Project GIzmo

Don't look me in the eye. Don't make loud noises. Don't move too fast. All of those things still frighten me but I've come a long way since I arrived at Town Lake Animal Center in August of 2010. I was found in a ditch, virtually comatose, covered in burrs.  Those first days were a blur but I liked the mornings the best, the lights would go up and the bustle of the day would start. I started to recognize some people, who came to see me every day.  To please them, I would try to lick at the canned food they put in front of me, it seemed to make them happy. They would examine me daily, poking, prodding, running their hands over my limbs, across my ribs, looking for some injury that was causing me such weakness.  After four or five days of this, towards the end of the day one of the doctors came to look at me again, for the third time that day. Her brow was furrowed and she wore a frown instead of the usual open sweet face she usually shared. 

"I'm sorry buddy, but I don't know what else we can do for you. I hoped someone would come looking for you, or you would show some improvement. But it doesn't make any sense to keep you here when you aren't really getting any better. There so many more animals we can help, ones we can fix. But since I don't know what happened you you, I don't know how to help you."

Why was she so sad? It worried me. She stepped away from me, toward the room to the left where I’d seen cats and dogs go in but not come out. I heard metal cabinets open, the vacuum suck of a needle going into a vial.  She came back in front of my cage, she looked so tortured it made my heart hurt. In her hand, she held a syringe with a blue liquid in it. She said she was sorry again, as she opened my kennel door. I didn't want her to be sad, so I raised up my head and licked her hand. As weak as I was, I managed to wag my tail which I had not done in so long. 

The blue syringe went from posed at my arm to fall to her side and she smiled - I'd done it! She shook her head and said "OK Eskimo Dog, let's hold off on this for now."

The next day a lady came to look at me. She had a clip board and a camera and seemed nice. She talked to the vet a little bit about me and then said she would take me home “just to see what we are dealing with”. I was still very weak and had to be carried to the car where I shook mightily all the way to her house. Things looked promising so when she opened the car door, I hopped out and followed her to the front door. Inside I was immediately greeted by a big yellow lab who said hello and welcomed me into the living room. 

A couple of cats came in to check me out and the lady who had brought me home looked really nervous as the black one came right up to me and rubbed on my chest. But I didn’t mind, things were starting to look up for me.

I tried to be good, I didn’t make any noise and I never left the living room. I just don’t like close spaces  and the hallway was scary. Sometimes I forgot to go potty outside but it was hard for me to talk to these new people. Things were still kind of fuzzy in my head. 

My front left leg never woke up like the rest of me and after a few weeks I went back to the shelter and had it removed. I was really glad it was gone, it had been getting in the way. I recovered really well and my fake mom said it was time to find me a forever home. Whatever that was supposed to mean. I went to offsite adoption events (stress!) and even a TV station to try to find a new home. Gizmo as Pet of the Week

I even had my own Facebook Page! Project Gizmo You can "like" it, I am still very active on Facebook!

Fast forward a little over a year. I tried living in 3 different places but I didn’t like any of them as much as that first house I lived in. I was sad and scared anywhere but there and each time my fake mom would come get me and bring me home.  After the third time, when I hopped out of the car and ran excitedly to the front door, tail wagging and face open and happy, they finally decided that I WAS home and my fake mom is now my real mom. Took her long enough.