Healthy Choices

After choosing to keep Gabe and Rose, we needed to invite our veterinarian onto their team. A health check, shots, spay/neuter, micro-chipping, heartworm preventative plan, and discussion about how they behaved with staff all happened.

The babies were okay health wise. They showed some wear from being on their own, but were improving from the time with us. Shots for small puppies are usually a four-round protocol to create immunity as the mother’s milk immunity wanes. These guys were old enough for one round.

My time in rescue means I have to encourage people to spay and neuter their dogs and cats. Here is why I do it. First, these dogs were dumped. This means someone didn’t want them. Breeding more doesn’t make good sense. Second, I’ve done the math and there will never be enough good homes if indiscriminate breeding takes place. Dogs breed once or twice each year; people don’t. We control our fertility–we also usually only have one child at a time. Dogs tend to have litters! I have seen beautiful dogs with amazing temperaments lost to the world because there were not enough homes. Blaming “kill shelters” is rude and wrong. If there are too many dogs, what do we do? Preventing the problem is the solution.

I would miss seeing the beautiful dog breeds out there, but not all dogs should be bred. If you are breeding dogs, please do your homework on health, bloodlines, vd (yep, dogs can have std’s), care, and safe placement there are creepers out there). If you want to spay/neuter but funds are tight, ask the vet for a payment plan. If you are on government programs, there are low cost spay/neuter MASH options. And please don’t breed pets to show your kids the life cycle. There are Youtube videos to show birth of puppies and kittens. The dogs and cats are trusting us to make good, healthy choices for them! (stepping down and away from soapbox)

Micro-chipping isn’t terribly expensive. While our intention is for these dogs to never get lost, there is the potential risk of a car accident, a thief, an escape from the yard, etc happening. The best protection I know for those crazy cases is to micro-chip. One of the last huge rescue operations I worked involved dogs who had been “bunched” and sold to a guy who sold dogs to labs. “Bunching” is stealing dogs and is often done to an entire neighborhood at one time. When I went on the first day of work, one of the dogs was attempting to communicate. The pens were loud and chaotic. Without thinking, I used the hand signal for “sit” and this dog sat. Another dog had clearly been an older person’s dog. She had been fed under the table and loved all people. We couldn’t get these dogs home because we didn’t know what state they came from. Micro-chipping would have helped us get these babies home. My experience on this case means we micro-chip at the same time we spay/neuter.

Heartworm preventative is required in the South. Mosquitoes act as a vector and the worms can grow in the heart of the dog and shorten that dog’s life. Ask your vet about options for prevention and treatment! (soapbox again, sigh) There is a newer, less expensive, less risky protocol for treating heartworms. We remind each other and have notifications on our phone to protect our babies.

We talked to our vet and the vet techs who worked with Gabe and Rose. We asked how they behaved and if there were problems for us to address in training. The dogs were sweet, sat when they needed to, were submissive (rolling over) when given shots, and gave kisses. We had asked that the dogs not be face-to-face with other dogs–yet.

Yes, vet visits are an investment of money in the dogs, but there is more to it than that. Sick, cranky dogs can snap. Intact dogs are more likely to get into squabbles and be aggressively territorial. Healthy dogs are the foundation for socialization and for training. These basic healthy choices mean Gabe and Rose are no longer strays. Gabe and Rose now have a home and a family and the time to make a choice about us.