new old dog from NWT did not arrive as planned. his flight was delayed so the shelter decided in his best interests to send him a different day.
oh...and his name is king by the way.
new in tho is stella, a PB, unspayed english setter, she is only 9 yrs old. she is healthy but the reason i decided to take her is because of anxiety issues. she was a well loved working dog, she was used for hunting birds and deer but has always been an outside dog who apparently goes insane when inside. her family was an older couple, one suffering from dementia and the other with cancer and they were no longer able to care for her. i was worried that if turned into a traditional shelter, she might have great difficulty adjusting to a confined kennel environment. we have room so i thought she might do better here.
stella came in late yesterday afternoon. it was an interesting first night...and not in a good way. she is extremely anxious and nervous and when you are with her...submissive, until you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. when i got back, she had mystic pinned in a corner, right on top of her, daring her to make a wrong move. i pulled her off, told her to knock it off and let mystic escape back up on to the bed and stella jumped right up after her. i held her off, again told her to knock it off but it took several long seconds for stella to change her focus from mystic to me and comply. the rest of the night was ok..stella settled back down on the bed on the floor beside me but mystic, luna and boomer huddled on the bed afraid to move.
now i get that stella is not in her right mind right now, extreme stress for an anxious dog affects their perceptions of impending threats and their reactions are heightened. but i need to be careful because my dogs have already dealt with the trauma results of pepper's stress and their reactions were not pretty. so i need to be on my toes. i am not sure how long it will take stella to settle and come to terms with her world upside down and if she can find some comfort and joy in this new kind of life.
i will try to be careful and not fuck this up, underneath her anxiety is a really nice dog and she does need to learn to live in a house without going nutz in order to find her a really good home.
summer had her knee surgery yesterday, the vet came and did the surgery in the old rabbit room...thank you to the on site staff for staying late and dealing with it all (we were down three staff!) and to mo, lynn and laura coming up and helping us out! it was hugely appreciated!!!
big bear had his diabetes recheck...his insulin dose is going up again but we are making progress.
sheila and i interviewed three potential new board members with the skills we need to help move us into the future. we have always done a pretty good job here but all of us are grass roots, working in the trenches types, saints is evolving to need more than that. i am pretty excited about adding the future view and journey to our current day by day focus.
i did get to spend part of the day at the cabin with jenn and emmalyn. i did my laundry, we had lunch, did some furniture rearranging and played with em down at the beach. i need more time for things like this. it was a tough week, last night was tough too..i was awake a lot worrying about things and this weekend is shaping up to be fairly busy. it was a bad time to be switching to a new job but hopefully once things settle here and i find my new groove at work it will all eventually work out.
hope floats this is true...sooner than later too.