New canine family member: Barney!

Greetings one and all.


September has already arrived, but here in Maine we are just now really starting to experience summer weather. It appears this will be a short summer.



September is actually my favorite month of the year in Maine: crowds are gone so we get the state back to ourselves, weather is in my sweet spot (70's daytime, 40's-50's at night), and still lots of daylight hours. Sweet.

This September is especially sweet for us because we just added another canine member to our family.

His name is Barney and we adopted him yesterday from a wonderful organization called Dogs Deserve Better, a non-profit organization dedicated to freeing chained dogs and bringing these "best friends" into the home and family (DogsDeserveBetter.com).

Barney was turned into the rescue by a family member who was concerned for his safety (for more information on Barney please see: http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=14482090). He was soon moved to a foster home with a very caring foster mom and had lots of other canine friends to play with.

Barney is a mix between a Bernese Mountain Dog and a Border Collie. From my perspective he is about the height of the Border Collie but has the overall shape of the Bernese Mountain Dog, which I gather were farm dogs which hailed from the mountains near Switzerland and Germany.

He's had a few injuries lately to his head and ears as you can see by

the photos. He has stitches in both ears with one ear literally sewn back on, but he's recovering well and no permanent effects are anticipated.

We have a visit scheduled with our regular vet this week to check his stitches and give him that initial baseline exam. He's such a trooper that if you didn't see the injury you would never know there was anything wrong -- it hasn't seemed to slow him down at all.

He has a very sweet nature and a sense of curiosity that I just love. At the foster home he followed Samantha around as soon as he met her -- it was really cute. At home they act like old companions and seem very comfortable with each other already.

We're unsure of Barney's age. Estimates have ranged from 10+ to 14. I've been doing some research and apparently the best way to guess at a dog's age is by looking at their teeth. The more plaque and brownish the teeth and gums, typically the older the dog. Given his teeth seem to be in relatively good condition, I'm guessing around 12, so we're calling his age 12 + or - 2!

Considering he's been with us for only 24 hours, he has adapted amazingly fast. Last night he wasn't sure about the stairs, so Tim and I ran shifts sleeping downstairs to keep him company until he got used to his new surroundings.

He paced a bit during the night and again this morning after getting up, but he also slept well the rest of the time and even seemed to be dreaming (that tell-tale sign of the little feet moving back and forth). That seemed a good sign that he was already feeling safe and at home.

Today we pretty much went about our normal routine. I took he and Sam for a walk this morning and then we spent the rest of the day working around the house. Tim was painting the outside trim of our house near the deck so the dogs could lay out there with him. I was inside part of the day so Barney went from one place to the other and figured out the stairs to the second floor pretty quickly.

At one point today he wanted to come inside, so Tim let Barney in and then went back outside to continue painting. I was upstairs and didn't even realize Barney was in the house because he didn't make a sound. Later we found him snoozing in his downstairs bed next to his new stuffed toy. What a trooper!

Now he climbs the stairs on his own when he wants to find one of us. As I write this from our bedroom, Tim has taken Samantha for a run on the beach before dark and Barneyboy (one of his nicknames) is sleeping at my feet on the throw rug right next to the bed. Only one day and already he fits right in with our pack and seems right at home there!

Dogs are so cool.

Cheers, cy