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Likes: 1) Food and 2) going for walks, although his preference is, of course, when I give him food for being good on walks
Pet-Peeves: Most things that move, particularly things coming directly towards him. The faster they approach, the more he is peeved. It is even worse when those things are male, and/or barking and growling BACK at him
Favorite Toy: Stuffed panda bear (looks like him!) so he can take out all of his frustrated aggression on it
Favorite Food: Haven't seen him refuse anything yet!
Favorite Walk: Runyon Canyon in Hollywood--160 acres of unspoiled wilderness, and it STILL isn't big enough to exhaust all of his energy
Best Tricks: Sit, down, stay, drop on recall, head down on command, roll over, roll over the OTHER way, left paw, right paw, sit up, target, kiss, come, crawl
Arrival Story: ***2/26/07 UPDATE: Mojo has now found his new forever home with us. Yes, I became a total "foster failure" in classic style. :P His previous owner never came forward in over two months of constant advertising in person, online, and in print, and it really seems that if one HAD been looking for one's lost dog, there is no way anyone could have missed my ads, and so we sadly concluded that he was not lost, but truly abandoned. We also have unfortunately fallen in love with the silly dog in the meantime. ***
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HOW I FOUND HIM: I was driving home from Christmas shopping on December 23, 2006, and happened to get stuck in traffic on my usual route, and so decided to take a shortcut. If I hadn't done that, I never would have found Mojo, as we would come to call him. As I headed east and then turned north through Hancock Park, a ritzy neighborhood in Los Angeles, I saw this dog running loose down the street (my thought at the time: "Not ANOTHER one..."--this would have been the FOURTH stray dog I had found since moving to Los Angeles in 2004, but I had managed to reunite the other three with their owners. I had no idea that this fourth would be my undoing). So, with a sigh, I stopped the car and got out to assess the situation. He was a medium-sized white and black dog; looked like an Aussie but was much, much smaller. On closer inspection his backside was covered in his own excrement. For a predominantly white dog, his body seemed pretty clean, but after cutting out his undercoat mats for hours (as I would do later) that had not been immediately obvious when I first saw him, it began to appear that he had been out on the street for much longer than we had initially thought. He seemed deliriously happy to see me, and ran up eagerly to be petted, and jumped in the open car door before I could even stop him!! On later reflection, after it became evident that he feared/distrusted all strangers, it was pretty odd that he was so excited to see me--a stranger--at the time. One of the rescue workers I consulted suggested that Aussies/BCs are smart enough to know that they are being rescued, and I fully believe this one knew it. He had a collar on, but the ID tag ring was bent open with no tag on it. I looked around to see if his owner might be not far behind, but there was no one. A dog his size could have easily wandered miles from home, and his being in Hancock Park was no indication that he was indeed from that area. In fact, the area is well-known for having dogs dumped in it, since people sadly think that their unwanted dogs will find good homes there. :( So, I thought the best thing to do was drive him to the local vet to see if he had a microchip. Of course, there was NO chip, and they scanned every inch of him at least three times at my desperate request (I was hoping the chip might have migrated from its usual location). The vet and all of her staff had also never seen him before, and suggested I take him to the shelter. It was still early in the day, though, and that was the last place I wanted to leave him, so I decided to drive him up and down every single street in Hancock Park, even stopping at a second vet and a local dog park, to see if anyone recognized him--still nothing. I was even accused at the dog park of him being MY dog and that _I_ was trying to get rid of HIM!!! :P The strangest part of it all was that he WAS acting like my dog--he would not leave my side, and he had only known me for a few hours by that point!! Now, the last thing I had hoped to find while out last-minute Christmas shopping was a homeless dog. I also knew that I had an elderly Bichon Frise with kidney failure at home, and not knowing the health status of this dog, I could not bring him home and risk giving a disease to my beloved but weakened Bichon. I really did not want to leave him at the shelter, but what choice did I have? It was now dark, the dog had stoically sat with me in the car for over six hours, and we were both hungry and tired, and I had no idea what to do with him! I was completely unprepared to bring an adult dog into my home with zero notice!! He had no place to sleep, I didn't know what he should eat, and what if he wasn't even housebroken? What if he was aggressive? I had no leads as to the whereabouts of his owners, I had called every friend I had and no one would take him that night, and I could not go home with him myself because of my own dog's health, so I reluctantly drove to the local shelter to register him as a found stray. I was getting ready to leave...but the plaintive howls of the dogs from behind kennel walls had really started to get to me all the while I had been there. I was shaking as I looked down at my day's companion one last time before handing over the leash to the shelter worker....but his big brown eyes looked back up at me adoringly, and his tail was wagging furiously and he was pulling toward the door, as if he were saying, "C'mon, let's get out of here and go HOME..." And I just couldn't let go of the leash. I think I had known long before I had even set foot in that place that I would never leave him, but we humans are great at denial, aren't we? :P My life now would certainly be a lot less hectic if I had done it, but it was almost Christmas. Someone had obviously already abandoned this dog, and I couldn't be yet another human who had let him down. I told myself, "He should not have to spend Christmas alone. I will put him in the garage for tonight, and just keep him until the rescues open on the 26th, and by that time, surely his owners will have come forward--maybe they're on vacation and a dogsitter lost the dog!!--and if not, then we can give him up to the rescue." :P I was in and out of the garage every hour all night checking on the new dog, who had remarkably remained quiet and had not chewed one thing nor gone to the bathroom anywhere. My own dog was frantic in the house, as she could smell the newcomer (and vice versa). After 12 hours of this, I completely lost my resolve, and so on Christmas Eve, I ended up taking him to my own vet and getting a full exam with fecal/bloodwork, and AMAZINGLY, he received a totally clean bill of health: so, after an emergency Christmas Eve bath at the groomer's, into our house he went...and even more incredibly, my other dog loved him on sight, which sealed the deal for him...and so, he's been ours ever since. :)
Bio: We named him "Mojo" because he had to have *something* going for him to convince us that we should keep him!! His official name is "Moses Joseph Spots," since we did find him so close to Christmas. :) We certainly weren't looking for another dog, particularly one that is so much larger than our other dog, so full of energy, sheds SO MUCH, and barks even more than he sheds! In spite of everything, I think he is PERFECT--the most affectionate and smartest dog I have ever personally known, and it has become obvious that he has worlds of potential given proper time and training, and we now look forward to having the rest of his life to continue undoing the damage that was done to him from wherever it is that he originated. The vet said that he is less than 6 yrs old--that's all we know for sure. After getting to know him, we *think* he must have been a backyard dog, since he is so unsocialized. While he is wonderful with other dogs off-leash, lunging and growling at other dogs while ON-leash and barking out the house/car window at passing dogs are two of his favorite compulsions, but we have begun modifying his behavior with great success so far! Say hello to Southern California's newest future obedience and agility champion......once we make sure that he does not try to kill all the other dogs at the trials!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Forums Motto: What the heck are you looking at?!?
The Groups I'm In: Addicted to Agility!, Australian Shepherds, Champ's Champions, Dogs with SPOTS and DOTS!, Rescue Aussies
The Last Forum I Posted In: Kiona passed her CGC evaluation!!!!!!
Thank you: Thank you SO MUCH to the Aussie Rescue of Southern California for their tremendous support throughout the process of finding and adopting Mojo! I am so grateful that I always had people I could rely on for information or advice that were only an e-mail away! Please visit their site at www.aussierescuesocal.com and adopt a dog or make a donation today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello, everyone--I am very sorry to bother you and intrude upon your day, but would you please sign this petition () to oppose California bill AB 1634? I feel very strongly about this, as it will affect all pet owners in the state of California. While the woman who constructed this bill had noble intentions, she clearly did not consider the true, awful ramifications that this bill will produce, some of which I have tried to outline as briefly as possible below. If you don't wish to provide your e-mail address on the petition site, please write your local California assemblyman (find the name here at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html) or, if you are out of state, I will provide the address for mine.
The proposed bill, AB 1634, erroneously tries to simplify a very complex issue--i.e., the tremendous pet overpopulation in California kill shelters--by calling for the mandatory spay/neuter of all dogs if they have reached the age of four months, which, first of all, is too young. Can you imagine having gotten a total hysterectomy or bilateral orchiectomy (i.e., having both testicles removed) as a prepubescent child? The resultant premature lack of sex hormones would have been extremely detrimental to your growth, development, and future life. This bill also stipulates that all current adult dogs--including seniors--be spayed or neutered, regardless of whether major surgery is advisable due to advanced age or ill health. While there are exemptions for individual animals, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to get them, and the cost of maintaining an "intact" yearly permit will be exorbitant. I will not get into the specifics here, but suffice it to say that these "exemptions" seem to have been designed in a catch-22 sort of way.
This bill has amazingly ALREADY passed the California State Assembly and is now going before the State Senate, and this will now be the only chance we have left to try and stop it! If this bill is written into law, it will essentially ELIMINATE the availability of any future purebred dogs and working (meaning: service, herding, police, performance) dogs, as all current adults will have to be neutered, and thus there will be no more puppies from their lines. More specifically, I should say, there will no longer be any well-bred, good-tempered, healthy dogs available from reputable breeders, because the #1 problem with this bill is that it penalizes small, individual breeders--i.e., the kind from whom you should buy a dog in the first place, if you are looking for a purebred puppy--and WILL NOT stop the people who are responsible for the animal overpopulation in the first place--all the "backyard" breeders, Internet breeders, pet stores, USDA puppy mills, and illegal dog fighters who mass-produce dogs for profit without regard for the animal itself, without regard to whether or not they are truly improving the breed by mating two animals, and without regard to the health or temperament of the pups. How many finished champion purebred show dogs do you see in the shelters? Few, if any. How many ill-conformed, alleged purebreds do you see in the shelters? Plenty. How many other mixes--particularly pit bull and bully mixes--are in the shelters? Sadly, far too many for the number of homes who want them. To re-emphasize: responsible breeders are not the problem, but they will be taken out of the equation by this bill. The people who should be penalized will not be, and the problem will not only continue, but will be MADE WORSE as the general public, determined to have a "purebred," will turn in even increased numbers to pet stores (supplied by puppy mills with breeding dogs out of state), and backyard breeders with unlicensed animals (thus, out of reach of the bill) and get puppies from these disreputable sources, and when these dogs turn out to be sickly, ill-tempered, and unmanageable, guess where they will end up? In the shelter.
There are two other major overpopulation issues the bill does not address: that of feral cats, and that of the people who place dogs in shelters in the first place. How many people do you personally know who, once the puppy grew up and stopped being cute, have given their dog up to a shelter because they were 1) moving and "couldn't" take the dog, 2) the kids got sick of the dog, 3) the kids went away to college and the parents got sick of the dog, 4) everyone got sick of feeding/exercising/training the dog, 5) the dog's vet/feeding/grooming bills became too expensive, 6) due to a lack of exercise/training, the dog developed behavioral (biting, chewing, barking, digging) problems that no one could handle? These dogs are in no way affected by this bill since they are mainly adult dogs, and are already spayed/neutered and have never bred; in today's throwaway society, however, people seem to take more trouble in selecting a flat-screen television than in properly choosing a pet that will be right for their lifestyle and learning what its care entails, particularly since the pet will be around for 15+ years. Instead, when it becomes too inconvenient, they just get rid of the pet....and, thus, we have our shelter problem. AB 1634 will do nothing to educate people and teach them how to keep their pets out of the shelter. AB 1634 will do nothing to prevent people from getting pets on a whim that they do not have the time, means, or expertise to care for.
Please don't get me wrong--I fully support the spay/neuter of all pet animals. Regular pet owners have no business breeding! If you do not have a show-quality animal that is worthy of passing on its genes for the improvement of future generations of the breed, or if you do not have a working animal who is so good at what it does that it would be a detriment to remove its genes from the pool, or if you don't even know what any of this means and you just want the kids to "witness the miracle of life," you have NO BUSINESS BREEDING. I also fully support adopting mixed-breed dogs from shelters and purebred adults from breed rescues instead of buying a new purebred puppy, as there are so many dogs already out there who need new homes! Yet, if one still wants a purebred puppy (certainly tempting for obvious reasons), I definitely believe that right should be retained. We should not be FORCED to obtain a shelter dog as our next pet, particularly because we WILL have to live with the animal for 15+ years, and we should certainly like what we get, because if that isn't what is wanted, then that animal will then stand an even lesser chance of a happy life. Of course, taking on such a shelter challenge is the honorable thing to do, and if you have the desire and the capacity to do so, do it! As the proud current owner of BOTH a spayed purebred dog obtained from a reputable breeder as a puppy and a neutered mixed breed I rescued as an adult stray, I feel I can speak to both sides.
Please sign the petition and say no to AB 1634! In summary: although we certainly need to do something about the pet overpopulation, while this bill is well intended, it was ill-conceived, and so will only allow the unscrupulous to continue to profit from poorly bred, mass-produced puppies, who grow up to become poorly socialized, ill-tempered, and unhealthy adults, which only fuel the shelter population. I obviously feel very strongly about this--please sign and forward to your friends! If this passes in California, it will quickly spread to other states!!!
If you wish to read more about the issue for yourself:
The American Kennel Club (AKC), the largest dog registration organization in the United States, is strongly opposed to the bill (read about it at http://www.akc.org/canine_legislation/CA_action_center.cfm). Another website dedicated to the opposition of AB 1634: http://www.ab1634.com/
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