This little lady arrived just in time for the long holiday weekend, brought out to us from Davis, California by TLC Pet Transport. Sophie had been surrendered to the Yolo County SPCA by her elderly owner, who said she could no longer care for this long-haired Dachshund. We were first asked if we could take Sophie back in mid-May, when we received an email about her from Ashley D., who had sent us Dexter T. Dickens a couple of years ago and more recently, had tried to save a precious little girl named Megan this past January.
This is one of the photos that came with Ashley's email:
(Yes, her tongue is out about 80% of the time!)
We agreed to take her, and Ashley kindly offered to foster Sophie until TLC Pet Transport could pick her up on their next scheduled trip to that part of the West Coast. That turned out to be in late June. So in the meantime, Ashley doted on Sophie, took her to the vet for a much needed dental, blood work and other care, house-trained her (thank you!), and … yes, tried to get her to lose some weight!
She tips the scales at 18 pounds, and her blood work showed her thyroid is fine, so the vet who Sophie saw in California suggested we investigate Cushings as a possible cause. She also has some bald spots that might be related to the same issue, so we'll be following up with our vets here. Sophie appears to be blind from progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), and her eyes seem very comfortable. She's 7 years old.
Sophie has an adorable personality, and reminds us a lot of blind Callie, just with more hair. She's also a bossy, demanding little thing, and since we really haven't been bossed around much since losing Bailey, she kind of filled that niche, too. She gets along great with everybody, and has settled in over the past few days. Here's blind and deaf Spinner checking her out:
Ashley warned us that Sophie's low-slung, ground-hugging torso and feathery long hair combined to make her a magnet that picks up just about anything on the ground. Sure enough, after one day here she had already helped us rake the recently mowed front yard by picking up lots of grass clippings in her coat. (It's time for our fabulous groomer, Lori Fillion, to make another trip up to the farm!)
If you saw this shape from a distance, cruising across your yard, you might at first glance think a ground hog had moved in, though upon closer inspection the harness suggests it is more likely a companion animal of some sort:
It's funny, though — we had similar weight issues with Callie, who was just as low to the ground, and even though she had lost a lot of weight in the aftermath of her brain tumor and radiation treatment, it never changed her fundamental oblong, low-riding shape. I suspect Sophie will prove to be similar.
Sophie says, "Please note, I'm a lot cuter than a ground hog!"
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This is completely unrelated, but a year ago this past week I had a brief blog post about how humid it is here in New Hampshire, and included a photo showing the outside humidity at 98%. This morning when we got up, our wireless weather station from Davis Instruments was showing a full-up 100% humidity outdoors:
I'd never seen that before.
No, it wasn't 4:27 a.m. … and it wasn't 5:45 a.m. either, which is what time the camera says I took that shot. It seems someone needs to reset some clocks on various digital devices!
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