes snooty folks who won’t pet him (that would be people: he has yet to meet a dog he didn’t like).

Booker is available for adoption through Steele Away Home – Canine Foster and Rescue.

Nutmeg Steele: Notes on a Foster Dog

Nutmeg Steele arrived today.

She appears to be a Black & Tan Hound. She is as sweet as can be.

We were told she’s 3 years old. The vet at her spaying said 6 months. Jen and I think more like just under a year.

She gets along with other dogs, she gets along with cats, not so good with chickens, and she rides well. We’re told she’s a “gate climber”, but we’re not sure what that means. She’ll be on a long lead when in the yard until we know if she’ll be going “over the wall” at her first opportunity. She is a little timid at first with people, but warms up quickly and becomes affectionate. Did I mention that she’s really sweet? This Nutmeg is sweet as sugar.

Buddy Beagle: Notes on a foster dog

Buddy BeagleBuddy Beagle, is an 8 year old beagle who was picked up by Animal Control on August 1st 2017. While in their care he was attacked by three large dogs. An eye witness said Buddy didn’t fight back, the others were going to kill him and he was going to let them. That’s how sweet-natured this guy is.

Until recently Buddy looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie: criss-crossed by lines of sutures where Cedarwood Veterinary Hospital’s staff cleaned up his torn flesh and stitched him back together. He had a flap of flesh three-fingers deep hanging off his neck that left is trachea and neck tendons exposed. His rump was torn up just as badly. Cedarwood’s staff was not sure he was going to live; many vets would have just put him down, but they tried … and succeeded!

He’s also had some plastic surgery to deal with granulations and scar tissue. Buddy Beagle has been in intensive care at Cedarwood for a month, but now he is ready to go into rehabilitation and can be moved to a medically aware foster home. That’s where we come in.

Shiloh Steele: Notes On a Rescue Dog

Shiloh arrived here on the evening of July 28th, 2017. I picked her up from the mobile spay/neuter clinic after her surgery. Fortunately I used a large transport box for this because it took hours before she was able to stand and walk about on her own. I have a loading dock on my workshop, so I just slid the box from the back of my pick-up onto the dock and into the workshop and let her rest until she was ready.

Shiloh’s Backstory

Sylvia Steele: Notes On A Rescue Dog

SylviaSylvia is a 7 year old Shar Pei mix with a checkered past. She is affectionate but not clingy. She shares the yard with most other dogs, but does not usually engage in play other than running.

She’s kind of a loner.

Last updated: Nov 11, 2017

Fast Facts

  • She has been spayed and all her shots are up to date except rabies and she is on heartworm preventative.
  • She has been crate trained and pee pad trained.
  • Sylvie currently bunks in a pen and has had multiple neighbors: male and female. She has gotten along just fine with all of them.
  • Amy says Sylvia gets along great with CATS.
  • She does show strong alpha-dog tendencies including an insistence on peeing on all the spots the male dogs have marked.

Sylvia’s Story

Sylvia is one of 20+ dogs taken to the Humane Society of Jefferson County after Animal Control removed them all from a single hoarding situation. Most of them are Shar Pei mixes. All of them exhibited some degree of fearfulness. Some of them had never had ANY human contact and had had to fight for the little food that was occasionally tossed out for them. During Sylvia’s stay she tested positive for heartworm and the shelter was not equipped to properly care for a dog going through HW treatment so they appealed to Steele Away Home – Canine Foster and Rescue for help. But not before she stole the hearts of the shelter staff.

Sylvia and another dog in the group had recently given birth to litters of puppies. The other momma dog attacked Sylvia’s litter and killed several of them and wounded Sylvie. The other momma had to be euthanized because of her “killer” behavior, leaving her pups motherless so the staff tried giving them to Sylvia. She eagerly adopted them and mothered them until weaned. But she needed special accommodations because she was so protective she’d charge the fencing if any dog was walked by. Once her foster mother duties were completed, she went into foster care herself for treatment.

Amy Huff was her first foster home and brought her a long ways from the terrified, defensive dog she was. Amy had cats, which Sylvie got along with just fine, but no dogs. Sylvie needed more group interaction, so Amy began bringing Sylvie here to play in our yard, meet our dogs and to meet me. That went well and after a few weeks of visits, Sylvie came here to live, and I’ve been working on socializing her further.

Sylvia is now quite accepting and friendly with both me and my wife, Marie, and has been friendly to strangers who visited. She has gotten along well with all of our dogs … except Blondie Bear. At first Sylvie ignored Blondie while they were in the yard together. But after a while Sylvie decided to challenge her:

I needed to step in quickly to avert a potential fight. That antagonism continues, but only toward Blondie Bear – and we don’t know why. Blondie is the sweetest, most gentle thing you can imagine.

This means she cannot come in our house because Blondie lives in the house, so further house-manners training is out of the program unless I can resolve this. She does, however, dance on her fencing with a toy clutched in her mouth when the others are in the yard, “I want to play too, I want to play too. See: I have a TOY! Let me play too.” She really wants to get along, but her insecurity gets the better of her on the rare occasion.

Sylvia plays with “The Gang” in the yard. Cochise is missing: he’s taking a nap. (This was shot a while back)

She plays better with Julian when Josie is not in the mix. She doesn’t like to compete for the attention of her playmate.

As you can see, Sylvie can play well with others.

Enjoying a dip in her pool

Sylvia knows how to cool off on a hot July afternoon! She stayed in there for the longest time, then stepped out, shook off, and went to sunbathe on the doggie-cabin’s front porch.

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Buddy Golden: Notes on a foster dog

Buddy is a 92 pound, senior, Golden Retriever picked up by Animal Control as a stray and delivered to an animal shelter. The shelter vet looked at him and decided he didn’t have any obvious, serious health problems, but could not tell for sure what shape he was in without a good examination and blood tests. Because he’s a senior, and because he does have skin issues and wounds on his feet, it’s not likely the shelter will invest limited resources in that examination, nor is it likely he will survive long in an over-crowded shelter. So I brought him home as a foster-project.

June 30, 2017

Removing maggotsI took him to Cedarwood Veterinary Hospital right away and it was no trick at all to find out that we has infested with fleas and ticks (even I could see that) but he also had three large hot spots where the skin was raw and the flies had laid eggs, resulting in those areas being infested by maggots. Two vet techs and I gloved up and worked for over an hour and a half to pull around two dozen ticks off and cut away the fur to expose the hot spots and clean out the maggots.

Dog Park Update

The Dogtor is in

For the past three days we have been hosting an installation crew from Stanley Fencing Inc. in Sevierville TN. In a previous post I described what we hoped to do and asked for help with the cost: we just didn’t have enough to cover the cost – and we want to get it done before winter.

The response was heart-warming. A batch of fellow dog lovers stepped up and offered generous gifts. In just 5 days following the posting of our request, we had covered our deficit and had scheduled the fence company to do the installation. They started work on Wednesday and got all the posts in and some of the top rail on.

On Thursday they came back to hang the chain-link and install gates. They ran into a couple of Oopsies: and an opportunity to show off their customer service.

  1. The fella who counts out parts and bags them up for each job shorted the job 10 tension straps, so they cannot properly install the final run of mesh. Their business is too far away to have these guys go after more.
  2. The fella who welds up gates made one too small and it doesn’t fit. This will take some time, so they would have to come back again anyway: might as well do it all in one trip.

Josephine: Notes on a foster failure

Josephine first came to our attention when the Humane Society of Jefferson County posted an urgent plea for rescue or foster of a female beagle mix who was so terrified by the “shelter” environment that she was at risk. My wife, Marie, decided we needed to help this poor thing. After some communication through Facebook, we drove out to pick her up for fostering.

Age: Approximately 9 months (as of May 2017).

History: Picked up as a stray by Animal Control in April. She was terrified of everything. The shelter environment only made that worse. She was placed into foster care to give her a peaceful environment and to work on her fear issues.

Health: Initially, her health was quite poor: the vet wasn’t sure she would survive. By the time she came here her health was much improved except for a fungal skin condition brought on by anxiety, which is being treated. She has been spayed, wormed, and is current on vaccinations.

Personality: Once she calmed down she has become a playful, spunky, silly, lovable girl. She craves attention (loves a gentle belly rub) and seeks it from people she trusts. Josie is friendly and playful with all of our dogs, even those 3 times her size! She is fearless and open with all of them.

Julian Notes On a Rescue Dog

When I first met Julian, he was sitting in an outside pen at the Humane Society where I work. He was a mess.

Julian had been picked up by animal control because a resident called to report a dog fight. I don’t have details about exactly what happened or what became of the other dog, but Julian got chewed up pretty badly, especially his head. We were giving him antibiotics to fight infection and help his wounds heal.

He was sitting, with his feet all bunched up, on a yellow toilet seat cover. Someone gave us a bunch of them to use as comfies — we use them mostly for cats in their wall crates. But here was this brown, 60 pound boxer bunched up on this woolly toilet seat cover like it was the best thing in the world: an oasis of comfort in an otherwise miserable existence. It was funny and heart breaking at the same time.

Over the weeks, Julian began to mend and he proved to be gentle and friendly when we worked with him.

Then we tested him for heartworm … and the test came up positive. Our boss wasn’t surprised: Julian had obviously been neglected and allowed to run loose. It was no shock to find he was not on a preventative. She said the best thing to do was to put him down. With his scars and the HW+ there was no way he was going to get adopted, and we don’t have the facilities to treat his HW anyway.

I could not let this precious boy be killed: and at this point, he was, literally, just minutes away from going under The Needle.

Lego Steele: Notes On A Rescue Dog

This is a foster dog diary post about Lego. New information will be added to the end of this post so all info on this dog is kept in one place and in chronological order.

Last Updated: March 31, 2017

Lego’s History

The story we got was that her family got another family dog after having Lego for almost 4 years. Lego did not get along with the new dog right away, so they got rid of Lego.

Intake Information

  • Arrived here: March 27
  • Breed: Black Lab
  • Age: 3 years (will be 4 in June)
  • Sex: Female
  • Spayed: Yes
  • Weight: @60 lbs
  • Health: Very good. Shots are all up to date and she looks great!
  • Personality: Energetic and playful. She LOVES belly rubs.