As I said in the previous post, I forgot about Georgia’s gotcha day as well. I got her “physically” the day after Grizzley’s birthday even though I signed the adoption papers a few weeks earlier. I think I’ll post Georgia’s arrival story my friends already know because I think this is an appropriate place to post it. So here it goes.

At the end of March 2003, I was looking through special needs dogs on Petfinder, and saw the following description of a Lab/Shep mix called Faith:

Disability description: 1.6.03 to PRESENT…

A few days before Christmas, I was contacted by the Clayton Co. Humane Society in Atlanta, GA. They had received a call about a woman who could not afford to feed her animals anymore and wanted to surrender them to the shelter. Since three of the dogs on the property were labs, I was asked to go out and see if there was something I could do to help the labs as well as get an overall picture of the situation.

When I arrived at the house, I walked to the backyard and saw an old rusted car, trash, and a filthy, unkempt yard. There was feces everywhere in the back and the smell was horrible. There were 2 adults (the mother and father of Faith – female black lab and male German Shepherd) 2 nine month olds (Faith and her brother) and 2 puppies about 6-8 weeks old. They told me the pups were from the black female getting pregnant again – they said that they had given away all the pups but the two they had.

I had originally gone for the black female but once in the backyard I was taken by a poor chocolate lab mix who was known as only “baby girl”. She could not stand totally up due to a deformed front leg. The owner said that she had been born that way and was pretty much treated as an outcast by the rest of the pack. The other dogs did not let her eat any food and she was not allowed into the “house” that the husband had built for the dogs for protection from the weather, the “house” consisted of three pieces of scrap wood and a tarp stretched across the top.

When I tried to approach Faith, she ran – she was scared to death. The husband went to the kitchen and tossed some dog food on the cement stairs (he said they preferred to eat off the steps since it was long and acted like a feeding trough so everyone could get some.) Needless to say, the dogs did not let Faith get near the food. The husband then explained he would throw food on the ground for her because the others would be busy eating their food from the stairs.

I couldn’t stand it, if I didn’t help this girl, she would never make it at a shelter and so I went back the next day with tranquilizers to catch her since sedation was the only way I would be able to get close to her.

After catching her (even though sedated she was still very difficult to catch) we brought her straight to the vet. The first thing was to evaluate the leg, get her shots and a heartworm test. My vet told me her leg would need to be amputated since the bone had begun to grow and had no where to go. She would never be able to stand up straight unless her limb was removed. This poor lab had lived a life of neglect, feeding off the ground and never experiencing human touch. I decided to do whatever it took to help her. The amputation was done and we began trying to work with her.

Unfortunately, the kennel at the vet’s made her even more frightened with all the dogs barking and being caged. Faith does not do well on a leash so she would need to be carried in and out of the kennel to go outside. After coming from a life of living in underbrush in her backyard, the environment she was now in was only putting her further back into her shell.

Then the unspeakable happened, after 3 weeks of boarding, I received a call from the vet telling me she had escaped and they were looking for her now. After searching for 10 days, she was finally caught thanks to the vet’s office staff looking for her on shifts and posting signs on every block. We believe she slipped through the metal poles of the fence and the gate. After that we knew we had to get her out of that environment. The vet’s office had done all that they could, she would not get better being there and an urgent plea for Faith’s foster care was made.

A wonderful angel answered Faith’s plea and she was moved to a home with a garage hoping to eventually bring her inside; however when she becomes frightened or approached by someone she defecates and could not be brought inside. She had gotten better at one point and we started bringing her inside, which she loved! But as soon as she would get scared she’d poop again and my foster mom’s husband put his foot down and said she had to be moved back into the garage. She is very lonely and wants so bad to come inside but because of her problem and a husband wanting her gone yesterday, she has been moved back outside to the garage.

Faith needs someone who can spend quality time with her, someone that has time to work with her, and of course, love and patience until she feels secure. Faith is truly a good dog but needs someone who is experienced with feral dogs. Faith does not have any aggression whatsoever, only fear. She will try to bite through a leash and so a leash with a chain is a must.

My foster mom has since asked her husband for a divorce and will be moving within the month. Now Faith has nowhere to go. I have no idea what to do. She cannot be kenneled at my vet’s for fear of her escaping again. It was horrible when she got out the first time.

She has come further than she was from the day I rescued her but still needs so much work. She is good with other dogs and also with cats – I truly believe she is very lonely right now and really wants companionship, she’s just afraid of it right now for lack of understanding. Faith is doing well on her three legs. The problem is her fear of people. She allows me to pet her but when she feels threatened or scared she will poop out of fear. We currently have Faith on anti-anxiety medicine to try and help with her fears, amitryptilline 50mg taken twice a day. I truly believe with someone working with her daily this could change.

After reading this with tears falling down, I couldn’t sleep 3 nights in a row, couldn’t do anything but thinking about the poor girl’s scared face in the picture. I knew I couldn’t do anything at the moment because I was living in an apartment with a no-dog clause. But since my lease was expiring at the end of July, if they could just hold on to her, I could adopt her. I sent an email after 3 sleepless nights to see if there is anything I could do. The rescue replied back telling me that they found another foster mom for her and they did not think Faith would get adopted for some time. So frantic search for a house began for me.

After all, I couldn’t get a house in my price range, so I settled for an apartment that allowed dogs and cats. After I signed the lease, I contacted the rescue again to adopt Faith. The rescue was reluctant to let me adopt her because I had not seen how serious her behavior problem was, so they didn’t want Faith to travel such a long distance putting her under enormous stress and end up being returned to them. So, I agreed to fly down to Georgia to meet with the rescue and Faith.

It turned out that Faith was living in a bathroom in her foster because the foster had gotten a lot of dogs, and they surrounded Faith and attacked her when the foster mom was not paying close attention. When I entered the bathroom, I could see this little dark colored thing shaking uncontrollably inside the bathtub under a cardboard. The foster mom explained that she liked to hide so she had put the cardboard at the corner of the tub so that she could feel safe. When I got close to pet her, she let her poop out still shaking, and in her attempt to avoid my hand, she was literally swimming in her poop. It was so painful to see. She was skin and bones, not because foster mom wasn’t taking care of the dog but because she didn’t eat if she’s under stress. They told me she was in an even worse shape when she was kenneled at the vet.

I told the rescue that I definitely wanted to adopt her, and signed the adoption contract and paid the adoption fee. I flew back without making the decision on how to get Faith up to New York with the least amount of stress on her. After talking over and over about transporting Faith to me, flying her commercially was out of the question because she would be scared to death, transport legs was out because it would be too dangerous – she was known to escape out of fear of people. Then we discovered Skyark. We put a request in, but since they had already made a run in this area a couple of days before, and no pilot was volunteering, I ended up just sitting there and waiting for a week and a half not knowing if it’s going to happen or not. I couldn’t take it, my baby is sitting in a bathtub all by herself lying in her own poop. So I decided that I’d fly down and drive her up myself one weekend.

Fortunately, my co-worker volunteered to help me. So in the early morning of Sunday 6/29/2003, my co-worker and I flew down to Georgia, rented an SUV, picked up my baby and drove up to New York. I renamed her Georgia from the song ‘Georgia on my mind’ suggested by a friend of mine since she had been on my mind every single moment from the day I saw her on petfinder. And she’s the love of my life.