He’s pretty durn cute, but he needs a little TLC.  I got him from the South Lake Tahoe Animal Shelter about 3 weeks ago.  He was badly underweight, lame from a buckshot wound, recovering from cancer, losing his fur from an allergy of some sort and the most lovable dog you have ever met.  Here’s what he looked like the day after I got him:

Yes, he was a mess.  We’ve been walking every day to rebuild the muscle in his back legs.  Yesterday we went 2 miles in two different sessions, but he was limping around and exhausted for the rest of the day.  Today he is also still pretty pooped, but at least he’s not limping around.

Last week he looked like this:

He’s a little timid around water…you can see him looking at the little creek that runs behind our house.

This morning I went out for a Starbucks coffee and since he makes me crazy until I take him for at least one ride in the car per day, I took him with me.  I left him in the car while I quickly went in to get my coffee.  Don’t worry, it wasn’t even 50 degrees outside, so he was quite comfortable and laid down to wait for me.  Then we stopped at this little pond nearby and I let him run around.  He sticks pretty close to me and when he smells something that scares him (probably a bear), he quickly returns to my side.  However, when we walked around this little pond for a bit, I made the mistake of telling him that it was time to go home.  He didn’t hesitate but zoomed off (and I mean ZOOMED) towards the car.  I don’t know him well enough to know that he would zoom over to the car and wait.  All I saw was my brand new dog zooming away from me and since he doesn’t know the new name I gave him very well yet, he paid no attention to my pitiful calls of  “Obie, come back here.”…”Obie, where are you going?” (As if he would stop and answer me.)  and “OOOOOOBIEEEEEEE  STOP!”

When I finally arrived back at my car (trying not to slosh my remaining coffee as I lumbered along), there he was patiently waiting at the car door to go home.

Here he is at the beginning of our walk looking good and raring to go.

He needs lots of work and there’s lots to find out about him.  But he is a dear, gets along with other dogs and seems to love everyone.

Good dog, Obie.