Bonnie is a 7 year old cropped and docked red girl who's with Illinois Doberman Rescue Plus. According to their page, she was surrendered to a shelter when her elderly owner died, and was adopted out. Unfortunately, she and the resident dog were not a good fit, and when her subsequent owners returned her to the shelter, the shelter contacted IDR+.
Back in October, I was approached by EzyDog to check out one of their products, the Cujo leash. Intrigued by the design and always willing to try new things I said "yes please!" and "send one on over!"
I chose the 25 inch Cujo shock absorbing leash, as that is (in the product description) the recommended length for medium to large sized dogs. I also chose red, because that's Elka's color!
Spoiler alert: If you watch this, you will bawl your face off. Or maybe just tear up a little.
The low down is that Trixie the Doberman's owner died 30 days ago (give or take, at this point) of natural causes, and she stayed curled up on the couch with him. She almost died herself, but neighbors called the police when they noticed the mail piling up. As is typically the case with stories like this, there were many offers to adopt her, but according to the above newscast, a vet tech fell in love with her and was bringing her home the next day.
Trixie is a sweet looking red girl, shaking very hard in the video. I wonder if part of this is because she was confronted by a camera. It could also be the shock of the shelter environment, which seemed very barky at the time, and is a whole lot of people when you've been with your dearly departed owner for a month.
I'm happy to hear that Trixie is going to a new and loving home, and I hope that she learns to love her vet tech as much as she did her previous owner. I hope she's never in a situation like that ever again, as it's a terrible thing for anybody to go through. In part, it's made me think of a post KB did a little while ago on Romping and Rolling in the Rockies, entitled "Do Dogs Understand Death?" My comment on the topic is currently thus:
I definitely read your post with interest, but I haven't really experienced dogs around death, so I don't really have a formed opinion on what they understand. Really, I don't understand death either, so I can't blame them if they don't. I will say that Elka seemed particularly sad the first (and so far only) time that she killed a moth. She was following it and sniffing at it, and smooshed it against the glass of the front door. She then brought it to me and looked at me with big liquid eyes, like "Why won't it fly?" It was like a Disney movie.
There are still 3 Dobermans left at the Broome County Humane Society, waiting for homes!
My handsome Houston went home not long after my last post on the Conklin dogs. You can also check out the Broome County Humane Society Facebook page to see some pictures of the lovely Sasha in her wonderful new home! You can also scroll down and see a picture of Emma (formerly Eclipse) that her forever home shared, and a picture of Storm the day he was rescued. He just breaks my heart.
Storm, Dusty, and Nani wait for somebody to need just the right Doberman in their lives.
You may or may not know, the Doberman breed comes in four "acceptable" colors: black and rust, red and rust, blue and rust, and fawn and rust. The Doberman Pinscher Club of America has a page, and chart, on Color Inheritance, if you're interested. I remember drawing those squares back in seventh grade science class! In short, though, Black is the dominant color. Red is the other primary color (for lack of a better word. Black is dominant over red, however). Blue is a dilution of the Black Dobermans, and Fawn is a dilution of the Red (sometimes referred to as "brown", depending on who you talk to).
