Utah

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Original: Utah came to us from a shelter. A spayed bitch between the age of 5 and 7 or 6 and 8, she is fitting in nicely in her foster home. She is heartworm positive and will be treated before placement. She also has a bump on her nose, possibly a calcium deposit from a previous injury. It does not seem to impair her breathing.

Utah is a sweet girl who loves people and is quite friendly. She is up to date on her shots. She is a smaller, petite, field bred girl. We don’t know if she has been abused, but she does shy away from her foster dad when he goes to pet her. While not housebroken, her foster family is working on it with her. She will benefit greatly from an obedience class, both to teach her some basic skills and to help with her socialization. An outside dog all of her life, Utah is enjoying being inside.

UPDATE:
Just a quick update on our girl Utah from Honesdale. She went to the Vets this morning to start her heartworm treatment. She has a class 2 infestation which is a moderate infestation with a good to fair prognosis. Her heart is enlarged on radiograph and she does have a pretty severe cough. Now, we need to have faith and hope she can recover from this and pray that her heart returns to normal size once the worms have been removed. She received her first shot this morning and she will receive another shot tomorrow morning and she will be on exercise restriction for at least 2 weeks or so. They will put her on heartworm prevention medicine tomorrow as well. That is a new development with the new medicines that are out. She will be at the Vet’s until Saturday. She will need to be retested for heartworms in 4-6 months. If the cough persists then an ultrasound of the heart should be done to investigate if permanent heart damage has occurred. At this point, I am hopeful that many of her symptoms (i.e. cough, lethargy) will improve once this problem has been eradicated. She should be careful of high activity situations… where there are many other dogs and/or children.

I feel that she would do the best in a quiet environment where her activity is somewhat restricted. Her temperament is great. We are making real progress in the house training department as well. We have also begun some basic obedience work- she can now sit, lie down, and give her paw on command. She is eager to please and really cute with her freshly groomed haircut. I will finish my roll of film this weekend and post a picture of her in one of messages to the group next week. OK, I guess that is all for now.

UPDATE:
I thought this would be a great time to update everyone on Utah. She is the sweetest dog I have ever come across. She loves Chelsie our other Springer. The negative is she learned how to open the gate in the back yard. Except for the little unsupervised walks she sometimes takes, she listens pretty well. She is also in love with my sisters Shitzu. The get along very well. She went to pappy’s the other day and Chelsie was soooooo depressed her buddy was not home. She pouted around for hours. Last night Utah slept with her head on my pillow. Except for the bad breath it was nice waking up to a wet nose in my ear. I have also found that she loves children because they give her undivided attention.