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July 04, 2005
Nice doggie
My first post about the nice doggie was gobbled somehow so here's a shorter version.
My hometown, Lewiston, NE, like many of the small towns along Hwy 4 in SE Nebraska, is a dumping ground for unwanted pets. This past April a starving German Shorthaired Pointer with a broken hip showed up at my parents' place. My mom, being a sucker for sad, lost animals began feeding him and discovered he was very well-trained and awfully friendly, even to the cats that rule the roost there.
They took him to the vet and figured out he was around 7 years old and also discovered he wasn't the German Shorthair missing from a farm near Beatrice. Other than his badly healed hip, he also seemed perfectly healthy.
At the family croquet tournament today he was happily bouncing from person to person, trotting mostly. His limp isn't as noticeable when he runs. He also shared my annual 4th of July nap in the back bedroom with me. He's obviously been trained very well as a house dog. My mom says he sleeps a lot of the day and then gets up to go outside when someone else is headed out.
I get the feeling he's been through some bad stuff. He's afraid to go outside without someone else and he's still got a touch of fear of the dark. The cats are still a little nervous with a big brown dog hanging around the house, but they'll get over it. He has some cat habits which suggests he was raised around them. He licks his front paw and washes his face and ears with it, just like a cat and he sleeps in positions one usually associates with a very trusting cat.
He's a dog even I could stand to have around, unlike some of the other dogs I've been around.
Posted by Half-Cocked at July 4, 2005 09:24 PM