Cruiser

Age: 8

AVAILABLE SOON

Update 7/27/12:

Update 7/21/12:

On July 16, we received a photo of a cute but highly bedraggled Golden with a note from a local animal control: “Hi I am a volunteer at the shelter, we have a beautiful male Golden Retriever (picture attached) at the moment and we would like to know if you take in rescues from other shelters?” Yes indeed we do! Next morning Jacki zipped over and nabbed the friendly stray, then e-mailed from the road: “I dropped Cruiser off at Forest Creek.  What a NICE boy.   He definitely needs a bath—he smelled pretty bad!  His dewclaws are very long and one was bleeding. He is already neutered.  He was pretty happy to get out of the shelter!    Let’s just hope he is HW negative.”  (Yes, he is—hooray!) Cruisier is getting settled in his foster home now, and foster dad sends this early report:

A quick update on our new boarder. Cruiser is already neutered, had his bath (he could still use another), and has had a full checkup. He's something like 5-10 lbs overweight (he's 86 lbs); nothing drastic. When we picked him up, I had a nice chat with  the vet. She had to remove a torn dewclaw (that’s what was bleeding in the lobby of the clinic), so Cruiser will be taking antibiotics for a week or so. She noted he wasn't too thrilled to have her looking into his mouth and ears. She didn't have any particular difficulty, just that he pulled away quite a lot. Given what he's been through, she wasn't surprised!

Here at home, he’s checking everything out. He watched us eat dinner with great interest, but didn't beg or try to get our food. He's good with the cats & mostly he ignores them. Surprisingly, they're all okay with him already! He's really non-threatening, I guess. No hissing, tail-fluffing or any of the usual (and expected) early behaviors from the feline contingent. It's not that they approve, exactly, but if he'll do the ignore thing, they will too.

He doesn't seem to be completely house-trained, or else he's not quite sure this is home yet. We can't tell. (He's had one small accident, after drinking a large bowl of water.) He's doesn’t care for the crate, but he did stick his head in to get some dinner. We'll get him settled and comfortable with the crate over the next few days. I doubt he'll see it as his Happy Place right away, but at least he'll know where the groceries can be found!

Cruiser's a very fuzzy dog, especially after his bath. We’ve removed some mats, and he took the grooming fairly well.

I tried him out on treats to see about starting some training, but he wasn't interested in the least. Still too distracted, I think. Also he saw me going out the front door and tried to push past me to go out. I don't think he was trying to run away; just no "door manners" yet. We can fix that! I'll walk him tomorrow; he's on no exercise restrictions. Then we'll see how he works on a lead. He also loves meeting strangers, and will try to jump up on them. The only command he seems to respond to at present is "Sit," and not all the time on that. Again, he's distracted and doesn't know his place in his new pack. We also haven't found what he values, so we can then get his complete attention. (All in good time.)

Overall, Cruiser seems to be a good and eminently adoptable pup!

Adoption Procedures