Ellie has had kind of a tough row to hoe over the past few months. We don’t know what her life was like before, but mid-summer she showed up at the home of a local resident: Deb. Deb did the responsible thing and tried to get her back together with her family — except no one ever came forward to claim her. But Ellie is a sweet, gentle girl, so Deb hung onto her.

After a while that got to be inconvenient. Mostly because Ellie chased her cat and the cat never came back. Hound dog, small furry creature that runs; maybe not the best combo.

When the local animal shelter re-opened, Deb took Ellie down there. A shelter employee decided to take Ellie home because her husband hunts coons. But they found out that THIS hound don’t hunt, (at least not for him) so Ellie came back to the shelter.

The shelter contacted Amy (our intake person) and asked if Steele Away Home -Canine Foster and Rescue could help find Ellie Mae a new home. Amy accepted her, but didn’t have any open foster homes. Steele Away Home agreed to pay for all her medical needs to get her ready for transport, but she’d need to stay at the shelter until a foster home opened up or until her transport date, whichever came first.

When Ellie came to one of our spay/neuter clinics the Veterinarian found Ellie to be so infested with fleas that she could not perform the surgery for fear of the fleas getting into the incision. So the spay was rescheduled and Amy gave Ellie a Capstar, to kill the fleas, and started her on Neosporin to help heal the eaten up skin.

Ellie was also stressed out by being confined full-time in a tiny run at the shelter. She’s a big, lanky girl and needs some room to amble around.

This morning, the shelter called Amy and said, “Come get your dog, we can’t afford to feed her.” So Amy called me knowing that Ty was now a (pretty much) full time house dog, so we had an outdoor kennel that could be put to use.

So I conferred with Marie about taking in yet ANOTHER dog (this makes 7) for just a little while.

Amy has already arranged for Ellie Mae to hitch a ride on the Humane Society of Jefferson County‘s rescue run to Cleveland on the 22nd of this month, so Elllie Mae will only be here for a couple of weeks.

Since Ellie has been claimed, (and, as far as I know, the shelter in Cleveland has no knowledge of this web page) there’s no point in extolling her virtues. But I thought this might make a good example (since I actually have details this time) of how dogs come into a rescue and some of the challenges we face in caring for them.

This is not a worst case scenario – not by far. But you can see that this poor hound has been bounced around, under fed, left in a cramped kennel for too long, and neglected to the point of being infested with fleas. She’s had a bad time, but will now find herself in a much better situation. I’ll work with her on basic training until she heads off, one more time, to seek a forever home.