Meet Afonso
April 9, 2007 by William K. Wolfrum
Meet Afonso. When I met him, he was sitting on the street, waiting to die. He had a fairly insidious virus that was causing him to overload on mucus. He was horribly sad, timid and sick. Luckily he had a couple sisters that were leaving some food for him and giving him antibiotics, but they had other dogs and couldn’t take him in, and were not well off enough to take him to the vet.
After I took him, my wife spoke with the ladies and they said they had made special prayers to St. Francis that someone would come take care of him. After an American showed up on their doorstep, they were convinced a miracle had taken place.
The Vet said he had a couple days left max when we left him there about three weeks ago. After a lot of rest, medication, relaxation and plenty of visits from my wife and myself, today he was ready to come home.
And it already appears that our comments of “we’ll find him a home” are getting pretty half-hearted. He is home. We promised ourselves we’d take care of him, so at this point, it will take an extremely impressive suitor to adopt him. But I’m pretty sure he’s staying.
He’s already charming Duchess, our Australian Shepherd. We also have two Boston Terriers, and Max seems to like him Ok, while Jack won’t get the opportunity to meet him sadly. We have to keep him separated as he made it clear he’d fight any dog to the death for dominance after he repeatedly attacked Duchess, who’s easily three times his size.
There’s a bit of dominance training going on between Duchess and Afonso now, but the sad, timid little mutt of before is gone, replaced by a charming, happy playful dog that has a pretty good understanding of when he should be submissive to the bigger dog, who’s still a little concerned about the encroachment into her kingdom.
I told my wife a couple weeks ago that if we were happy being the crazy dog people, then that’s what we’ll be. We hope to save more dogs, and hopefully do some other things to help the massive population of abandoned and street dogs in our little corner of Brazil.
So meet Afonso. We’re pretty happy to have him.
–WKW
Crossposted at Shakesville
Crazy dog people are COOL. My Bostons are doing good…old and fat, but good. Cleaning up my bookmarks folder and had to check in. Good reading…I need to check in more often. Peace to you and yours and carry on Wolf.
Hi Wolf! We miss ya over at the hd forums. Thought I’d drop by. We’re dog lovers, too, having adopted two (mother/daughter) about six months ago. Just love ‘em so much. I enjoy your writing style. I’ll drop by more often.
Hey guys. Very nice to see you both chime in. Personally, I’m pretty sure I’m evolving into one of those 70-year-olds who has 75 dogs and does nothing non-dog related. It’s been a process
Regards,
Bill
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