I Have the Best Dog in the World[sup]TM[/sup]

So I got a dog. Did I really want a dog? Was I ready to have a dog? I can’t say that I was 100% sure. Let me back up a bit. I’ve got an 8 year old son, turning 9 in a month. For years now, he’s been begging for a dog, but few children know the tremendouse responsibility of owning a pet. So I placated him with a cat, and frequent visits with my sister, who has 3 dogs. Recently, though, my son’s want for a dog has become an illness, an obsessive, urgent need. So like any mother, I felt my resolve start to crack. My sister and 2 of her brother-in-laws own German Shorthair Pointers. They’re a beautiful dog, used for hunting birds, and smart as can be. A tad hyper as pups, but most dogs are. My son is in love with these dogs. I was more interested in getting a shelter mutt and saving a life, so we decide to compromise and put in an application with a local GSP rescue group.

4 weeks ago, I got THE CALL. The rescue group had a dog for me, but there was a catch - he was injured badly, and stuck in an animal shelter 75 miles away. Some ahole had shot him while hunting, and instead of taking care of him, left him to die out in a field. His right front leg was laid open to the bone, his hide was full of buckshot, and they were going to amputate his leg because treating the injury would be too costly and there was no guarantee it would save the leg anyway. I discussed it with my son, and we agreed that we were okay with having a 3-legged dog, so we visit the pooch.

If I live to be 100, I hope I never again see something as awful as this poor dog. The shelter had done nothing to treat his injuries, and he was basically just lying in his cage in pain. They were calling him Trigger, since they didn’t know his name. A bit demented, I thought, since the dog had been shot, but hey - whatever. He was less than a year old, but looked and moved like he was 15. Even with that horrible leg wound, he struggled to stand and came over and licked my hand, and that’s all it took - I was in love.

This is turning into a long story, so for the sake of brevity, I’ll skip over some things. We found a vet willing to operate on the leg and try to save it. Lots of surgeries and recuperation time… but he finally came home Saturday. We named him Monday. My family members are Jimmy Buffett fans, and we name all pets after Buffett songs (my sister has dogs named Tin Cup Chalice and Coral Reefer), so Monday fits the pattern. There’s a Buffett song, titled Come Monday. How do you call a dog named Monday? “Come, Monday”… haha, we’re so clever. :smiley:

This is where the Best Dog in the World[sup]TM[/sup] title comes in. This dog sits, he shakes, he fetches, he knows tricks. When he has to pee, he will find his leash and bring it to me. He sleeps on my bed at night, and doesn’t chew on things he shouldn’t. Monday is field trained, which means he tracks birds, flushes them out, then retrieves them once they’ve been shot. When we go for walks, he will do exactly that. Whenever he sees a bird, he will point, which is hilariously cute. Even cuter is his look of expectation, then disappointment when I don’t shoot the bird. Except for his extreme interest in the cat, he’s perfect. I love this dog.

There are so many pit threads I could start about this animal - the hunter who shot him and left him, the animal shelter that let him lay in pain… but since we’ve got a happy ending, I won’t do that. Anyway, as I’m typing, Monday is laying happily at my feet and gnawing a rawhide. If there is a point to this story, I don’t really know what it is. I’m sure that a lot of you are dog owners, and I’m sure you all thing you have the Best Dog in the World[sup]TM[/sup], but I promise you that you don’t. The Best Dog in the World[sup]TM[/sup] is named Monday, and he’s all mine.

Bless you for taking care of him. I know it’s not cheap to fix a severely injured leg. I’m not surprised that the shelter didn’t fix it due to the expense, but are they so hard up for cash they couldn’t even provide pain relief? That’s messed up.

Do be very, very careful about the dog-cat interaction. It takes but a second for a dog with a high prey drive to kill a cat. They can do it before you can even react.

May you have many happy years together :).

Are you sure you got the dog for your son and not you? :slight_smile:

As much as I thought my dogs were the Best Dogs in the World, I am willing to concede it to Monday. Sounds like he deserves it!

The shelter is in Zanesville, Ohio, underfunded, and staffed by morons. They were planning to euthanize him, but the rescue group talked them into holding on to him until I could get there. The rescue group only found out about him because someone familiar with the breed visited the shelter and passed on the information. The whole time I was visiting him, the shelter coordinator was telling me that a dog with 3 legs would have no quality of life, and that he’d probably never survive the surgery, etc. He is fortunate to have survived the operation(s), not because of the severity of the injury, but because the shelter let him lay for over a week without so much as bandaging the wounds. By the time my vet was able to provide treatment, he was unable to suture parts of the wound because the swelling was so great that he couldn’t pull the edges of the wound together, so Monday had to be put back together in stages as the swelling went down. After laying for so long, some tendons had retracted into the leg and the vet couldn’t repair that, so Monday has lost some function in that leg as well.

He does have a high prey drive, but it seems directed solely at the birds. My concern isn’t that he’ll kill the cat - he’s already shown that he doesn’t want to eat it or kill it. He’s just too playful, and doesn’t understand that he can’t play with the cat. Smacking kitty with those giant webbed paws doesn’t make kitty happy. So far, Monday is only allowed supervised visits with the kitty, and only when kitty is in my lap. Otherwise, kitty is living upstairs, with Monday downstairs, and 2 baby gates between them. I learned the hard way that I have to have 2 gates, one on top of the other… Monday can jump 1 gate easily. Kitty isn’t helping matters, though, because he’s spending every waking moment taunting Monday from afar, and poking his paws through the gate every time he sees Monday pass by.

I’m mentally contrasting this with a shelter in Chicago that saved a female bull terrier who’d had burns over about a third of her body in a garage fire, was left mostly untreated by the owner, and had one leg that was withering up as well. They had a vet amputate the leg and try to treat her burns (which were already at least a week old, IIRC) as best as possible. The workers called her Ginger after Ginger Rogers because of how well she moved around, or just “Sweetie” because of her loving disposition. This was reported on in a column in one of the local papers. A follow-up column talked about the flood of responses to that story, and how a woman who’d had a mastectomy due to breast cancer was chosen by the shelter as being a great match for Ginger; the woman said she knew what it was like to be scarred yet healthy and happy, and she wanted to give that dog a good home.

My best wishes to you and Monday; he does sound like the Best Dog in the World, and I’m glad he found an owner who could see that about him.

GREAT JOB! Thank you for saving the animal’s life.

I, too, own (well, she owns me, but I digress) a rescued English Springer Spaniel (also a bird dog). She and the cat get along fine now, but we were a little concerned when we brought her home and she wouldn’t stop pointing at the cat. It sounds like you are doing a great job with the introduction phase. Another thing we did that worked out well is we put a gate going into the room where the kitty’s litterbox is located. That way she doesn’t ever feel stressed about doing her “business” and the dog doesn’t use the litterbox as a salad bar (even though it’s one of those $150 auto cleaning deals). :smiley:

Awesome story, jay-c! Ghod bless you for taking on the responsibility of an injured dog. What breed is he?

I hope you all live long and happy lives together!

I’m sorry to hear this person is not educated about this type of stuff, particularly because of the position he/she’s in. Lean-bodied athletic dogs can do just fine after an amputation. I know - I had a greyhound whose leg was amputated at the age of 9 due to bone cancer. He was perfectly healthy in every other way, and he lived 3 more very happy years after that. A friend of mine who saw him running in the yard when she first met him said she didn’t even realize he was 3-legged at first. Most dogs will do fine, as long as they’re in good shape otherwise.

Perhaps someone at your vet’s office could refer you to a place that can do physical therapy/hydrotherapy, if you want to do it.

Give him a big hug for me. He sounds like a really special guy.

I guess I wasn’t clear. He’s a German Shorthair Pointer, the solid dark brown/liver color. He’s truly a beautiful dog, even with all the scars. How anyone could leave him to die is beyond me. There’s breed info here. Monday looks a lot like the dog at the bottom of this page, only larger. That last link goes to the rescue organization that I adopted Monday through. My sister was so impressed with the organization that she just adopted Jenna, the same dog pictured at the bottom. Jenna was at my home yesterday, playing with Monday. Except for the size difference, they are identical.

He’s not showing any real signs of diminished functionality unless he’s tired, and then he starts having difficulty lifting his foot and will drag it a bit. The vet has said that should improve in time. Meanwhile, we are already doing some physical therapy and acupuncture to help it along. As he ages, he may need a boot to support the leg and foot.

I’m passing on everyone’s hugs to Monday. He says thank you, and also asks if you have any treats for him. He loves treats. :wink:

Ok, jay-c, I see in the OP now where you referenced GSPs. My duh.

Sending yummy homemade virtual dog cookies to your pup! And ear scratches and ball throws too.

My dogs are jealous.