Took a dog home from the LA North Central shelter yesterday afternoon. Had been contemplating a dog for a bit, but heard about her on Friday afternoon and needed to go check it out.
She was adopted out of that shelter in 2003. She was picked up on Xmas of 09 as a stray. They ran her chip and tried contacting her owners by phone, letter, etc and no one ever made an attempt to get her. She appears to be a chow, shepherd mix, with maybe a little akita? They estimate she's about 10. She's 54 lbs and all black. She apparently had some very bad hair loss on her lower back when she was brought in. They had her on some meds and is growing back (just looks a bit thinner in those areas). Needless to say, 10 year old black weird mix is not on a lot of people's lists to adopt and her time was up. She was over 60 days which meant she was going to be put down any time now.
She's incredibly sweet. She's a little over-stimulated right now, which makes a lot of sense considering she's been in a small pen for the past 2 months. (There's too many dogs there to walk them all every day, so if she was lucky, she got out into their yard twice a week.) They told us at the pound that no one had asked about her in weeks, so she's had very little interaction with anything. She's fine with other dogs (barked once at some dogs who jumped at her while we were out walking) and seems OK with the cats. She generally ignores them. She's run after the kitten a couple of times, but it seems more playful than aggressive, and it's been after they've had extended eye contact and the kitten goes first. So, the dog probably thinks they're playing. I think kitten disagrees.
We got her groomed yesterday and she's looking good. Still has an area where you can tell she's growing hair back, and she has dry skin which we're treating with some spray lotion stuff. She's really an awesome dog.
However, she's probably a bit big for this place, esp considering the cats. Ideally, I'd love to see her get a permanent home where she can live out the rest of her days happily, maybe with a yard (she seems to want to bury her bone in my office) or other friends. I intend to put a listing up on petfinder and contact some other sources to help with this. If anyone reading this is interested, or knows someone who's interested, etc please feel free to contact me or to forward to other people.
MarkJVieira@hotmail.com is the best way to reach me.
