We got Grace from a rescue in Abilene TX. We do not know her story or background. She is under evaluation now. She is on a medical hold because of how underweight she is. All we know at this point is that this little girl is a thief of hearts. It is impossible not to fall in love with her when you meet her. And she will love you right back.

Update 4/25/05 - Well Grace is finally starting to eat regularly and put on some weight. She was not used to eating, and clearly had to compete for food at some point. At first she would grab a mouthful of food and run off to a corner to spit it on the ground and then eat it. Then she'd sneak back to the bowl to get another mouthful. This took so long, and left her food unprotected for so long, that the other dogs would simply go over to eat her food when they were finished with their own. And she would not try to go near the bowl again with them there. We tried pairing her with several different dogs, and even feeding her alone. None of it seemed to work. And in addition she just never ate very much when she did eat. We were worried she was never going to develop an appetite or put on any weight. But we finally found the right combo of eating partners and enticements. We started adding a bit of salmon oil to the food and she really seemed to like the flavor of that. Eventually she developed a real appetite and now she eats her food with gusto, salmon oil or not. And she has almost completely stopped the snatch a mouthful and run behavior too, she just eats straight from her bowl for the most part now.  She appears to either have some sort of neurological problem, or a physiological problem, perhaps from malnutrition while she was a puppy or just plain weakness and muscle atrophy from being inactive and so skinny. She is clumsy and tends to bunny hop with her back legs. She is uncoordinated and her movements are often disjointed. But she does not let it slow her down or dampen her joy of life. And her goofy gait and movements simply make her all that more endearing. Now that she is putting on weight and gaining strength, we will monitor this to see if it improves. If not we will take her to our vet to see if we can pinpoint the cause of the problem. In addition, now that she is stronger and is a decent weight, we have an appointment to get her spayed in a couple weeks. We have not wanted to do this up to now because of how underweight and weak she was.

Update 5/14/05 - Grace was spayed on 5/3 and is recovering form the surgery. She had a hard time of it and is taking some time to get back to normal.  She has lost most of her appetite and has been losing weight again. We expected she might have problems, which is one reason why we waited until she had built up her strength and put on some weight before we had her spayed.

Update 7/21/05 - It seems that Grace has gone blind in her good eye. Over the last few days we have noticed her behaving differently, more timid and cautious. She was always blind in one eye, but saw well enough out of the other eye to get along just fine. But as of today, it appears she can not see out of the good eye at all. We have a vet appointment scheduled for her and we will do whatever we can for her. If her vision can not be restored we will teach her how to cope with being blind. She is a very sweet girl and learns easily, so we are hopeful that this will not be a problem for her.

Update 1/10/06 - Grace has recovered her eyesight in her good eye. We were on a bit of a roller coaster ride with her for a while, but things have cleared up for good now. We think this might have all started by her getting hit with a tail in that eye. So she is back to being the same wonderful girl she used to be. She is healthy, her weight and appetite are good, she is enjoying her life here at our new location, with all this land to run around on, and she has settled in nicely to our new routines. She is still a thief of hearts though, so watch out if you come to visit.