After we decided to make Kai a part of our family, it was necessary to schedule another vet visit. I give nothing but high marks to the veterinarians at Banfield Pet Hospital in Garland. They provided numerous services to help me take care of this newly found dog. Because of how badly he’d been treated, they gave me a lot of discounts because Kai needed a lot of stuff done.
I put Kai on the medical plan they offer that reduces cost and they cut costs for me. We scheduled his shots and to have him spayed. The cryptoid required a deep surgery into Kai’s abdomen to remove the undropped ball. There were several stitches in his abdomen that we needed to give him time to heal.
Kai continued to gain weight and we provided him with a lot of support. Kai and Pagan became the best of friends (Pagan is our youngest dog) and the older dogs became tolerant of him. Still, the road for Kai was long as we healed his medical issues. He was eating regularly, his anemia was better and his feet were healing along with his stitches.
So that was a great thing.
Now we needed to fix his interpersonal skills. Kai lacked any concept of personal space for people or for dogs. A human’s personal space is about 3 feet; a dog’s is 6 feet. My older dogs were being driven to distraction by his behavior and Kai couldn’t not walk on us, our bodies and our daughter; yet he was never violent or aggressive to people. He was just desperate for love and attention.
So, we showered him with that.
Now three weeks into our adoption of our new family member, it was time for Kai to go to school. His stitches were mostly healed. The cuts and scrapes around his eyes were healed and we signed him up for introductory dog training. It’s important for dogs to understand personal space and to be responsive to commands. It makes life safer for them and for us.
Sue, the trainer at PetSmart is fabulous with dogs. She grew up training hunting dogs, worked with the canine unit of the police force for 12 years and now serves as the senior pet trainer in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for PetSmart. She was there the first day I brought Kai in to see the vets and we’d talked several times before we began to class. She understood Kai’s history and like many other older dogs with an unknown history, she understood how to help him.
We’ve been working together in the class and I independently to help him learn his new tricks. Already he’s grasped the commands of sit, walking on a loose leash and ‘leave it.’ Leave it means he cannot pick anything up with his mouth if he thinks about it. This is reducing his habit to chew on everything from furniture to shoes.
We’re working on new commands this week including ‘drop it,’ ‘down’ and ‘watch me.’ Kai is mostly housebroken, he asks to go outside and he comes when he is called. He doesn’t try to grab food off plates anymore because he’s not starving and he understands ‘leave it.’ He’s even stopped trying to rip apart the trash can.
We’ve got a long road with Kai yet, but he’s safe, he’s secure and now he weighs 41 pounds. In six and a half weeks, he’s become an integral part of the family and he feels that.
Kai is the perfect example of why we need to remember that as pet owners, we are more than responsible for their care and their feeding, we are responsible for their love and their safety. We are caretakers. A pet is never a possession, it’s a living, breathing, feeling sentience that can give so much.
In just six and a half short weeks, we’ve saved this animal’s life and offered him a better one. He’s offered us unconditional love and he even listens to the five year-old when she gives him a command. He is loving, he’s incredibly gentle and he’s trying so hard to please us when we ask him for something. We couldn’t ask for more.