Holiday's Unwelcome Surprise & Welcome to Braden

Holiday is the female shepherd I got from the Orange County shelter a couple weeks ago. She was found to be already spayed and she was obviously a house dog in the past. She's been living upstairs in my office, content in her crate or on a bed outside the crate, for the past week or so. Several days ago I had her out in the dog yard in the evening with 5 of our own dogs when a fight broke out. I would bet that Holiday gave one of her little warning growls and Molly lit into her, quickly joined by Cabell and Bremo too, a very formidable trio. I got out there and broke it up. Holiday seemed basically OK, but was limping a bit. She wasn't bleeding and I thought she got off pretty easy, but have been concerned that she was still limping several days later, so today we went to the vet.

It turns out that she has a couple of deep puncture wounds in the chest, and a stress fracture in the leg. The xrays also revealed a lot of buckshot in her, which is not uncommon for a country dog. It will all heal up, but she's going to be on a couple of powerful antibiotics for several weeks and won't be up for adoption anytime soon. She's a tough old girl, though. Seemed perfectly fine except the limp and even that wasn't all that bad. She still walked on it, did the stairs, and would even play a bit when she felt like it. I'm sure glad I took her in though.

My other destination in town today was the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA to meet a young rottie mix named Braden. As you can see from the pictures, he came home with me. Braden was apparently food aggressive in his temperament test, to the point of biting the artificial hand they use to stick in his food dish as he was eating. But come on, he's part rottie and he's just a pup (5 months old). I held his food dish when I fed him this evening and I will make a point of sticking my hand in his food dish when he eats. I really don't think we will have a problem, not more than once anyway. He will learn to eat with the other fosters. They may have bad table manners, but they don't fight and certainly won't bite me. He has already met Jeep, Score, Lyka, Julie, Betty, and Philly, and is having a great time. Betty, in particular, seems to think that he was brought in as her own personal play toy. I'm not crazy about the name, though. We may have to come up with a new one.