Hunter was making his way down a main street in San Juan del Obispo last Tuesday evening. We were dropping off the final spay and neuter patients with Francesca Luissi, and he passed us, scrounging for food.
We stopped and offered some potato chips (all we had with us), and the pup stopped and began to greedily wolf them down, until two of the resident dogs attacked him and drove him off.
We chased after him, Francesca stopping quickly and buying a small bag of cat food from a woman heading home with it for her cat. We baited the dog with bits of cat food but he was too leery to let us catch him.
In a flash of brilliance, volunteer Jilli grabbed a crate from the car, and we were eventually able to bait the hungry dog into the crate and close the door!
We took him directly to a local veterinarian to board and to begin treating his skin and internal parasites until after our clinics were over.
We picked him up from the vet on August 8 and brought him up to the rescue.
Most of his intake photos were taken a week after we found him, with a full week of treatment already completed.
We christened him Hunter, in memory of a dear friend’s special black dog who passed away recently.
Hunter has made an incredible recovery, both physically and behaviourally. He has a glossy black coat and a bounce in his step. His a happy dog who now trusts people and approaches for petting and treats. He gains more trust with people every day. Hunter has his basic obedience behaviours, walks nicely on a leash, and is great off leash. He has a good recall, and is smart and food motivated. He gets along well with the other dogs at the rescue. We would recommend a family with older or no children for Hunter as children can be loud and move quickly and erratically and he can still shy away from loud noises of brusque or threatening movements.