Dano
Dano, age 4-6
AVAILABLE SOON
Remember the musical
Kismet?
It tells the story of the beggar Hajj, who rises from a homeless,
penniless street poet to Emir of Baghdad in the course of a single miraculous
day. Which just goes to show that when it comes to Fate, even the most
improbable is possible.
Take Dano, for example.
What were his chances for
a happy ending?
As far as we can tell,
he’d spent most of his life with owners who were neglectful at best. It went
beyond the dirt, the fleas, the overgrown
nails, the poor coat, the lack of nutritious food (or much food at all;
we found out he’d apparently been eating grass, leaves, pebbles, twigs…anything
to survive). He’d also been subjected to a thoughtless kind of torture: when he
outgrew a collar, nobody removed it; they simply added another one on top. Dano
had not one, not two, but THREE tattered collars literally embedded into his
neck, crusted with blood & infection—and a rope, likewise embedded, on top of
those.
And when Dano finally
escaped or strayed from his home… what are the chances for a worn-out dog who
wanders out into a busy street in a big city at four in the afternoon? A dog
dodging in between cars usually winds up getting run over.
… But in one of those
cars was a GRR foster mom, driving her son home from school. (What were the
chances of that?) And that’s how, instead of ending up at the pound or lying
badly injured in the gutter, Dano found himself bundled into the back seat of a
car, then welcomed into a grassy backyard, then whisked to another GRR home
overnight, then transported to anAustin clinic, where the vet anesthetized him
and removed every single one of those embedded colllars & cleaned and sutured
the wounds. “Dogs with this kind of injury usually recover very well,” he said.
And he’s right!
Dano’s foster mom reports
that he’s doing great. As you might expect, he’s a little needy, loves
affection, and doesn’t want to be out of the picture for long. He likes to be
around you. But he sleeps peacefully at night on the cool tile and has done fine
at home alone (uncrated!) for short stints of an hour or so. He’s great with
children and a wonderful playmate for the family’s “chug” (a chihuahua-pug mix):
“He seems to know to play gently with someone who’s so much smaller than he is.”
Amazingly enough, he’s housebroken, and he’s generally very well-behaved
indoors, though he has had one trash-can raid… but come on, there was a
half-eaten sandwich sitting right on top! Any dog would find that hard to
resist, let alone a former street stray.
Dano is a smart fellow
and is doing well at learning commands (he didn’t seem to know any when he
arrived in care). For instance, he quickly learned “out” to mean “stay out of
the kitchen when I’m fixing dinner,” and now he responds immediately just to a
finger pointed out of the kitchen and obediently lies down to follow the
proceedings from a distance. Naturally he hasn’t been out on lead yet, since his
neck is still healing, but he’ll probably learn to leash walk pretty easily,
too.
As for his age… don’t let
the slightly gray face and somewhat worn teeth mislead you. This dog isn’t a
puppy, but he’s not an oldie by any means! He has energy to spare, he pops up
and down and jumps around with ease, and generally frisks about just enjoying
his new life. He does get kind of clumsy at times---gets so interested in what’s
going on someplace else that he may bump into you without realizing you’re in
his path! He loves water, and whenever the hose is on, there he’ll be, pouncing
around and rushing in and out of the spray.
Dano’s foster mom reports
that his fur is a little “frizzy,” but with good nutrition we know he’ll
eventually have a shiny, soft coat. It’ll just take time.
We reckon that he’ll be
ready for adoption in another week or so, once he’s had time to heal up just a
little more.
What are his chances for
a happy ending now? We’d say: 100%!
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Hotline: (512) 659-GOLD |
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