Deluge on a dry day, with a rainbow

The flood of dogs washing up on my doorstep continued today with one we'll call Romeo.  This handsome guy is probably about 4 years old and came out of the Rockingham-Harrisonburg SPCA as a stray.  He's a nice boy and has already met Teddy in passing, but I'm giving him his own space at least until tomorrow, when I may put him together with the Gang of Four: Odie, Teddy, Koa, and the pup Gypsy.

This is the last dog I've committed to taking right now, but there is at least one more that I need to see about.  If I have to take that in too, then I will probably farm out 2 or 3 of them to a boarding kennel for a week or two.  Romeo here brought the foster count to 13 and total dog count to 19, and that is stretching my limits.  Romeo should move quickly, but "quickly" is a relative term.  He needs to be neutered, so it will probably be two weeks before he moves anywhere assuming he has no other problems. 

Ranger (left) came over mid-afternoon so he could go the vet for a 4:00 p.m. appointment along with Teddy (right).  Ranger has been with his prospective adopter but he needed to go back to repeat the blood tests and to have a skin problem looked at.  The blood work showed improved kidney function but it's not normal yet.  We got another round of medication for that, and for a skin infection, and will probably need to do the blood work yet again in a few weeks.  He was very happy when I got him back to his new home with Starr.

Teddy tested positive for Lyme, so he's got doxycycline to take for several weeks.  He was scared and apparently got a little aggressive with the vet tech in the back.  I should have had them do the blood draw in the room with me holding him.  He doesn't know me all that well yet, but at least I'm a familiar face and smell.  I'm always amused that people think of shepherds as big, brave, bad-ass dogs.  They can be, but that usually requires a lot of training and confidence building, and maturity.  More often than not they are rather fearful and suspicious animals. 

The labs are doing fine and their former owner apparently called to check on them today.  I know I sometimes come across as hating most all of humanity.  That's partly true, of course, but it's also because I write to vent my frustrations and let off steam.  I may be a stone cold cynic, but I don't want anyone else to feel that way.  That's my job and cynics hate competition.  Besides, I saw something today that sustained my glimmer of faith in humanity. 

I'm sitting at the vet's office waiting for all the meds I needed for Ranger and Teddy to be prepared.  A young woman was there checking out to the tune of $350+.  Her dog was a smallish, nondescript mutt.  A basic brown little guy, with floppy beagle-like ears, a bit of white on his feet.  He was as cute as can be, but he was nothing special.  That same dog is a dime a dozen in any local shelter (which is where he had come from).  A few weeks ago I'm sure he was running at large, living on whatever he could find, barely getting by, and probably would have ended up being road kill himself.  But this lucky little dog (who had bit a groomer trying to cut his nails), had, by the Grace of Dog, ended up with a person who loved him in spite of the groomer episode, and who was willing to shell out hard earned cash for his health and well-being.  Those people are out there, interspersed among the assholes.  It's these little moments, and that look in a dog's eyes, that keep me going.