Harvey

This is Harvey. We adopted him on my oldest son's thirteenth birthday at the end of October. He had belonged to an elderly woman who had to move to a care facility. According to the adoption ad and papers, he was supposed to be healthy and fully housebroken. We traveled to a pet store in Salt Lake for the adoption event and found him dirty and quite smelly. We immediately fell in love with his sweet, happy little personality though, and he loved the kids so we wrapped him in a blanket and brought him home anyway. I had to bathe him twice (with rubber gloves) to get him clean. Since he was in such bad shape at the adoption event, we really didn't touch him very much. Now that he was clean, I could feel that he was skin and bones and he had several little tumor-like bumps. We couldn't return him without forfeiting the $200 adoption fee and besides that, we didn't want him to be re-exposed to the poor living conditions he had obviously just come from so we decided to keep him. We quickly found out that he was not at all housebroken and he cried all night in his crate.

We have since found out from our veterinarian that the tumors are most likely sebaceous cysts. In addition to his cysts, he needed his teeth cleaned, he is developing cataracts in one of his eyes, he has something wrong with his trachea, and he has a heart murmer that indicates the possibility that he will probably develop congestive heart failure. He has a sebaceous gland in his ear canal that will require surgery through the side of his head if it becomes any bigger. There is also the possibility that he is also diabetic and he gets to go back soon for a test.

Now for the good news. Yes, there really is some good news. After a lot of patient training, he has since been housebroken and sleeps quietly in a little bed on the floor of our bedroom at night. He has also gained a couple of pounds. He doesn't chase the cat. He loves to play and is not at all nippy or yappy. He is most certainly a momma's boy. I call him my little white shadow because he follows me everywhere I go. And I have fallen hopelessly in love with him. So despite all of his health issues, he is definitely a keeper. An expensive keeper, but a keeper nonetheless.