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Magoo

Sanctuary, not for re-homing

Description

I was a new foster provider for BARCs Rescue in February 2017, sitting at home with my pack of dogs and my new foster dog Marty, a little chihuahua, when a BARCs Rescue volunteer called us about Magoo...a pit bull mix.
My husband and I offered to help more with BARCs Rescue and both wanted to become a part of the BARCs Rescue core team of volunteers so the current rescue team knew they could call on us for anything.
It was Valentine's day and we were asked to rush to Airdrie to pick up a foster dog, Magoo, who was dumped at a vet clinic by his previous foster provider.
We rushed to the vet clinic to find a happy, but very unwell pit bull Bulldog mix.
Magoo was limping and quite lame in his hind end, patches of baldness all over, inflamed and infected sack where his testicles used to be and terrible breath. He was in such rough shape that the veterinarian seemed reluctant to even touch him.
He was provided antibiotics, pain management and scheduled for a dental surgery.
My husband, being somewhat or a pit bull whisperer, picked up Magoo and carried him to the car and we headed home.
We set Magoo up in our basement that we have set up as a quiet please to decompress foster dogs and let him rest. It was an eventful day for him and to this day we are still uncertain why he was let down by his assigned foster provider.
With the rest of our dogs upstairs with us we carried on about our day when we realized...where was the Chihuahua Marty? Marty was just new to our house on the 11th so we were not quite used to having him around and being so attached to me, it was strange that he would just disappear.
We searched everywhere for Marty and could not find him.
As I was putting on my shoes to go search the neighborhood I could hear rough-housing coming from the basement where magoo was supposed to be decompressing. Yup! Marty was with Magoo and they were playing, however, Magoo was in pain and unable to keep up with the little chihuahua so we gathered Marty up and tucked Magoo into his bed and let him settle properly.
The weeks following Magoo's arrival we conducted our meeting with our pack and learned a lot about Magoo's personality. He was not dog friendly, he was painful and temperamental.
Magoo had to have several teeth removed as they were filed down, he had horrendous ear infections and after several x-rays, it was concluded that Magoo was probably a bait dog for dog fighting and as a result of that abuse, he had suffered a broken spine and nerve damage to his hind end.
That combined with his behavior issues, it was concluded that Magoo was unadoptable and since we knew how to handle his personality, we became his sanctuary home.
We took Magoo to professional physical therapy, did massage and physical therapy at home and worked on his interactions with our dogs.
We've concluded that Magoo has issues with pit bull type dogs and we've worked very hard with him to correct that negative behavior. Now his only issues are with male pit bulls and for the most part if they ignore him, he ignores them - that was a lot of work!
Today, Magoo is a loving happy boy who attends BARCs Rescue events and is a social fun goofy dog.
He still has mobility issues that we work on daily and Magoo was also diagnosed 4 years ago with 4-types of skin cancer that we spot treat and manage with diet.
Magoo is a great dog who was just misunderstood when he arrived in care. He brings us lots of joy and we cannot thank BARCs Rescue enough for rescuing the former bait dog from Longbeach California and letting us help him live his best life.

To contribute to Magoo's costs while in care, please EMT donation@barcsrescue.com and mention Magoo's name in the subject line