This page has been created for all the underdogs in the world—the old dogs, the sick dogs, and the ones overlooked.
The story is about a girl named Lilah. We went to bark in the park and fell in love with her. She is seven years old and has the most perfect smile. Lilah is all white and absolutely beautiful. Although she was born deaf, she is a very smart, playful fur baby.
After bark in the park, we began to visit Lilah at the Conway Humane Society. We visited as much as we could. Allowing Kudo and Lilah to walk with each other, play in the pen together. Lilah was a total sweetheart meeting Kudo and Honeybee, she was miss manners when meeting new people. We worked with Lilah using sign language help with basic commands, she appeared to know some of these signs already. Lilah does have a habit of laying down when she has decided that she has had enough, doesn’t really matter where she is when this happens.
We decided to adopt Lilah and that we would bring her home on October 5th. We took the next few days to prepare for Lilah to come home. On October 5th, Brad and I went to get Lilah from the Humane Society. Lilah was overwhelmed and full of anxiety for the first 24hrs, but she seemed to be settling down in most ways with the exception of food aggression.
We would feed Kudo and Lilah in different locations at the same time. Lilah would leave her food and try to go after Kudos meal. After the first night, we set up gates all over the house, creating barriers to separate the dogs. Lilah is much stronger than Kudo and can get through the gates. It didn’t matter what Kudo had Lilah wanted it.
We were very careful to keep the gates closed; Brad and I would divide and concur during feeding time. Each of us would be with one of the dogs to ensure that they were both protected while we tried to work through our food aggression with Lilah. Kudo was in the kitchen on the third day, drinking a bowl of water; Lilah quickly made it through 2 gates, almost getting to Kudo before getting stopped. While Kudo is the type of dog to step back and share anything, Lilah was very quick and much stronger than Kudo and could easily trigger a different reaction by startling him.
After consulting with trainers and vets about our current situation, we realized we were over our heads trying to protect both dogs from negative backlash and trauma. We decided the best thing for us to do was to surrender Lilah back to the shelter.
While this broke our hearts, and months later, we still miss her beautiful smile and spunky personality, we know that this really was the best thing for us to do.
This was the first time Brad or I had to surrender an animal; Lilah returned to the shelter after only 72 hours in our home. While this may seem like such a short period, and Lilah wasn’t given enough time to adjust to her new life, we knew that we would never forgive ourselves if anything happened to either dog because we wanted to give it more time.
Because of Lilah, we are adding Team Underdog to Kudo the dog. Our goal will be to help promote the underdogs. We will focus on promoting dogs that need a little more help finding their forever homes.
Team Underdog,
Love Kudo the dog
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