Well that is quite a story.

We rescued this girl from a nearby (relativley) dog rescue charity who had bought her over from Morocco, although we didn't know that as first. According to the genetic test we had done she is best described as a Staffie wearing an German Shepard's coat with about a dozen other breeds mixed in. A proper 'Heinz 57' mutt as my mum would say.

She was somewhere betwen 4 and 6 years old when we got her. She had clearly been a pet at some point because she was already house and lead trained, but she had been picked up as a street dog so had been cast out for some reason. This became apparent shortly after we got her and she settled in and we noticed she had something wrong with one of her back legs. She was good at hiding it so you'd only really notice if she was getting close attention which she obviously hadn't up to that point (she was being fostered with 7 other dogs when we first met her). No shade on the rescue people, they're saints, but they have a lot of dogs to look after.

We took her to our vet and had some X-rays done and discovered that the bad leg had in the past been broken and not treated so had set crooked. This meant that this leg was about 1/3rd shorter than her other legs and as a consequence she had been over-extending it to compensate. This in turn had caused all of the ligaments in that knee to collapse so there was very little holding it together, so every time she tries to put weight on it the joint just grinds together. There was, unsurprisingly, a lot of arthritis in that leg as a result.

Once we found that out we got her on a regime of pain control medication. We discussed surgical intervention with the vet but decided that there was a low risk of success and a very high impact on her to go through such major surgery so decided that medication was the best route.

Getting her pain under control really helped her. She became much less reactive to other dogs and opened up to us. It has still been a long road, it'll be 3 years this May, and she still has her issues - she won't let anyone come near her with an obvious object in their hand for instance, which makes both grooming and her regular pain relief injections a challenge. Luckily she is very motivated by food and with time and training we've managed to get her to trust us and a chosen circle of vets and groomers who, in return for enough roast chicken, she will assent to being touched by.

And, after all that, yes - she does finally like belly rubs :)

Thank you, I think I've got the basics. Been on Mastodon for a while so the concept of federation isn't new at least.

Someone back on Reddit recommended the Voyager app which as a Reddit migration feature that imports your list of subreddits and then does the search and list of like minded communities on Lemmy which helped massively in getting started!

I've been around a while, I know the rites and rituals of civilised discourse :)

And yes, they are very good doggos. Usually.

Dog tax pt 2, 'that one'

Dog tax pt 1, the Golden child