Newsletter
Winter 2010
Volume 11, Number 4
A Very Furry Christmas
This Christmas was going to be our first in ten years without Beau, our standard poodle who left us last May. We’d made several attempts since then to find another but nothing worked out until a friend and co-worker, Melinda Bailey, found a breeder in Illinois on-line who specialized in apricot and red standards. I called and spoke to Tina, the breeder, and she told me she had two males from her last litter, about four months old. Well, I’ve always thought two is better than one, and I promptly said I’d take them.
Tina and her husband drove them from near Peoria to St. Louis where they boarded a Delta flight for Atlanta December 7. Not wanting them to have to change planes, John and I drove to Atlanta to the Delta Cargo area at Hartsfield to pick them up. We waited about 40 minutes for them to appear in the cargo warehouse and a Delta Customer Service Agent, Kimberly Hall, took us into a room where she opened their crates and we met. They were adorable!
Kimberly who had just lost a standard, was very helpful. She took us across the parking lot to a fenced-in grassy area where the pups could chill a bit before our drive back to Savannah.
The pups—we were groping for names, nothing was clicking—had to adapt to city living. Cars and loud noises spooked them and walking on leashes was a first for them. Steps? I don’t think they’d ever seen steps before, so John had to carry them up and down.
We wanted a Southern connection and John suggested the Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard and from Gustave we got Gus and Touy from Toutant.
We took them to our beach house that weekend and they started learning steps there, but Sunday afternoon in the square back in Savannah, Gus, collapsed on his leash. He became more listless as the day went on and would not eat or drink, so first thing the next morning we took them to our vet, Dr. Karen Kane, at Southside Animal Hospital. Pneumonia, Canine influenza, renal failure? No one had an answer but by Wednesday Gus had improved significantly on an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory, so home he came on Thursday.
We had another spell the next week but changed his meds and I am very pleased to say that he’s 100% again. Karen thinks it was something called immune-mediated polyarthritis which is definitely Greek to me. We’ll never know for sure but perhaps he picked something up on the plane trip.
Well, needless to say, it’s been a wonderful Christmas and New Years. Gus and Touy have adjusted well and except for several Mad Minutes a few times each day are very manageable. They have brought us great joy and we begin 2010 with new hope and purpose.
Happy New Year
