Arnie & Gizmo

These two dogs were going to be featured on new page I'm designing on my website for the dog walking portion of my business. The owner wrote a cute little blurb about how much they like me and how they enjoy their walks. My job was to get a good picture of these little buggers.

The story with these boys is that they are rescues. The bigger cream colored one was the dog of an AIDS patient.When he could no longer care for the dog....Gizmo is his name and he's 17, the girl part of this couple brought him home. He had to have most of is teeth removed, endured a nasal fistula, eye infections, a prolapsed trachea ....I could keep going but it was bad. They called me to walk him three days a week because he's also incontinent. Which I do at a much lower rate than my other dogs because they were so nice to take this sickly old dog home.

So several months later Arnie joined the party from a Chihuahua rescue. Losing his sight, with a broken jaw from removing all his teeth (BRUSH YOUR DOGS TEETH!!) and incontinent too. Where Gizmo is so sweet, Arnie is nasty. Gizmo daintily takes treats from my hands, Arnie snatches them angrily. He had his jaw wired shut for a long while so I didn't know his most obnoxious trait.....biting

It's not scary or painful...usually. He does have about three teeth lurking in there and if he angles his head just right he can pierce the skin but just barely. His jaw strength is not what it used to be so it turns into a big pinch. Not pleasant but doable.

My routine is to go get them out of the pen they spend their days in and walk them for as long as they can stand it. Gizmo is always happy to see me, Arnie isn't. So after being bitten a couple of times I asked the owner to leave a towel hanging over the pen. Now I throw the towel over him and lift him out. Lately I've discovered I can stuff a treat in his mouth and while he's chewing get him out.

But today I realized dogs are capable of spitting out treats. The little bugger got me again. Still I will continue to go walk them and bear the toothless bites. I figure if you get to that age and you are a troll like this Chihuahua you have a right to a slight attitude.