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01/23/2004 Archived Entry: "Update on Sweetie Pie the doberman"

WE FOUND THE OWNER OF SWEETIE PIE THE DOBERMAN Or rather, he eventually found us a week or so after seeing our group's "found dog" listing. Odd guy. By his own lights, he loved Sweetie Pie very much. Not enough to biopsy her breast tumors (which he'd known about for two years). Not enough to search for her when she wandered off. But enough to train her very well. Enough to make her his cuddly housedog. Enough to make sure we knew what snacks she likes and what special commands she knows. Enough to make sure we were okay people and that she's well and happy in our care before telling us we could have her.

His consent wasn't really needed. By the time he called, Sweetie Pie legally belonged to her rescuers, anyway. But it was ... well, sweet. And good to learn her history.

She wasn't exactly a discarded breeding bitch, as I'd guessed. Just sort of. According to her mystery owner, she spent the first four years of her life being overbred and underfed in a commercial breeding operation. That accounts for the poor, ruined, unsightly breasts hanging from her otherwise-elegant body. This man bought her to breed to his male. She had a couple more litters before her health gave out and his male died. After that, he sold her to a friend, got her back ("too clingy"), gave her to his daughter, got her back ("can't have any more pups"), and then was more than a little relieved when his lonely girl roamed off earlier this month in search of company.

So all's well now. She may be old and in shaky health, but she's a beautiful, happy, truly elegant girl and she's got a home for as long as she lives. It's off to the vet Monday for that long-overdue biopsy and chest x-rays. Cross fingers for good results.

My original post about Sweetie Pie also drew a bless-the-net benefit. Hours after I mentioned wanting a digital camera (something that's become almost a must for getting rescue critters identified or adopted), a generous reader wrote to offer one. A couple of books and a DVD go his way, a 2+ megapixel camera comes my way. And I think that's one heck of a deal. Doesn't the magic of the Internet still boggle your mind?

Now, if anybody out there writes Linux drivers for digital cameras, I'll be delighted to hear from you. (Remove (spamtrap) from the address before mailing.)

LATER: TC from a Higher Plane pointed me toward SourceForge, that amazing place where all good Linux development projects end up eventually. He even picked out two digital-camera software packages for me (one of which turns out to be already installed on my system). Now comes the challenge: getting them to work with a camera not already in their databases. When he wrote with the software links, TC suggested politely that I may have forgotten SourceForge. I confess. I go out of my way to forget SourceForge. A wonderful place. But what you find there is often not newbie-friendly. I batted my e-lashes and TC has now offered to help me figure out the camera-database dilemma, as well.

Lord, I wish every "neighborhood" was as neighborly as the Internet!

Posted by Claire @ 08:57 AM CST
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