Jacob's Story

by Karla D,
(El Monte, CA USA)

Zoe in the back and Jacob in the front. What a great pair!

My husband and I started looking for a companion for our dog, Zoe. We looked for the right dog for over a month, I was on the internet daily looking for dogs from shelters, rescues and humane societies.

We brought Zoe to visit a few dogs at our local humane society, but they didn't like her. So we went home empty handed, even after having a lot of hope that we were going to take a certain dog home.

One day we were just close to a county shelter and they had a few dogs that we were interested in, so we stopped by, we agreed no pressure, we were just looking. I had seen a picture of a dog with four white paws online a couple weeks before, he was a male, one year old shepherd mix. I went looking for him right away and was surprised to find he was still there!

I recognized him right away and watched him interact with his cage mates. There was a little dog in his cage that kept pawing and biting at him. The dog with the white paws just ignored him or turned to give him a gentle warning bite once in a while.

When my husband saw him, he was more excited than he ever was when we visited other shelters. We were told that this certain dog had kennel cough and because we were not very educated on the subject we were hesitant to take him home for fear that our dog would get sick.

Fortunately, we spoke to the shelter vet and he informed us that it was not a big deal and that it would be over in a couple weeks, the only thing we had to do was keep the dogs separated for 2 weeks and keep giving the new dog his medicine.

We interacted with the dog and we fell in love with him. We thought about coming back to get him later on and maybe the cough would be better.

However, they also informed us that he had been there a few weeks and would be put down soon. We decided we couldn't let that happen and we would regret forever leaving him there to die. The vets and staff at the shelter were very helpful, sent us home with 2 weeks worth of medicine free so we could treat the kennel cough. We got a free vet exam from the shelter and the independent vet told us that aside from the cough, the dog was healthy.

However when we brought him home, he was covered with fleas and smelled like urine. On the way home, we named him Jacob. We hoped that he and Zoe would like each other.

He smells much better now, no longer has fleas and is the sweetest, most gentle dog ever! Even Zoe is not as gentle, although she is extremely sweet. He has been with us for more than 2 weeks but only a few days in the house with Zoe. Now that they have finally spent some time together it looks like they will be great friends.