Jackie, Kevin, and I did your first quasi dog "rescue". I work for a home nursing agency on the weekend, and the family has the Sheltie pictured above.  The father of the family may be allergic to him, and isn't thrilled with having a dog in the house, so he was going to get rid of Chester. After their cat met an untimely demise (rumored to have been euthanized in a nearby field), one of the other nurses and myself had always said that if they were going to get rid of Chester, either of us would take him. As it turns out, the other nurse "inherited" her daughter's dog after her daughter moved to England, so she asked if I would take him. 

Although I didn't need to ask (I knew the answer before I called), I did run it by Jackie, and I brought him home last night. 

We were worried about how our 10 year old Springer Spaniel would react, because she is known to be jealous and somewhat possessive, but they get along great! Our 16 year old Cocker Spaniel is senile, so she just happily walks around the house, oblivious to Chester (and everything else). 

As you can probably tell, he has some skin problems. The father of the family only took him to the vet 2 times for this, and then gave up, due to the "expense". Instead, he shaved him down to the skin, which may also have contributed to the irritation. So, we bathed him up last night in tar shampoo, and are going to brush him nightly, and then take him to the vet, once he acclimates to his new home. He hasn't eaten anything yet, other than a small piece of cheese (there is dog food down all of the time), but we're hoping he'll soon be hungry enough to eat. I'm sure that he's stressed out, since he lived in the other home for all his life, and never left it, other than a handful of times to go to the vet. 

We went to my parent's house for dinner tonight, and even with their 2 dogs, he did great. And everyone there just loves him. We even left him home alone with our 2 dogs last night while we went out to eat, and there were no problems.  Hopefully, we'll get his skin problem under control. BTW, we don't know how old he is, but figure he's about 8 or 9 years old. Since we don't know his birthday, we're making it September 16th (the day we got him).