It's Dark Inside a Dog: Oh Nose.

I know I've complained about this already but...

If you are going to run a shelter you HAVE to properly quarantine and isolate your animals to keep them from getting sick!

It sucks, it's hard, I knooow. Whoever told you rescue was easy was stupid or fucking with you.

I know this is probably one grumpy post too many, but this was an extremely difficult day. I drove 8 hours this fine Sunday. Four hours to McKinney, where I picked up Lanie (who does not appear to be full lab) and another dog on its way to Houston. Then I drove four hours back. No, actually, my fiance drove four hours back - I sat in the back of the car with two dogs.

But..that's fun, isn't it? Not when one of those dogs is aiming sneezes at your face. Lanie had a wicked sneeze. It wasn't an occasional blast, either, but a frequent sniffle. Her sneezes smelled like dog blood. I couldn't nap because my hands and face reeked of blood. The fluid was clear, but this makes me wonder if she has pneumonia. Sure, she was vaccinated for bordatella (actually caused by one or more of about a zillion things) and her distemper/parvo combo, but those shots take a few weeks to protect a dog. And the sneezing was horrible. I'm wondering at this point if perhaps something in the car was irritating her.

An hour away from home it starts to get cold, now that the sun has gone down. My fiance turns on the heater, only for the entire car to fill with the most sudden and pungent stink of death. He quickly shuts it off, but we're gagging and wondering what the hell died in his car (it recently broke down and sat by the woods for a week - anything could have crawled up in there). He rolls down the only functioning window and blasts the AC. Eventually the stink fades (I feel for those poor dogs and their noses!), but we discover we can't roll the window back UP. Now there is freezing cold air blowing in at 70 mph for the last 60 minutes of highway. Just...ugh. I'm not really in heaven.

We get home, hand off the other doggy to its new owner, and I get the genius idea to call the girl who picked her up from the shelter for me and ask her if she had been sneezing with her, too.

It turns out she had been. It turns out, MOST of the dogs at the shelter are sick. I don't understand how a shelter could adopt out an unhealthy animal. Now MY dog is at risk, my dog who just had surgery 3 weeks ago and just now finished her antibiotics. You HAVE to tell people that stuff ahead of time, and if they're on meds, SAY so and INCLUDE it! Don't just ship it home with someone without a word of warning! Few things could be LESS safe or responsible than handing off dogs without mentioning they are sick with an unknown sneeze that smells like blood.

She says she had put her on doxycycline for "2-3 days," and that most of the dogs put on antibiotics (doxy "or you can put her on any other general antibiotic") cleared up after a few days. You know how when you go to the doctor with the sniffles, and they hand you antibiotics and warn you not to stop the antibiotics before you've taken them all, even if you feel better? It's not different for dogs. Dogs and all animals on antibiotics need to finish a full cycle of antibiotics once they've started. Was I given antibiotics? No, but I'll be at the vet tomorrow, spending surprise money on an office call and antibiotics, won't I! And in the meantime, I have to sterilize every single thing that comes into contact with her every single time it comes into contact. I don't even know what food she was on, so she's probably going to have the runs on top of it. Yay...a dehydrated sick dog.

The good news? She's damned adorable, and very friendly, and obedient. I can't look for a home for her until she's no longer sick, and I can't get her spayed/vaccinated until that point, either. She doesn't look to me like she's completely lab, but you can definitely see it in her. Maybe it's just that she's young? Here, have photos!