Learning to walk

I will never be able to completely vocalize how awesome today was.

I spent the morning at Old Friends and what a morning it was! There's a dog in Sharkey's run, Mattie, who has a brain tumor (she's been adopted - just waiting for her people to get her!). You usually have to hand feed Mattie as she's on a bland diet because of her tumor. I tried to hand feed her and she was not having it. There's important medicine she needs to take, which she did end up getting. A few minutes later she vomited her pills up. Luckily after that she didn't seem to have any issues.

June is such a pretty dog

Later in the morning, I was walking June, who is a dog that kind of just wanders around Old Friends. She has a run there, but doesn't spend too much time in it. She is epileptic. Her mouth involuntarily closes sometimes, so you're not supposed to put your hands (or face) near hers because she starts licking and then her mouth just closes. She doesn't mean for it to happen, but it just does. She's such a doll though. On our walk, all of the sudden she just stopped walking and starting kind of like dangling her paw. I knew that couldn't be a good sign so we headed back to the run immediately. Apparently, that could have either been a small seizure, or a sign of a seizure so we put a bunch of padded pillows on the ground in her run in case she did start seizing so she wouldn't hit her head. That seemed to be the worst of it and then nothing else really happened.

I walked more dogs and then went with the caregiver, Haylee, to get Eve her cart!

I know I've mentioned Eve before, but here's a quick low-down on Eve: Eve cannot really use her back legs. She was (guessed) hit by a car. She uses her front half to drag herself around and still quite enjoys life.

Today she got a cart to help her get around easier! They didn't know if the cart was going to work for Eve. She had tried a cart before, but it only had two wheels and not enough support. Eve walked with her front legs kind of split sideways apart and would fall when she tried to use the last cart because it didn't have enough weight in the back. This chair, is also two wheels, but it has an extra weight support in the back to help keep her upright. This is what I was lucky enough to see:

 

Eve did so well! It was the most amazing thing to be able to see a dog who couldn't walk be able to walk! I was so proud of her! They're going to work with Eve in the cart so she can gain the right muscles to make it easier for her to use it. I'm so happy for her!

This afternoon was one spent at the Fairway. I like working there because I get to do a lot. Kathy let me feed almost an entire run by myself and then grab the bowls. It's nice having a little responsibility. After, I went with a few volunteers to the dog park. They had a great time. The dog I was walking was Raisin, who is very, very shy. After seeing her, I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon there trying to socialize her. Raisin is very good with Kathy as Kathy hand fed her the very first night Raisin was at the Fairway. I blocked out the other dogs in her run outside and sat with her inside. She was very nervous and just stared at me mostly. After a while, she would come and sat as far away from me on the dog bed that was next to me as she possibly could. I just sat there. She got closer. Eventually, she started offering me her paw. I found this strange because I don't believe she knows shake or wave or any tricks of that sort. I continued to sit there with her and read her life plan (life plans are like the dogs' files - it has their intake forms, their history wherever they were before Best Friends, their history while at Best Friends, etc). Raisin was from a hoarding situation. Her and her sister Latte (who I met at the Garden - she's equally as shy) were rescued by a woman who had them for 1.6 years. Both dogs remained painfully shy and the woman no longer had the resources or time to try and socialize them. Every now and then I'd pat the bed and call Raisin over and she would come and just sit next to me. If I reached my hand out for her to sniff, she'd offer her paw. Eventually I got up and got some treats and we worked on sits. She is still very, very shy with me and I'm sure we'll probably have to start at square one the next time I work with her, but I still felt a sense of accomplishment with Raisin. I told Kathy about her offering me her paw and her mouth dropped. I guess the only other person Raisin ever offered that behavior to was Kathy. That's pretty cool.

I'd like to see Raisin find her person and come out of her shell; I think her life would be a lot more enjoyable that way. She seems to want to interact with people (sometimes) but is so, so shy.

I didn't take a photo of her and I couldn't find one on the website but I'll get one next time.


After the Fairway we had our weekly intern meeting. I can't believe our 3rd week is already over! The meeting was great, as usual, to reflect on the past week. So much has changed with all of our project dogs it's fantastic. Japhy's project dog, Lillian, might be going home tomorrow - some adopters have flown in just to meet her. I hope it goes well.

Also at the intern meeting I found out my answer to whether I can shadow Huck or not - kind of. I'm not allowed to officially shadow him because they don't allow that kind of thing, but I can schedule myself to be in an area where he's training and can observe. AWESOME!


Tomorrow some of my intern friends and I are going hiking at Bryce Canyon. I'm super excited.