Just dropping a note to say hello. He did a lot of growing over the winter: he's about 75 lbs and his fur is 7" long. He'll get his first big summer shave in a couple of weeks. Hard to imagine he was only 13 lbs when we first met him (prob 22 lbs in this last pic).
This was taken at a little trail in Pikes Peak National Forest earlier this evening.
I know a lot of ppl say OES rescue pups are hard to find and i work in rescue so know about SoCal ones all the time. should i post her here or is there a different sub for that? photo of my girl below for the puppy tax.
My 5 month old male OES seems to scratch more than usual. No sign of fleas and he is on monthly preventative. He’s always done this- since we brought him home in late Jan but I am worried. What is curious is that I also itch after his fur touches me. He’s my third OES. I wonder if there is something in the food bothering him and maybe me.
He is on Purina Large Breed Chicken. Was on the shredded chicken blend to start but I can’t find that anymore. Tried the sensitive stomach one bc he had loose toothpaste pops. Didn’t change things. What got the poos mostly normal was perfect poo suggested here.
Not sure exactly why I'm posting this, or what response I am looking for, but I think I just need to get this off my chest.
A couple years ago, I fostered the majority of a litter of puppies. Someone had bred their ten month old sheepdog female, and out of a litter of six had kept two for relatives and tried to sell four. Then she'd been unable to sell them and listed them for free. And then a local rescue offered to place them for her and also paid to spay the female so that this didn't happen again. All the puppies got homes, including me keeping one, and it all seemed to have worked out.
And then, three months after the first four got adopted (one by me), they decided that they actually didn't want one of the two that they'd kept and dumped that one with the rescue, too. So, I fostered him as well, and that one was stressful because my dogs had very mixed feelings about the new arrival. His littermate was really excited to see him, but also didn't want him touching anything that she saw as being hers in her home. My older dog tolerated him but didn't really interact. I gave him lots of attention and minimized conflict, but he was sort of the odd one out, but it was OK because he already had a home lined up and was just waiting to be taken there. As it was farther from where I live, he was here for two weeks.
Well, fast forward 1.5 years and I have just gotten a text from the new owners saying that they need to urgently get rid of the last one because he has started to bite the husband when the wife is stressed, an issue that has been escalating for six months. They are releasing him back to the rescue, and they basically want me to take him. Frankly, the only reason they're still in touch with the rescue at all is that I borderline insisted on sending them things like "happy birthday" texts So, he's on his way here while the rescue figures out how to address his behaviors so that he can move into a permanent home.
The good news is that, despite the husband being extremely old and frail, the dog hasn't done damage, so the scale of the bites has not been severe to this point. I am relatively confident that we can do a behavioral intervention. His sister has a serious edge, much more than this dog, and it comes out when she's understimulated (not at people, but in her case at other dogs). So it seems likely to me that this dog got understimulated under winter with a couple that was simply not equipped to handle a young OES.
The bad thing is that I really AM NOT in a position to take this dog longterm. She clearly hopes I'll be adopting him, and that's not fair to either him or my dogs. I'm fostering him so that he doesn't get into even more trouble, but I am actually quite stressed about the prospect. I don't quite know what I'm going to do.
took this last fall, haven't shown anyone yet.