Rescued a Border Collie last week

But before I get to that, I will say that I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I ate my weight in food, and that’s totally OK. I’m enjoying the massive cheat days while I can, because eating 3500 calories in one day is still a slight calorie deficit for me.  When I lose another 60 pounds, that won’t be the case.

I started this diet on September 22, 2008 at 390 pounds. I now weigh 364.

Now, on to the dog story:

Friday afternoon, my wife came home from work and asked if we could go to the end of the road and pick up a stray border collie running around. It’s an intact male that looks to be about 2 years old. Apparently, people kept running it off of their property and the dog would run out in the road and weave in and out of traffic. So, I agreed we’d keep it in our yard for a few days, put up fliers and whatnot, and see if anyone claims it.

Unfortunately, we were too late. It had already been hit by a pickup truck, twice, according to a couple of emo teens walking around the neighborhood. We saw it laying in an old man’s yard, and the man was sitting next to it; he was going to call animal control because the vet was going to charge 50% for any care it gives the dog. The dog’s underbelly was all cut and skinned up, as well as his back legs. He had skin punctures around his pelvic region.

We took him to the vet and got some meds for him. The vet said there were no visual signs of broken bones, and the scrapes did not go past the skin. In her words, he’s a very lucky dog.

Now he’s in my hall bathroom for his own good. Friday night, he was drugged up from the morphine type stuff that the vet gave him. He lay in a corner by the toilet and wouldn’t eat or drink. Saturday morning, we got him to hobble outside to pee. His pee was brown, which means there was some blood in it. The vet said this is normal and that it’s fresh, red blood that I need to worry about.

As of today, he’s hobbling pretty well on three legs, eating his food, and going to the bathroom regularly. It seems like he’s housetrained, too, and he is a very loving dog.

My initial goal was to find its owner or give it to a border collie rescue group. And now, after only four days, we’ve decided to keep him. My wife’s reason is that she’s just an animal lover. My reason is that this dog — being an intact male with no ID or rabies tags, no microchip, and an owner who has yet to respond to our fliers and ads — was just hit by a truck. He doesn’t deserve anything else stressful to happen to him. He obviously feels safe in my bathroom, and it’s only a matter of time before he feels safe in my house and with us in general. There’s no reason to give him to a rescue group to have him possibly boomerang between owners. I think his troubles should stop here.

Don’t get me wrong; I would hate for someone to find my dog and decide to keep it, so I am giving the owner a chance to reclaim him. He has until Friday. I think a week is long enough to figure out that your dog is missing. By law, I can keep the dog regardless because he has no identification. There is no proof he belongs to anyone.

During this ordeal, I’ve learned a couple things:

1. I am a dog lover, not an animal lover — I’ve been getting a lot of pats on the back for doing this for the dog, but I must confess that there are few animals I would do this for. I don’t think I’d help a cat, and even a dog that looked wild and grungy and possibly dangerous would probably be off my list of animals to save. I took the dog to the vet because I thought I was saving somebody’s pet. I’m keeping the dog because he was somebody’s pet. If the same thing happened to another dog tomorrow, I would probably call animal control instead. This one good deed is the extent of my resources.

2. Vets Do Think Practically — if they don’t stand to profit much from you. The local vet I went to offered a 50% discount on treatment since it was a stray. The dog was given a shot of pain medicine and sent home with antibiotics and pain pills. No X-rays, no stitching because she knew I wasn’t an overzealous dog owner. I was just helping out a stray. She made an educated assessment of the dog’s injuries by watching how he walked; she told me his scrapes would heal; she told me to monitor his urine for fresh blood. $47 in vet bills.

I called the vet back today to ask if the limping was normal or if it was a sign of a fracture, and the vet said it might limp for a couple of weeks.

My vet, the fancy one in the city, would’ve done an x-ray, prescribed 30 different precautionary drugs, stitched the dog up, put him in a body cast, and probably board him overnight. I guess they just gauge your level of committment to an animal and price accordingly.

So, I’ve got a third dog. Way in over my head here.

This is him, injured and scared. We're naming him Edgar.