WTF?

On Wednesday I picked up two new shepherds, a 1-2 year old male and a 3-4 year old female, that I named Buddy and Holly, respectively.  They are both good looking dogs.  She has Lyme disease, they both had whip worms.  Oh, and she's in heat.  Someone else pulled them from a shelter and transported them to a vet, who was supposed to vaccinate them, do the heartworm and fecal tests, and hold them until I could get over to the Valley to pick them up.  It was not a vet that I have ever used and it's not one that I'll ever use again. 

The shelter had given both dogs the kennel cough and parvo/distemper vaccines, so all these two really needed was a rabies vaccine. The vet there was a pleasant young woman who proceeded to explain to me that they couldn't give the rabies vaccine because the dogs had recently had the two other vaccines.  WTF?  I've never heard of such a thing.  She even conceded that they could have had all three vaccines at the same time, but said that because they had two at one time, the dogs' immune system could not now mount an appropriate response to the rabies vaccine.  I've run this scenario by some other people, who had the same WTF? reaction that I did. 

I can only assume that she's still got student loans from vet school to pay off and wants these dogs back for repeat office visits.  They won't be going.  Even if it's true that it would be ideal to wait, these dogs do not inhabit an ideal world.  She left me with two unvaccinated dogs, that I now have to haul to a real vet on another day for a rabies vaccine. If they were to bite someone in the meantime, I can't even show compliance with the law.  It's stupid, it's irresponsible, and what pisses me off most is that it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of reality.

Fortunately, the dogs are nice, although they are a bit fearful and undersocialized.  Buddy (left) has a neuter appointment for next week.   Holly (right) will be spayed a week later.  They bark at me out of fear but I can enter their kennel and they will approach me when invited.  They should be fine.  They went into the kennel next to Sparky that has been vacant all summer.  I had to cut down weeds in there and I'm going to put up a canopy for shade because it was 95 degrees here on the first full day of Fall. 

Today I took Bubba and Trooper on a trip to the SPCA in Charlottesville. Bubba is my most adoptable dog and I really want to move him this weekend.  He's incredibly sweet, crawls into a lap or climbs up your body for kisses.  He's not spooked by anything; he even rode the elevator with very little fear.  I wanted him to meet cats in order to maximize his adoption prospects.  The cats we met were rather aggressive towards him, but he was cool and I think would be fine with even a moderately dog savvy cat. 

After the cat test, I brought Trooper out to meet three of SPCA's bravest (or most foolhardy?) staff.  Trooper still has a problem with fear aggression towards strangers.  I had him muzzled at first so no one was in danger.  When he calmed down a bit, I took it off and let him interact.  He's good if no one looks directly at him.  If he can approach a stranger on his own, sniff, etc., he seems to be ok.  He's still not adoptable as he is, but he does seem to be better.  Once he settled down and realized they weren't going away, he was ok, but mostly he just wanted to go home.  Trooper likes it here and he's getting really comfortable.  He's even doing the alert bark, which my fosters generally leave to the resident dogs.

Friday, dog wash, in preparation for the Vegetarian Festival on Saturday.