Delbert the 80 pound Basset

It's been a long while since I posted last. I figured I would forget about this blog, but I've remembered now. :P

Delbert was our second foster dog and was around 2 years old. He came to us on a somewhat warm March day. (I think...I may very well be wrong. After a while the time-frame of all of these dogs tend to blend together.) We should have known he was going to be trouble from day one. He came from Tennessee on a transport and we had agreed to meet the transport at a small store somewhere around the middle of nowhere. Long story short, they couldn't find the place so we agreed to meet them somewhere else. We get Delbert, surprised at his immenseness (for a Basset Hound). He was longer and taller than most Bassets, and had more drool than any Basset I had ever seen. Yet he was scared of other dogs. And he had bad manners. Poor guy never learned the lessons he should have as a puppy; It was completely beyond him why jumping on people or counter surfing was a no-no.

We had him for a couple of months and was then adopted out. About three months later, we learned that he was being returned to foster care as he was getting into things at his new home and wasn't bonding with the other dog. He was sent to a different foster home this time, were he remained for a little while before being adopted again. He remained in this home for about another three months before he was once again returned to the rescue because he was causing even more trouble such as licking the floor (although my guess is that there was more to it than that). He came back to our home where I spent an hour sitting on the floor with him as he sat there whining and wondering why his owner had left him there. The poor dog was confused, wondering why this was happening again. Being a dog with a short attention span, he quickly got over his feelings of being abandoned and began to show his true colors once again. He had lost some weight since we last saw him, but he was still the same old giant Basset. Or so we thought. He soon began to show a new side of himself. While he no longer pulled on his leash and rarely jumped on people, the sweet dog we used to call the "Gentle Giant" had turned into a beast.

He had food aggression, for starts. He gobbled that food down like it was going out of style. But that wasn't all of it. While he was still terrified of dogs, he had suddenly decided that most people were beneath him. He would snap and growl at anyone who came near him at the wrong time or when he had something he didn't want us to have. And he especially hated my dad. I knew that if we adopted him out, he was going to bite someone and he would be put down. I had grown attached to Delbert and didn't want that to happen to him. I begged my parents to adopt him, and after much begging and making promises that I have tried to keep, they agreed. Delbert's problems have better since then, but not before they got worse. The whole family has put in a lot of time and patience into this dog. He is now 5 years old and we recently took him to see an animal behaviorist who has been helping us turn him into a part of our family. It's been a long, hard road and it's still going on, but I try to remind myself to take it one day at a time. He has shown some improvement. And he's still my best friend. I have never had a dog become more attached to me than anyone else. I'm not going to give up on him.

He's not all bad though. He's actually quite the character. As I sit here writing this, he's outside on the deck sitting in the rain. He refuses to come in. He loves to be outside. He has a corner of the yard that he sits in and watches the rest of the world. He has the attention span of a little kid and constantly seems to forget what he's doing, but he can be a lovable dog when he wants to be. Our house would be very different without him. I love my buddy, and I pray that someday he'll learn to get along with everyone so that he can be a real part of the family. And you can be assured that you will be hearing plenty about this dog in the future. :D

I know I said I would tell you all about the 80 pound Basset, but that will have to wait a little longer. First I have to rant.

We got a call from the rescue today asking if we would take in a Basset mix whose family has a toddler. The toddler pokes and kicks the dog, but the owners don't stop him. They're getting rid of the dog.

It drives me CRAZY when people get rid of their dogs because they have a baby. It's not fair to the dog! Maybe they should teach their bratty kids to respect the dog! I'm fairly certain that the dog would leave the kid alone if the kid would return the favor.

If you have a kid, please. Teach the kid how to be nice to animals. And NEVER leave a little kid and a dog alone.

Happy

There he is. The freakish terrier hound.

His name was Happy, a dog about a year old who was whisked out of a kill shelter in Tennessee days before he was going to be put down. But none of that phased him. He was a bundle of energy. That dog rarely settled down. And he would jump over our (supposedly...) Basset Proof fence without even thinking about it. Now me, I don't really like extremely hyper dogs. They get on my nerves. But I somehow got along with this dog. For the most part at least. It did upset me when he would get out of the yard and I would have to chase him down the road in the chilly air...

He also loved chasing the laser pointer light, which was a very un-Basset trait. This dog was play play play all day every day.

Yeah, he may not have been full Basset, but he was still really cute. Who could resist this face?

Not too long after he came to us, Happy left us for a new home where he could run wild and terrorize new people. Miss you Happy!

Shortly before Happy left, we acquired a new dog. His name was Delbert. And he was ALL Basset. All 80 pounds of him.

First post: How it all began.

I figured I would use this first post as an opportunity to introduce myself and give you the history of why we began to foster Bassets.

We got our first Basset in 2000. My aunt and uncle had always owned Bassets, so I was familiar with them. But it was so much cooler having one of my own. She was an adroable puppy that we named Missy. But when you have one Basset, you have to have another. There is no way around it. They are just that cool. So we convinced ourselves that Missy needed a friend. So in 2001, we got another puppy who, after much discussion and many coin tosses, was named Hubert. And the two got along great together. We were happy, they were happy. It was great! But you remember how I said a few sentences ago that when you have one, or in our case two, Bassets you have to have more? Well, we weren't looking for a new dog, but my mom was searching Basset Rescue sites and came upon a picture of a handsome Basset named Rufus. So, we went through the whole adoption process. The application, the phone calls, the home visits, and eventually the trip to New Hampshire where we ending up driving by the persons house a few times before they started flickering the porch lights at us...but that's OK! We made it there eventually! And we got Rufus, who was just as cute in person as he was in his picture. And so the story began. The downward spiral into Basset land. A place that you can't return from. It's a good thing I like it here...

My family and I have been a foster home for Basset Hounds for the past 3-4 years. In that time, we have had more than 20 dogs come through our door. All of them have had different personalities and issues, and they all had different stories. The only thing that connected them was the fact that no one wanted them.

Why did my family decide to get involved in Basset Rescue? Well, to be honest, it was mostly my mom who wanted to do it. I was afraid that I would fall in love with every single one of them. I think I finally caved because I thought it would be cool to have an extra Basset around the house for a while. I mean, Bassets are cute. Who could resist? All of that made it pretty funny and ironic that the first dog we got wasn't a full Basset. Yup. You heard me right. He wasn't a Basset. He was some sort of...freakish terrier mix that might have had a tiny bit of Basset in him if you looked close. REALLY close.

But, you see, it's late. I have left you some pictures of my dogs at the top. The first one is Rufus, the second one is Hubert, and the one at the bottom is Missy. And so, I bid you all goodnight until another time. And then I will tell you about the fence jumping sort of Basset.