Howie

Profile

We welcome Howie to the RAGOM family. Howie is a stray who no one claimed so his time was up at animal control. He is now safe and sound and will be a RAGOM dog furever.

Howie is approximately 11 years old. He is a tall boy weighing 84 pounds. The RAGOM volunteer who picked him up spent quite a bit of time cutting out mats and trimming his toenails. I guess they were so long he couldn't walk on the pads of his feet very well. The next day he came to our house and we gave him a much needed bath and brushing. I don't think this boy had been bathed and/or groomed in quite some time. Poor guy! Well, he is feeling and looking much better now. Howie has a gorgeous darker red coat and now it is shiny and clean. It is hard to tell from his photos since it was so windy out when we took the pictures, but he has very long silky hair on his ears. In these initial photos, he is sporting the "wind blown" look.

Howie has only been with us for about 6 days and we have learned he is one gem of a dog. He is housebroken and very well behaved. He listens well and knows several commands such as sit, down, and stay. He also walks quite well on a leash. Howie met our 3 resident dogs with no issues. Later on the day he arrived, we had another dog visit, so there were 5 dogs here and Howie did great with everyone. We have a couple of cats and at first he wanted to chase and bark at them, but now he doesn't pay much attention to them. He is a typical golden - just a happy go lucky guy. Somewhere along the line, someone spent time with this dog. It makes one wonder how he ended up a stray.

We did our vet visit this week and Howie is now up to date on everything. His heartworm test and fecal came out negative, so that is great news. We have noticed that Howie drinks more than the usual amount of water and pants quite heavily. His heart and lungs sound fine, so we are waiting on his blood work to come back and see if he possibly could have Cushing's disease. Howie is somewhat stiff when he gets up from a nap and he does have limited range of motion in his back legs. It is nothing major, probably just age related.

Howie is the perfect houseguest. He is so well behaved you hardly know he is around. He loves attention, but is not needy. He likes to be wherever you are and since we have dog beds around the house, he usually finds one that he can lay on while he stays close to us. You couldn't ask for a nicer dog than Howie.

Howie will be moving to a new foster home tomorrow. We were his temp fosters so he had a place to hang out until a permanent foster could be found. In the short time he has stayed with us, he has grabbed our hearts and we will sure miss him. Those grey faces get me every time!

Stay tuned to hear more about Howie.