Update on Buddy
Last week, I made a post about the stray who wandered into our yard, which we decided to keep and named Buddy.
We continued to feed Buddy and let him get used to us. When I got my paycheck, I got a harness, stake, and tie out for him, then we didn’t see him at all over the weekend. (It was rainy/stormy, and turned out he was under the neighbor’s porch. By the time Monday rolled around, I was worried, so I left a note on their door for them to please call me if they saw him, and luckily they had. We got him fixed up with the neighbor’s Dogloo and staked in our back yard that night. I HATE to put him out there like that, but my yard isn’t fenced, and I don’t want him wandering because one of these days, one of the neighbors might call animal control. We gave him a nice bath with some lavender/lemongrass baby wash - he did not like that AT ALL! But he’s got a flea collar right now (since we bathed him, we have to wait two days before using the Frontline stuff), and any pests he had on his body are now all dead and have fallen off (I think he has dandruff, though).
Last night, while I was out getting supper for us, I noticed another one just like him not far from here. In fact, it looked so much like him that I called home to have them check on Buddy. Buddy was still here. So there is another poor dog out there wandering around. I saw the dog again on my way back, so I stopped the car to see if I could get it to come to me….but it was pitch black, and the dog had disappeared. I assume it is Buddy’s sibling, and is as skittish as Buddy was. I mean, I suppose it could have been someone’s pet just out wandering, but I doubt it.
So Buddy went to the vet today. He appears to be a purebred Beagle. The good news is that he is heartworm negative, so I’ve started heartworm prevention and his rabies shot is updated. And he got dewormed; he did have tapeworms. The bad news is that he is a LOT older than I had expected (approximately 11 years), and will still need to have about $400-$500 worth of work done. A little bit would be to fix his cherry eye, but the main portion of it would go to dental work.
Y’all, I have a STRONG stomach, but I nearly fainted when the vet showed me the inside of his mouth! The poor little guy had tartar buildup so bad that it looked like rocks were embedded in his gums! He’s lost most of his teeth, and some that he has left are rotting and broken off a bit. I had noticed an awfully foul odor in my car on the way to the vet, and I knew he’d had a bath. I figured he was passing gas, or at the worst, crapping in the car due to nerves, even though that’s not what it smelled like. After I saw the shape his mouth was in, I asked the vet if that was his breath I smelled. He said it definitely was, because tartar is bacteria. EW. Poor doggie. I can’t smell his breath oustide, and couldn’t smell it the few times he’s come in here. But I could really smell it in my car, and some at the vet’s office. And I could smell it from a few feet away. We will need to do a blood test, a round of antibiotics five days before the dental work, and antibiotics five days after. They will have to remove all the tartar and some of the teeth that he has left. He will be on soft food for the rest of his life. That’s certainly not a problem, though. But he will have to live with it a bit longer, since it is going to take me months to save up enough to have that done.
So one of the ladies working there told me that he most likely had been a hunting dog who just wasn’t fast enough to return to his pack when their owner rounded them up. She said that it’s sad but true, but some of the hunters here will often leave the dogs out and come back for them in a few days and those that don’t make it back just get picked up whenever, or left for good. And that they’ll even let the dogs get into the shape Buddy’s in because they’re not pets, they are only used for hunting and somewhat expendable. That they usually don’t put flyers up when they lose them.
I’m glad he found us! I hope the one out wandering around now is as lucky.
I can’t believe it’s been so long since I blogged last, but I’ve had an awful lot going on lately. All good stuff, though, so I can’t complain!
Originally published at devilishsouthernbelle.net. You can comment here or there.