Thanks -- Rook is such a sweetie. She melts everyone she meets (now that strangers aren't something to bolt from.)
There is a place near me that has had hoarding issues for decades, and every few years it gets enough public outcry for something to be done. The dogs alternate between being in a tiny side room of a trailer home and roaming free. They have bred with each other to the point that the shelters in either nearby town can tell when someone has nabbed pups from them and brought them in. They almost all have teeny, tiny ears, and just have a "look" about them. When this was all going down, one shelter stopped accepting them because they didn't want to deal with a borough issue/stolen dogs. We don't have borough animal control, and Troopers wouldn't get involved, so it was just a matter of some locals with connections convincing them to sign over 35 dogs (they still had at least 15 they kept.) I happen to have connections with those people, so when the owners said "Go," I got a call to help kennel them up.
One of the big pushes to get help to the pack (aside from a few really grisly stories) was that people saw a paralyzed puppy who had been hit by a car and never received medical attention dragging around the yard/roadway. I admit I got involved mostly because of hearing that, and wanted to help that pup, but wasn't in a position for another dog. I told the sanctuary not to put her to sleep for her needs -- to call me if they needed help. So the next day, she became my foster.
Somehow, after a quarantine and slow introduction, she has become the only dog Zoe accepts the existence of. That was really my deciding factor, and I assumed it would never work out. We have an unspoken agreement: Zoe pretends Rook doesn't exist, and I work to help her maintain that facade.
Rook is completely incontinent (and rocks diapers like a star,) has a crushed/fused pelvis, and her L5 and L6 vertebrate are crushed together. She cares 0% about these things and gets around great, plays hard, cuddles hard, and is smart as a whip. We do nose work (though she can't trial with NACSW since a rule change banned dogs in diapers other than bitches in season,) and we're starting treibball (the ATA does allow diapers, as well as mobility carts.)
The owners said her litter was "Husky, collie and hound." The sanctuary listed them as Husky/BC, since we don't really have any other collies around, but I think they may actually had Sheltie in them. There are Shelties living down the road, and those are "mini collies" to most people. She definitely has traits of both huskies and herders, which is a really interesting mix. Either way, "Alaskan Husky" works, since they are mixes anyhow, and she's basically a stunted, inbred version of the local racers.
