Old Arthritic Kyra

Well, Kristen never really got back to me on the fostering, so yesterday Chris and I went to the Nevada Humane Society. Nikole didn't have anyone either. We heard about their new Angel Pet program where they adopt out animals, but pay for their vet bills for the rest of the pet's life.

What I wanted to do was find an older or sick dog who should spend what little time they have in a loving home instead of a shelter. This way we can just spend a little bit of time making a big difference to a dog, letting him know before he dies that someone cares instead of leaving him to die in a shelter. The only problem with this is old and sick dogs have lots of expensive vet bills that we can't afford. Which is why we either wanted to foster or adopt an Angel Pet dog. When I explained what I wanted to Art, the NHS dog manager, he suggested Helena.

Helena is a 13-year old akita mix who is severely arthritic. She's also the sweetest girl ever :) We met with her and Chris immediately got attached. We went home and came back with Briar and Breeze and everyone got along ok, but Art had gone home. So today we went back, worked it out with Art, and took Helena (Chris renamed her Kyra) home in foster care :)

Kyra has a few problems. She's severely arthritic, she takes meds twice a day and needed help getting in the car and needed to be carried up our stairs (We recently moved to a new second-story apartment, but luckily she's not very big and Chris can carry her no problem). She waddles when she walks and her tail flaps uselessly. She's also taking some thyroid meds and has a few small patches of hair loss, possibly from sleeping on a hard floor (NHS has beds of course, but they were slightly raised and I doubt Kyra could get on them. So she probably slept on the tile floor). So hopefully those will go away after a while as almost our entire apartment is carpeted and she has 2 beds and 2 couches to choose from. She just needs a little help to get up there :)

So we have a new foster and we'll probably have her for the rest of her life, which may be 2 years if she's very lucky. And we'll give her a loving home until then :)