Suzie is all Shiba when it comes to water.  She walked as far away from the edge of the water as possible on the beach and did not like it at all when we dipped her feet in the water… ok, ok, we picked her up and tossed her in.. She did love romping around in the sand with her brother Tomo and sniffing out all of the new smells the beach had to offer.

She also experienced our favorite dog friendly B&B (The Mill House Inn in East Hampton for anyone interested) for the first time and made herself right at home.  The innkeepers loved her outgoing personality and hearty appetite.  Smoked bacon bits and eggs that found there way off of our plates into the bellies of two lovely Shibas each morning.  They were both passed out cold on our way home from all of the activity and the good food.

Suzie is definitely getting used to her new life and she sure is enjoying it!

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!

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…

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! 

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!

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.