A week ago today, my wife and I picked up at puppy at Oakland Animal Services where I volunteer. I had answered an urgent request for someone who could lend a home to a puppy who was to be released from surgery. The puppy had a bad leg injury and there was some concern that the leg might need to be amputated. The request was so urgent and the puppy was very cute in the photo, so my wife and I answered the request for housing.
As I mentioned, I am a volunteer at the shelter. I had been looking to foster a dog and my wife was agreeable. We had just lost our big, crazy, wonderful husky/malamute/shepherd mix, Kodiak, or Kody for short, about two months ago.
Kody had been with us since he was dumped in our neighborhood about 10 years ago. A neighbor collared him after three days on the street and brought him to us, thinking he might have been our dog. I took him to the shelter where we kept tabs on him. When the rescue organizations for German Shepherds, Malamutes, and Huskies didn’t take him–too much of a mix and not enough of all the others–we did.
He occupied a place in our home and in our hearts like we had really not expected. He was a lot to handle and a challenge, but with a couple years of training and constant work, play and home life, he became just about the best dog ever. Last September, he developed what appeared to be an internal tumor and bleeding and we had to put him down.
So we had a place for a new dog. The shelter was being overwhelmed with dogs, mainly those surrendered after Covid measures were relaxed, rents began being charged again and people started to get new work and move to places that couldn’t have dogs. The number of dogs taken into the Oakland Animal Services shelter increased by nearly 1,000 over 2022 to around 3,200 dogs in the shelter to date this year. As a result, there was a real fear of having to euthanize dogs and subsequently a push to get people to adopt or foster dogs. As such, I signed up to foster a dog.
So last Monday morning, I got a text: can we accept the puppy. I had indicated my wife and I would be willing, but wasn’t sure. Around noon I went into the shelter to pick up supplies, food, mats, bedding (although I had some from our dog, Kody), and poop mats and bedding.
We also met the puppy, who was very cute, housed in a large carrying crate, and we noticed he had hanging right rear leg, which appeared dysfunctional. Apparently he had been surrendered to the shelter by an “unhoused individual,” who at least recognized that the puppy was in danger and not doing to recover; the injury appeared to have been older and not a recent development. We got instructions that the surgery on the puppy would wrap up in the afternoon and we could pick up the puppy around 5:00, which we did.
The foster coordinator said that they had tried to save his back leg but couldn’t save it due to extensive scarring, possibly from having been untreated for a prolonged period. We were given more blankets, pain medicine and a syringe containing worming medication. I was instructed to cut the pills for pain into 4 pieces to adjust for the puppies weight, which was around 5-7 pounds. He was small, but terribly cute.
We had a kind of breakfast nook between our kitchen and the back door. It has a composite tile floor, which is suited for cleaning and maintenance and has nothing that could be a problem for a pup. However, the puppy was pretty drugged up and spent the night in the crate after we had gotten him home.
The next day, we got up early and opened the door. The pup was up and attentive, but still fearful and reserved. He did take the food I prepared, some of the Kasik canned salmon I had used with my dog when his appetite waned with disease. The puppy devoured it.
After he’d eaten, I set up his bed with pads and blankets and removed the top of the crate to make it clear that he was to come out, which he did readily. He was already walking fairly well. I had to clean up the crate and the puppy a bit. He spent the better part of that day just sleeping on his new bed in between meals.