OT

Rascal is less than perfect. I guess he really needs us.

We knew adopting an older dog would be difficult, particularly a rescue a dog. But I thought there were things in a rescue that would preclude one to assume a dog ready for adoption is going to have a certain level of health, or at least get a full disclosure of health issues. We did get a full behavior disclosure. As advertised, he is a counter-cruiser and marvellously talkative. He ignores our other dog unless there is food around. He barks at the cats but doesn't chase them. This is wonderful. This will fit into our household and I'm happy about that- once out of the adjustment period, we should be okay.

But his health... I have never seen a dog so full of flea dirt. His blood-shot eyes didn't bother me- I thought that was okay for Bassets. Not really. He has apparent uveitis and very low occular pressure. Apparently I'm not the ignorant person out there concerning basset eyes. The sutures from being neutered... as far as I know that happened in April... and the sutures were still on him. Um. Four months??? Followup after the surgery should take care of that. Should. And apparently he has something seriously wrong with his lip. This was judged as an infection by the vet they took him to, but I think this is a mis-diagnosis from the vet and not the blame of the folks who were trying to give him adequate care. I'm fuzzy on the details at the moment (getting our vet to write this up), but if things don't improve in a week, we may be considering extensive surgery to remove the tumors. Aspirate was only blood. Differential diagnosis from memory involves hematoma and he chews on his lip while eating or other and keeps injuring it, hemangioma or hemangioma sarcoma- the latter two will likely require serious resection of the lip. The original vet thought it was just a minor wound infection and put him on Clavamox for a little.

We'll be informing the rescue group. They deserve to know as a courtesy. I worry that this is "normal" but seriously hope not. I hope this is an issue of a bad communications twixt their vet, their foster mom, and their foster coordinator, and that we weren't deliberately lied to in the hope that we would take the dog. I really want to get on with the rescue group (for one thing, I'd like to be a foster dog parent with them, and believe they are working for a good cause for another). Bad communication can be fixed.

But it certainly makes us determined to make this work. We certainly don't want to send Rascal back to where he was.  ¶ 12:54 PM