Introducing Goose

Introducing goose!

In a deviation from the Spaniel norm we have found ourselves a Malinois puppy, or rather, he found us! Meet Goose... he’s now just over six months old and he came to us on 21st February 2021. Goose was rescued after breaking his leg on a training exercise with his breeder. It was quite a nasty break, and the breeder was not willing to go ahead with expensive surgery, preferring instead to have the puppy euthanised. Thankfully, the wonderful vet he found himself seeing did not agree and Goose was signed over to their care. A whip round paid for the surgery – a huge plate to hold the bone back together – and the super surgeon gave his time for nothing.

Dave is still in touch with a lot of his search and rescue colleagues and it was on their WhatsApp group that he spotted a picture of Goose together with a plea for a forever home. Well, of course we couldn’t resist!! After a long conversation with the vet to get a good idea of his personality and what kind of care he would need to make sure we were up to the job, the decision was made.

Goose was all the way up in the North East of England so we could not meet him beforehand, especially with the whole of the UK in lock down, but the vet kindly agreed to meet Dave half-way for the handover in a supermarket car park!

Goose had to spend his first six weeks with us in a crate to allow his bones to knit together. It was a tough time for everyone, especially Goose who seemed not to be feeling any discomfort at all and would have happily bounded around the garden – dragging one of us behind him – given half the chance. There were sleepless nights aplenty, aching backs and anxious hearts, but the x-rays six weeks post-op showed a great recovery – the orthopaedic surgeon was very pleased with Goose’ progress and pronounced that he could have unrestricted exercise.

So Goose is now free to enjoy the garden pretty much unsupervised and is improving bonds with his spaniel brothers every day. We’re doing a little bit of training with him and are getting the three dogs used to being in the back of the car together in preparation for a long-awaited trip to the beach.

We’ve also had our first guests here this week (woohoo!) and Goose has got on really well with man and beast alike. He’s really got such a lovely personality, we’re so chuffed to have him in the family and will be eternally grateful to vet Helen and surgeon Neil for quite literally saving his life. Just for the record, we’re not changing our name to Two Spaniels and a Malinois!