This came in the e-mail this morning from Toronto Animal Services:
George was euthanized....He must have bloated...We rushed him too the vet clinic but they said he was in poor poor shape.....And that it was in the veterinarian's opinion that he be humanely put to sleep.
I want too thank all you for trying soooo hard for the this poor boy.
At the end of day yesterday, as people were leaving the shelter, someone noticed that George looked like he was in great discomfort. They rushed him to the veterinary clinic where X-rays were immediately done and they revealed that George had bloated.
Bloat is an evil that all owners of big chested, large/giant breed dogs, like Great Danes and Dobermans, have to be alert for. It's a gas build up in the stomache accompanied by a twisting of the stomache, like a candy in a candy wrapper, which essentially traps the gas inside. The stomache expands like a balloon, blood vessels are cut off, cells die. It's extremely painful and if it's not detected and operated on in very short order, typically within the hour, the chances of the animal surviving are minimal. The thought of it gives me nightmares. I've had my Dane, Stella, to the emergency clinic three times on suspected bloat.
For George, though surgery was an option, the vet didn't think he would survive it as it looked like he had been bloated for a while. They decided against the procedure.
No one knows what causes bloat. There are guesses: genetics, diet, eating and drinking too much too quickly, stress. No one will ever know why George bloated. Maybe after the meet and greet on Saturday, he sensed a changed was coming and he became anxious, excited.
A change was indeed coming. George was going to be flown to California tomorrow to go into a Tibetan Mastiff rescue. He almost made it out.
Big George will be cremated and his ashes will be given to James Langton, who's been pivotal in trying to find a home for him. James will take the ashes up to his family farm and lay Big George to rest there. Finally, freedom.
There's been a lot of local interest in people luvin' big George, the Tibetan Mastiff at Toronto Animal Services, but most inquirers are dissuaded from paying him a visit when they hear about his sometimes unruly behaviour with other dogs. If he were a 10 pound Shih Tzu or even an 60 pound mutt who was occasionally reactive with some canines, that may not be such a big deal, but having a 130 pound dog angry at something is a whole other story.
Nevertheless, one couple did decide to try a meet and greet with George on Saturday, and brought their own female Tibetan Mastiff, Stella, along. I took a series of videos to show the progression of the meet and greet with the hope of recording a mutually agreeable ending but, well, you'll see what happened (don't worry, there's nothing graphic, not even close).
Here's George when he was first brought outside and got sight of Stella about 20 meters away. He's obviously excited and can't take his eyes off the other dog. You might notice there are two leashes on George and that's because one is going to his Gentle Leader while the other is a back-up going to his collar. A couple of days ago, George took a swipe at a haltie someone had put on him and broke it and shook it off.
It turned out that the Gentle Leader held up on Saturday, but still, better safe than sorry.
Here's Stella, interested but much calmer than George.
As George starts to walk in Stella's direction, he gets more and more excited to the point where he's on his hind feet and doing loops around James trying to get closer to Stella. You can imagine how this behaviour would not be tolerated on a city sidewalk.
There was a soccer game on that afternoon and the crowd noise was quite loud so it was decided to take the meet and greet inside in case the noise was making the dogs more anxious than they needed to be.
Inside, George and Stella are walked at a good distance from each other for several minutes just to get them accustomed to one another. George is still quite focused on Stella, but he is no longer jumping and lunging at the mere sight of her.
George is brought closer to Stella and he does okay, reacting mostly only after Stella initiates with a bark or some other signal (she's inviting him to play). George has also calmed down enough and is not so focused on only Stella that he is now aware of other people's attentions on him and leans in for affection when he gets some pets.
George is still reactive, though, so the handlers ease off a bit and do some more walk-bys with both dogs for several more minutes.
Another attempt at closer contact but while George is better than before, he's still unruly.
It's decided that it would be safer to muzzle George before allowing him a face to face with Stella. He's got such a big noggin, though, that the muzzle, sized for another Tibetan Mastiff, barely fits George and he doesn't like it much so he puts up a bit of a fuss. Not bad though. If he really didn't want to be muzzled, there would've been no way.
More walking. George spends a few moments trying to remove the muzzle but is leash corrected from doing so.
George tries to stick his nose into Stella's face but learns pretty quick that the muzzle isn't going to allow him to do much. Then it's Stella who tries to give George a nose to nose but she's surprised by the muzzle and doesn't know what to make of it.
Both dogs now seem very calm around one another. Stella even starts to mouth near George's face, trying to get him to play but the muzzle is kind of freaking her out, and George, for his part, doesn't seem that interested. This is where things were definitely starting to look positive for the two of them getting along.
George seems to have lost interest in Stella now, preferring to get lavished with attention from a person instead. He's also getting quite hot. The muzzle's only been on him a few minutes but that's long enough.
The muzzle is removed and George still seems pretty good around Stella. He's more interested in getting a big drink of water at this point.
Back to more walking with muzzle off, and side by side. George shows almost no interest in Stella now and it's Stella who is now more interested in getting George's attention.
Stella's still trying to get George to play but he's not interested and walks away. At one point, he seems to get a little fed up and tries to respond to Stella but is blocked.
I had to leave TAS at this point and was really quite hopeful that things were going to work out between George and Stella.
Unfortunately, a couple of hours later, I got a call and was told me that George had attacked Stella and that it had taken a couple of the guys there to pull him off her. It wasn't a serious incident as Stella wasn't hurt and George didn't in any way lash out at the people who were restraining him but it became obvious to the couple interested that they wouldn't have been able to handle George if they were alone with him.
George had basically gotten fed up with Stella trying to initiate play with him and was telling her to stop it in the only way he knew how. How far he intended to go with his rebuke is anyone's guess but no one was going to take any chances considering the damage that could've occurred if there had been a dogfight.
It's too bad the meet and greet didn't work out but George has still got options and hopefully one of those options will firm up in the next few days. The safest route for him now is to go into a rescue or an giant breed experienced home either with no other dog or at most, a very relaxed, non-provocative dog.
George is great big teddy bear with people but he needs guidance on how to behave around other dogs or else he'll need to be in an environment where there are no other dogs at all and I think that would be a bit of a shame considering how much he likes Boo, his little Shih Tzu girlfriend. He can obviously get along with other dogs. He just needs to find the right friend.
While everyone was oohing and aahing over Big George in the kennel beside hers, Boo, George's little girlfriend, wasn't getting enough attention so she decided to she had to do something about it.
Maybe it's due to performance anxiety that she only made it halfway but Boo can actually scale the whole height of the door, scramble over the top and through the gap between the door and the ceiling and then drop down the other side. Needless to say, that's pretty amazing but it's also pretty dangerous as she ends up falling 6 feet onto concrete.
The staffers have tried a number of different set-ups, with boxes, makeshift plastic guards, bumpers, etc. to try to prevent her from climbing but she's always either clambered over what was in her way or destroyed it to get access to the door. And every morning someone finds her on the outside of her kennel.
I think she just wants to be near her boyfriend, Big George.
Boo and George make such a cute couple and I know it would never happen, but in a Disney fairy tale, the two of them would find a home together and live happily ever after in unconsummated bliss.
Boo just got spayed today, so I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up in a crate for the evening. Absolutely no climbing for her with brand new stitches.
George, Toronto Animal Services' giant mystery breed dog is less of a mystery now. A couple of Tibetan Mastiff owners dropped by yesterday to check him out and see if they could more positively determine his breed and while there was some question about his big floppy ears, his huge size and his friendliness, which is not the typical behaviour for the usually more aloof Tibetan Mastiff, they walked away pretty sure George is indeed a TM.
I think they also took a liking to him but it's hard not to fall for such a great big friendly bear of a dog. He's sometimes a little too friendly, though, like when he was out for a walk and passed by one of the female dogs at the shelter. He walked over to her, dragging that slightly inconvenient weight at the other end of his leash over with him, and even though he was neutered a few days ago, his natural urges hadn't clued into that yet and he proceeded to hump the other unfortunate dog who was half is size. It finally took five staffers to pull George off the unhappy recipient of his attention.
Poor amorous George with his love interrupted. It's pretty obvious that his, uh, personality is probably going to be too much for most families to handle. His previous owners certainly felt that way when they had him debarked - either that or the chain they put around his neck was too tight and his vocal chords sustained some kind of permanent injury - and now when he barks, he kind of sounds like a rasping, high pitched seal.
George was actually in a home just this past weekend for a trial run where there was already a big, energetic St. Bernard. The two of them didn't quite see eye to eye on who was going to be boss and I guess the thought of the two of them running through the house playing smash up derby was a bit too expensive for the owners. Monday morning, George was back at TAS.
The aim now is to get George into a rescue or with someone who's already got Tibetan Mastiff experience, where he'll hopefully be taught manners befitting of a giant dog.
video by James Langton
Update: There's a good chance that George might be going down south to sunny California for his new rescue home. Much thanks to James Langton for making the call to the TM rescue down there.
Toronto Animal Services South didn't take in a lot of dogs this week but they did get this mismatched pair from a pound in Quebec. Boo, the female Shih Tzu, may only be about half the size of the big male Leonberger's head but they got along famously on their car ride down to Toronto and seem to fancy each other quite a lot. Now that's got to make for a frustrating relationship.
Boo is a perfect little companion dog and though she may be small, her personality is pretty big. I had her out with the Leonberger and even though he was the more immediately eye-catching dog, simply because of his size, Boo wasn't going to let him hog all the attention. She'd get up on her hind legs and wave you over hoping for some spare affection.
The Leonberger, unnamed as of yet, is the biggest dog I've ever seen at Toronto Animal Services with a huge bear head and huge bear mitts. He's very friendly, a little too exuberant for his size perhaps and slobbers buckets. He's "only" 128 pounds - which surprised me because my Great Dane, Stella, is 135 lbs and this guy looks way bigger than her. It's all his gorgeous, thick fur coat, of course, because when you feel him, he's all bones underneath. This big boy actually needs to put on a whole bunch more weight.
Update (09-05-16): Well, it looks like the Leonberger is probably not a Leonberger but a Tibetan Mastiff. He was shown to a breeder today and the breeder's pretty sure.
It boggles my mind that someone would dedicate the time and money to track down such an exotic breed like this, buy it, raise it and then dump it off at the pound to be euthanized. Some people really have shit fer brains.
Posts
