I picked up a sad little shiba from an upstate shelter near my hometown. She had been left at the shelter because her owners no longer wanted her…it was the usual excuse…we don’t have time…So I picked her up on the April 21, just five days after she arrived at the shelter. Her 4th Birthday fell on April 17th, nothing like going to the pound for you birthday.
So this no name shiba endured the long drive to the city and all the traffic and noises that went along with it. We took a walk when we finally got home and a family stopped us and told us how beautiful our dogs where and asked if they could pet them. I gave permission for the kids to pet Cadence (my shiba) and said that I was not sure with the other one becuase I had just rescued her from a shelter. So we started talking and the first thing the kids asked was “whats her name,” I told them we were trying to figure out a new name and asked for their help. The two little girls started firing off names and finally someone said Sabrina…and I thought Bri for short would be PERFECT. So Bri it is. I thanked the girls very much for their help and they wished us luck. The next morning we played the name game and she learned her new name in under 10 minutes. What a great way to get a new name!

Posted on April 29th, 2007 by terra
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We’ve had our first volunteer “fail fostering 101″ by deciding to adopt her foster dog. Suzie will be staying with Gloria (and Tomo). We couldn’t be happier for Suzie. She was our FIRST foster dog and we get to keep her in the family!

Posted on April 26th, 2007 by jenna
Filed under: Suzie | 4 Comments »

Meet NYC Shiba Rescue’s third foster dog.

On Thursday of last week, I received an email that a female Shiba near Albany needed out of a shelter. I thought “how can we possibly do anything about a dog way up there?” but I know one person about 20 miles from there, so I dropped her an email and then sent out an email to the NYC Shiba Rescue list. Then, the most unlikely thing happened… a few minutes later I received an email back from Terra that she was IN Albany through the weekend and not far from the shelter in question at the moment! By that evening she had evaluated the dog and we had agreed to take her. On Friday, paperwork was faxed and she was spayed and microchipped. Saturday, Terra picked her up and brought her home to NYC. Sunday, she - now named Sabrina (Bri for short) - attended a training workshop that a bunch of us already had planned. Considering everything this dog had been through in one short week - being left in the shelter the day before her fourth birthday, being subjected to shelter temperament testing (which includes pinching dogs’ feet, not something a Shiba can tolerate), being spayed, and then picked up by a stranger, driven 150 miles away and introduced into a new home in a completely new and strange place - she was amazingly easy going and happy. Everyone loved her and I’m sure she’ll be adopted out pretty quickly.

Posted on April 22nd, 2007 by jenna
Filed under: Sabrina | 6 Comments »

Suzie and Tomo came to the dog run to play with Snickers today. Suzie did much better with other dogs than we expected. She and Snickers got into it again, but it was mostly noise and teeth… looked scary but no damage done. She’s a fiesty little thing, but a GOOD girl really.

I think she’s going to be moving from the “foster” category to the “adopted” category without ever leaving Gloria’s apartment…

Posted on April 22nd, 2007 by jenna
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Suzie is now fully recovered from her surgery. She is such a strong girl with an amazing attitude. Not once did she complain about her pain or even try to pull at the stitches despite the difficult operation she’d had.

During the first week or so, Suzie had quite a lot of nervous energy, which I mistook for Suzie being a high energy dog. She would run to bring me a toy no matter how tired so I would give her affection. Now she has grown more secure in the knowledge that she will not be abandoned and is actually quite mellow. In the office we commment on how different she is from Tomo, who is always on the look out for something to play with - magazines, trash cans, boxes, plants… and generally runs around like a maniac. (No Jenna, he is not an angel. ;-))

Now as sweet as she is with people, she does have an alpha streak that makes her a bit of a trouble maker with other dogs. Jenna and Snickers have kindly offered to show Suzie the ropes on socialization 101.  It is critical that we work through her socialization process because that is the only thing that is now stopping us from making Suzie a permanent part of our pack! 

Posted on April 19th, 2007 by gloria
Filed under: Suzie | 1 Comment »

Hero is continuing to improve.  He is walking much better. We have gone on a couple long walks and he seems to love it!  He is such a sweet boy and gets along with my other Shibas, Cody and Kylie.  Hero is staring to play more and seems happy just to be around people.  He had his latest vet appointment yesterday and is doing well:) 

Posted on April 18th, 2007 by michele
Filed under: Hero | 1 Comment »

Hero is doing great. His legs are healing and he is walking and running better everyday. (When I first picked him up he could barely stand). He is eating well and gaining weight. He is going back to the vet on the 17th for another evaulation…which I think he will pass with flying colors. His progress in the past week and a half has been impressive and he has really come out of his shell. He is starting to act like a Shiba should: as a great companion who is loving and a little silly at times.

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by terra
Filed under: Hero | 1 Comment »

On April 6th, I went to visit with Hero, Foster Mom Terra, and Cadence (her black and tan, female Shiba). I couldn’t believe how much better Hero already looked. He was so alert and walking so much more normally! He LOVES to be petted, rubbed, and brushed. Terra has been giving him doggie massages, which have probably been helping him heal faster. He’s been taking his medicine like a champ and eating fairly well (although we think he’ll eat better after he’s off the pain meds and antibiotics he’s currently taking).

We hung out in the floor and just petted him for a long time and he REALLY liked that. Then I had to go play tug of war and fetch with Cadence for awhile so she didn’t feel left out. She’s a petite little girl and super cute. Unfortunately she doesn’t like Hero much and he doesn’t like her much right back! She wants to play and he doesn’t want anything to do with it, so Terra keeps them separated and that upsets Cadence when Hero gets attention instead of her. Shibas. Such emotional little creatures!

By the way, we’ve started a medical fund for Hero, so if you can help, please make a donation to help cover his medical bills. We’d like to get follow-up bloodwork done and some take some x-rays while he’s under anesthesia to be neutered, but whether we can do that will depend on how much money we have in his fund!

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by jenna
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On April 1st, Snickers and I went to visit Suzie, Foster Mom Gloria, and Tomo (Gloria’s black and tan, male Shiba). When Snick ran into the apartment all Shiba-hell broke loose as Suzie immediately tried to stand on his back and Snickers SOOOOO hates that. He is a nice boy, but he just won’t tolerate another dog posturing and trying to exert dominance over him without a proper sorting out of who’s who first, so he decided he’d let Suzie have it when she tried to put her paws on him! Gloria and I separated them and sat and chatted for a while, occasionally turning one of them loose to play with Tomo (who was an angel, by the way). Suzie sat in my lap a few times and was SUCH a lover. Finally, we let all three loose together and, after some circling and snarking, Snickers and Suzie worked it out on their own (much to Gloria’s surprise I believe).

The picture above is one of Suzie that Gloria took around that same time. Doesn’t she look happy and relaxed? She’s a good dog. She was spayed on April 5th and she’s recuperating quite nicely. Now, the real question about Suzie is whether she’s actually going up for adoption or if Gloria will end up becoming her forever home… we’ll see!

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by jenna
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This was the first picture we saw of Hero. On March 29th I received an email that had been forwarded through a couple different Shiba rescue contacts. This poor guy was in a shelter. He’d been hit by a car and the shelter was looking for someone "in rescue" to take him off their hands (probably meaning they’d have to put him to sleep if someone didn’t go get him). By March 31st I’d spoken with the shelter and had a volunteer foster home all lined up. On April 2nd, Foster Mom Terra drove to the shelter and picked up our new, nameless male Shiba.

When she got there, she said it took about 30 seconds for him to stand up. He could barely stand or walk. His skin was a disaster - no undercoat at all, black scaly skin, coat missing from several large areas. He was really underweight. His hips were weak, his back legs barely working. She was a little freaked out that he seemed in so much worse shape even than we expected. (The shelter said he’d spent a week at their vet. We thought he’d at least be clean and recuperating. He was oily and dirty to touch.)

She’d already made an appointment for Hero to see the vet that afternoon, so I told her I’d meet her there (fearing a tough decision was in our collective future). When I walked in the vet’s waiting room, I almost cried. This poor guy was so pathetic looking but WOW did he have heart. He tried to get up to greet me when I walked in. Terra said she’d named him Hero and we both agreed there was no way this dog was being put to sleep.

Foster Mom Terra has a dog already, as does everyone else that had offered to foster Hero, so we were like “what do we do now?” regarding his skin condition. We had no idea if it was something contagious. The vet we went to basically said she couldn’t tell us anything without a bunch of money though. She recommended the ASPCA, but when we called them, they wanted $150 just to let us walk in the door. So I called my vet and they squeezed us in at closing time. My vet had JUST given me a big discount on the first checkup on my adopted female, Secret, so I hated to go in begging for a discount. However, he did not charge us for the visit and then kept him for two nights and did blood work for free. They only charged us for the bath and meds! They gave him pain meds and an anti-inflamatory and bathed him with a medicated bath and then treated him with Revolution 24 hours later.

I talked to the vet the next day and the blood work had ruled out thyroid problems or testicular tumors that could have been causing the skin condition. His thyroid was low, but the vet said that could be a symptom of his health problems, not necessarily a cause. He thinks a lot of Hero’s troubles are from malnutrition. He doesn’t have any current fractures but he has a good bit of muscle deterioration and arthritis and probably some poorly healed old fractures. Mostly likely scenario is that he never recuperated from a previous accident (notes from the shelter say he has a plate in his hip from before they got him) and then was hit again recently. His general health checks out pretty well though except for the back legs and the skin. The vet thinks with some exercise, good food, and physical therapy he could build his muscle tone up to compensate. He’s only about 5 years old, so he’s got some good years left in him if we can get him healthy and neutered and adopted out.

Oh, and he is SO SWEET. He was just an angel for us. He never complained when we picked him up. He walked as much as he could and we carried him when he got tired. When we were waiting at the vets he laid down and put his head on my leg. He was just so sweet. He’s got the Shiba pride and stubborn streak though. He’ll probably be a handful when he’s healthy!

We have high hopes for Hero!

Posted on April 12th, 2007 by jenna
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Ah Suzie… the dog that started it all!

On March 24th a local rescuer in Long Island saw a Shiba in a shelter and contacted Midwest Shiba Inu Rescue through a form on their website, looking for someone to get this sweet girl so she’d be safe. Michelle at MSIR forwarded the message to me, because we had some previous rescue-related contact and she knew I lived in NYC. If the beginning of NYC Shiba Rescue had to be tied back to one specific moment in time, that would be it!

I called the shelter and found out about her… "case 3248" was the name on the picture they sent me (to the left). She was a couple years old, not spayed, healthy, a runner. She’d been brought into the shelter as a stray a few days before. The owners showed up to identify her but then left her there. They didn’t want her any more… they said she wasn’t housebroken because they were never home to do it. They said they didn’t have time for her. They left her in a high kill shelter to most probably die because they couldn’t be bothered.

Luckily for Suzie, the woman that saw her waiting there COULD be bothered and she reached out to Shiba rescue to help Suzie. I faxed the shelter all the necessary paperwork so we could pick her up. (Thanks are due to Rachel Chamberlain for hooking me up with Mitch from The Jindo Project and huge thanks to Mitch for walking me through process of pulling my first shelter dog!) While I was working on lining things up with the shelter, I was frantically emailing my Shiba meetup group… "help! help! foster home needed!" or something along those lines anyway. I got email back from 6 or 8 people within a couple hours offering to help in one way or another. Wow!

On March 29th, Foster mom Gloria headed to Long Island for Suzie. She called me when she got home… Suzie was a sweetie, very high energy and IN HEAT! So, now, we had a healthy, young female in heat that had been running around loose. Oh boy! The next day Gloria headed to the vet for Suzie’s first visit. He recommended spaying her right away instead of taking the chance that a pregancy could take. A pregnancy would just be too risky - what if she WAS pregnant and the dad was a large breed dog? What if she died? Or what if she didn’t and then we had 5 or 6 more puppies to place and hope never ended up in shelters? Other than that and a case of tapeworms, Suzie checked out in good health and Gloria’s frequent updates sounded like she was falling more and more in love with this girl.

Posted on April 12th, 2007 by jenna
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