We picked them up this morning at the Plainfield CT Park and Ride, along with about 30 other new parents (there were two pet transport companies dropping off today).
There were a couple people who saw the transports and stopped to see the new families and one of them asked me lots of questions about how to adopt a new dog.
I have to thank Petfinder.com, Good Dog Rescue, Linda the foster mother, and Peterson transport.
We are madly in love with our two babies.
Now we just need to work on the peeing outside thing.
They were listed as German Shepherd mix but when I talked to the foster mom, she said that even the vet wasn’t sure. The mother wasn’t a GSD, she apparently fell under the breed of “Dog”.
Holly has some very definite GSD looking markings but Ginger is completely buff colored. They’re just about the same size, Holly is a wee bit smaller. We’d guess they weigh about 15 or 20 pounds and are 3 months old. The foster mom said she doesn’t think they’ll be more than 30 or 40 pounds, but admitted that she has been wrong before.
They are very soft and snuggly. I took Ginger from the nice transport guy (Kyle?) and she immediately lavished me with kisses. The lady who was asking me about adopting asked if she could hold Ginger and I let her because Ginger was so obviously looking for love from anyone and everyone.
My boyfriend took Holly and she just sat in his arms and shivered. He talked quietly to her while holding and petting her. He took her away from the throng also. After 10 minutes or so, she stopped shivering and started wagging her tail and licking him. When I got Ginger away from her adoring fans, she was very happy to meet Adam and Holly seemed to take to me pretty quickly.
Holly is still timid but she did seem to really like my neighbor (who we all met for the first time today). She is a follower and wont do much until Ginger does it first. I finally got her to take a treat from me, without her giving in and letting her sister have it. I also found out that while Ginger prefers PupPeroni, Holly prefers grapes.
Ginger has peed outside twice and the second time, she even gave us a signal that she wanted to go out (she squatted and looked at us expectantly, she did it 3 times before we got the point).
Holly, on the other hand, acts like we’re sending her to the wolves if we take her outside, which is odd because their foster home was a farm and they spent their days outside, and their nights inside. I wonder if she’s confused by the snow.
Both girls are afraid of doorways. They have the run of the house but they wont go near our bedroom, the bathroom, or the outer perimeter of the great room. They are mostly hanging out in the dining area, so we put their crate there. As soon as we moved the crate, they got right in. They’re sleeping right now, both with their heads hanging out the open door.
CRAP!!!
Um, shit. I didn’t know that. The program I watched on dog health said fruit was ok to give as snacks!! It didn’t say anything about grapes being bad!
They’re really small grapes, about the size of a dime and she only had 4. The Snopes thing said to get them to the vet even if it’s a small amount. Really?
I don’t know. The Snopes link said anything from a pound of grapes to a few raisins did damage.
How long ago did she have them? Would it be useful to make her throw up? You can do that with hydrogen peroxide, I’ve done that once. I can dig up a how-to link if she ate the grapes recently.
Do you have a vet yet, that you could call for advice?
She ate them about 2 hours ago and hasn’t vomited at all. She seems fine and up til she started napping, she was still playing with Ginger. No farting either.
No vet yet. We’ve only had them for 7 hours. They saw a vet on Tuesday before they left Arkansas. I was going call our local vet on Monday.
Tufts is only about half an hour away if it becomes necessary.
She’s eating her dinner right now and is fighting for supremacy of the food bowl (neither of them cares that we have two).
The issue is renal (kidney) failure, not stomach upset. Inducing vomiting would be to get the grapes out before they are absorbed…I’m guessing two hours ago is too long for vomiting to help.
Hrm. I’ guess there’s a chemical that is present in different concentrations in different types of grapes, which would explain the wildly-varying dosages reported as problems. This might be problem and it might not, at that dosage.
I posted a quick alert on one of my dog boards to see if anyone has advice, I’ll let you know if I get responses.
All right, I got too worried and called our emergency vet here.
Bearing in mind the e-vet always advises you to spend money, the vet tech I spoke to said:
[ul]
[li]yes, this is serious[/li][li]yes, inducing vomiting and possibly stomach pumping would still be good to do after 2+ hours[/li][li]yes, take the dog to the e-vet ASAP[/li][/ul]
So I think you should call them, crate her up, and go. Sorry to say.
I read somewhere that by the age of six months, most dogs will be 75% of their full growth. If that’s true, Holly and Ginger won’t be horses.
As for grapes/raisins, our puppy Sadie ate about a cup of chocolate-covered raisins (double whammy) shortly after we brought her home, and before we had done any research about food no-nos. This was about four months ago. She seems fine. The research I found said pretty much what Sailboat posted, except to add that sometimes it’s months before any kidney damage is apparent.
