Welcome, sweet Madeline!

We are happy to announce that sweet 8 month old, 10 pound, Madeline has arrived in WA after a 1 - 1/2 day drive up from Northern California. Troy met her transport in South Tacoma this morning and brought her home.

We are happy to say she is a sweet, well socialized girl with a nice even temperament, especially considering that she is in pain. A big surprise was that she is in heat and I believe is about 12-15 days into her cycle. Since she's been in the shelter, kept isolated since December 1st, I think we're safe. Still, we're not enjoying the mess. If she is as late in her cycle as I think then she only has about 4 or 5 days left of the bleeding.

The bad news is that she is not using her rear right leg at all and it is obviously uncomfortable when she lays down. She moves around on her other rear leg okay, even though it was obviously injured as well. Her story is that she was brought into the shelter on December 1st after she had been attacked by a large dog. The owners asked the shelter to put her down as they didn't want the vet bills. The shelter refused and tried nursing her back to health in the front office while they attempted to find a rescue spot for her.

There are an amazing amount of lacerations on her legs that are healing very well - most are just scar tissue at this point. She has an appointment on Tuesday to see a vet for an exam and to have digital x-rays taken so we can see what the damage is and the vet can create a treatment plan. I am crossing my fingers that it will be something that can be fixed without orthopedic surgery as that would be heavy burden for the rescue, especially since we have another WA dog that will be needing hip surgery as soon as he is healthy enough to undergo anesthesia. Watch for her and Edward (the other WA boy who has a broken hip) to appear in the New Rattitude Clinic soon.

At this point Frodo, Frisby and Tilly are just curious about who the new girl is but Nimh is having absolute conniption fits over her. Since I know Nimh will try to start humping her if I let her near poor Maddie we are keeping everyone very separate right now.