Rescue Journal

honestly..i am so predictable...i will always try to do the right thing even if i don't want to.

Carol  ·  Oct. 27, 2011

so i hike on out to chilliwack to pick up our three new little guys (saints welcomes: may, bruiser, and snickers ...now known as nicky cuz we already have a snickers...at least for a little while more..) and i am pretty pleased with them all. may has some skin, eye, mouth problems but is a cheerful and happy girl and she is a senior shitz.... bruiser has ear, eye, mouth problems, a not so great tumour on his butt and probably cardiac issues..and while he is not exactly of the sunny personality persuation..he is most definitely a nice little guy..maybe a senior cocker/schaunzer cross? and nicky is just too funny...mr little busy butt and already my bestest little lap buddy with mouth, eye and ear issues plus his skin might be a tad yeasty for some reason....and he is a shitz/maybe terrier cross?

anyway..so i am driving home feeling all sunny and happy that all three are going to fit in absolutely fine. when i was about halfway home, the phone rang..i should have remembered it is illegal to answer your phone when you are driving.
low and behold it was chilliwack animal control...trina said...so what are you up to? and i said i was just leaving chilliwack after picking up three new dogs. she said she felt bad for calling but she was looking at a dog in the shelter and trying to decide what to do..he was emaciated, old, deaf, with cataracts and....
he was a chow.

my inside voice said "nuke him." (don't even bother being horrified that i would think this...the dog is a CHOW! and anyone who works in rescue, in shelters, in vet clinics, in kennels, in groomers..KNOWS that chows on the whole (but not always)...are major pain in the butts.)

SHIT! if it was a collie or a lab or a shepherd, i could have easily said no, we are too full..totally guilt free. but a freaking chow adds my personal breed bias into the mix...now i am saying no because he is a dick head breed and that isn't very nice of me.

so my outside voice said..ok..i will come and look at him after i drop these new guys off at home. sooooo...i finish the drive home, drop off the sweet guys and turn right around to go meet the dick. i am hoping beyond hope he is a cross breed cuz i can ignore the chow part of mixes...almost all fuzzy rural strays have chow in them somewhere so i just choose to see the other collie, lab or shepherd half cuz then you have a 50% chance of them not being a dick head.

anyway when i finally get back to chilliwack..sure as shit..he is a fullblood chow...and he is unneutered and i watched him mark the walls on his kennel like 20 times in less than 5 minutes. oh please...big surprize...an old dominate and arrogant chow? we all treated him with kid gloves...he wasn't too keen to let me look in his mouth so we waited for him to pant on his own so i could peek in with him unaware and see why his chest was so wet, matted and stinking. great caution was used to collar and leash him and lift him into my van...all of us knew not to piss off a chow cuz pissed off chows bite back.


he lifted his leg and pissed in the van on the way home so many times that the van smells like a skid row alley. i took him straight into the shop and stuck him in the shop pen cuz i am not even going to start trying to figure out if he likes dogs and cats and where to put him until his teeth are fixed and he is neutered...plus the poor old fart is a skeleton under all of that hair so he needs to be fed without a bunch of competition around him.

now he needs a name..i am thinking of either Ed for Eduardo (so i can call him Edweirdo when he is being a weird ass chow) or Howard (after Howard the Duck so when he is bad i can call him Howard the Dick.)

what do you guys think?

anyway..i am pretty sure that today because i didn't want to be biased.... we are probably welcoming the King of Dicks....but i don't know for sure yet..he might be ok...i just don't feel too overly hopeful about this today....chows are special dogs.

Comments

Marla in SD

I have a rescued half-Chow/half-lab female who can be so exactly like this new SAINT - she is as sweet as can be when she wants to, which is most of the time, but boy, can she be a nasty little snot when she's in a mood! She was abused/neglected before she came to us, and she took a long time to come around, but now she gives the best hugs and wants to hold your hand when you're sitting on the sofa with her. That being said, I also fostered a full-blood female Chow puppy who turned into a very defensive, sometimes not very nice adult dog - she's great with her family, but not so good with others.

If I may be so bold as to weigh in on the name game from thousands of miles and a country away, I like King - King Richard would allow for King when he's good and Dick when he's being just that!

Carol, you have a good heart to overlook the breed and look at the dog - maybe with a bit of groceries, a no longer sore mouth, a place where he feels secure,and without the parts that make him want to mark EVERYTHING, he'll turn out to be a great dog!

lynne

i have a chow akita cross and he is a lovely old guy. although he can be , and usually is, the dominant dog in my house. my max is scared shit of him. they do tend to be a one person dog. not being a true chow probably does make a difference in his temperament.

roff

Is he deaf, or doesn't he want to listen?

Is he blind, or is he unwilling to look?

I nominate a name that covers your bases: Nixon.

Carol Ann

Ha Ha Harold resents or should I say represents all the nasty things you've been saying about chows. Don't worry we love him and he won't be returned. lol Hope the new guy is a good boy.

Hillevi

Well, Carol, you wrote the name I would suggest . . . King (short for King of Dicks). Regal when he is good and number one when he is bad.

Carol

ok..here..i will share my stupid for today...i called the vets to book stevie in for a re-check...the receptionist tells me that they have stevie as listed as dead in dec 2010. so i am racking my brain...do i have the wrong rabbit's name...i was sure it was stevie but wtf? did stevie die last year and i just forgot and mentally transferred his name over to another rabbit? so what the heck was the name of the rabbit i wanted re-checked???
it TOTALLY boggled my brain!!!

anyway...after i got off the phone i kept thinking which black bunny died last december??? then i remembered it was tu's buddy but by then my head was so messed up i couldn't remember his name either so i left a message for tammy.
finally it came to me..it was rudy who died last decemeber and the clinic probably just saw the one black bunny named stevie on our files and so they wrote him off instead of rudy.

it was such a relief to realize that stevie was in fact stevie (and still alive!) and i wasn't as mentally messed up as i thought!

Brenda

omg...I'm sitting here laughting outloud - I knew Chyna was Shar pei - sorry, my brain is stupid tonight. Oh boy, will Lynne and Ann have a good time razzing me about this blunder!! (short-haired wrinkled shar pei vs. big fluffly longhaired chow)I'm still laughing....

erin

o shit please dont name him dick! groucho marx maybe, or even samuel l jackass but he may well have reason to be, i know i would be if i were old, lonely, hungry and my friggin teeth hurt.

Carol

chyna was a shar pei...not a chow..altho really...same difference.
i don't know that he is an actual dick...my breed bias just presupposes he probably is...so far except for almost jumping frodo (hah! i had him on a short leash so that didn't work out the way that he hoped!) he has been good.,.he has in no way shape of form indicated thaat he would like to bite me. (frodo tho is shut up in the suite tonight just in case a certain chow climbs out of his pen (he doesn't like it in there very much.)
and..omg brenda!...i can't name them after freaking scary and violent puppets..that just might encourage the chuckiness to come out.

i did think of calling him dick but that means i am not giving him a chance to be a nice and sweet howard or ed...but..realistically i am reserving the right to add to his name if he occasionally does become an actual dick head.

what i know so far...he is not good with cats. he likes butt rubs and canned food. he is not interested in dentabones or toys, he pees on puffy pillow beds, and he is a big ass baby who cries and fusses when left alone in his pen.

sigh..tomorrow i will move puffy daddy back over to the mp room behind an xpen wall to keep him seperate from dusty and lucky..he was fine with living there before..it is less isolated.
and i will move the unhappy skinny and fuzzy howard or ed? over to the office...given his dislike for cats, i doubt i will ever risk bringing him over to the house anyway..so he will need a decent permanent office-home of his own.

Bunny Horne

I agree with Jezebel - why all the titles - if he's a dick he's a Dick.

Brenda

I prefer Howard over Ed; but neither jump at me How about Chuck? (as in "Chuckie", the possessed doll). Whatever you want Carol, as you'll be the one using his name the most! Hmmmm... China was a nice Chow, maybe he will be too after he is settled in and fixed?