Egypt

Another rescue story from our Rescue Director Barbara Yumart  over Coffeeat Espresso Culture & Cuisine

Egypt was a female that I brought in from two UNLV students.
They should have never really had a dog.

They crated her ALL the time on the balcony outside their apartment.  Even in the heat she was kept out there and she didn’t have any access to water.  The crate bowls are so tiny, so once that water was gone it was gone!!
She also had a really really mean attitude, she was not socialized at all.  I remember sitting on the steps of the apartment, and she nipped at me a couple of times, and I thought I didn’t really want to bring her in but the young woman that had her already had animal complaints against her tsaying the dog was in a crate and it was howling all day long.

So I brought her in to rescue, and this was also in the early days when we didn’t have foster homes for the dogs. So she came to my house.
She was a normal weight and healthy which was fine, but she just had such a mean attitude, so much so that I was afraid to put her in the crate in the back of the car when I collected her, I had to get the owner to do it because a couple of times she tried to grab at my pant leg or my shoe.

I took her home and unfortunately she was not a good match with my dogs because of her attitude but I had to just deal with her.
She would do things like chase my other dogs around, bite their ears, bite their butts, and pin them in the corner.  She just had a mean spirit.  So, when I put her on the website and an application came in I was so excited I called Leilani and told her straight away. We have to be honest with applicants about any problems with any of the dogs, so we told the lady that she had a attitude (she only got 1 application) and that she could be a bit mean.

I did the home visit and saw that they had 2 big labs and I thought, ‘this is perfect, they will keep her in line – they are not going to take any monkey business from her’.
The lady ended up adopting her and she just loved her.

Usually when I do an adoption, I give the new families about a week and call them back to make sure everything is going ok.
I like everyone to know that when they adopt a dog from us, when I let the dog go, I am really not gone.  I am always there, so is Leilani, to support them if they need help with anything.
I thought that I might get a call from this lady, asking me to take the dog back and I was constantly looking at my cell phone all week worrying that I may have missed her call, but the call never came.

So I called her at the 1 week point to check everything was ok and she said ‘We just love Egypt, we changed her name to Eva Longoria and took her shopping and bought her collars and dresses and stuff ‘.
I just couldn’t believe it and wondered if I had just heard right and if this was really happening??!!

This was a real light-bulb moment for me as far as rescue is concerned, because it made me realise that there really is a person for every dog.
I genuinely thought that Egypt was going to be in rescue until the day I died, but her new family just loved her.
I think her attitude change was because she had a lot more interaction with her new owners and the other dogs, although she still doesn’t like me.  I saw her at our petapalooza event recently and she saw me and just growled.  I like to think that she just associates me with the bad time in her life and that is why she growled at me, but I don’t care, its just great that her new family love her to pieces and she is happy and settled in her new home.