Posted.

After 7 weeks in rescue, Tweed has finally been posted as available for adoption. It took so long because I was dealing with assessing his separation anxiety and extreme stranger fear, and communicating with a trainer on how to deal with it. I also had to go out of town for 2 weeks, so we decided to wait to post him until after I got back from vacation.

Here is what his posting says:

“Tweed is a beautiful, happy boy who is on the small side for a Border Collie.

Tweed’s previous owner said he was housetrained, and this seems to be true as he has not had any accidents in his foster home. Besides the occasional jumping up on someone, he has great manners. He loves to give kisses and he especially loves to cuddle.

Tweed has the energy to go out on hikes and long walks, but at the same time he is equally happy to have lazy days where he does nothing but cuddle with his people. He is definitely a “velcro” dog that follows his person everywhere.

He loves any toy I give him, including tennis balls and Frisbees. He is a big fan of sticks and can frequently be seen dragging sticks longer than his body out of the oak forest area of my yard. He also loves to play with the water coming out of the hose.

Tweed will chase a cat that runs, but does just fine with cats that hold their ground. He has been living peacefully with the cats at his foster home for many weeks now, as they don’t run away when he, on occasion, sniffs or pays attention to them. He needs to go to a home where he won’t have access to chickens as he thinks they are fun to chase.

Tweed gets along great with other dogs, and listens extremely well when they tell him to stop something by giving a warning signal. He is very playful and loves to wrestle and chase with his foster sister. Unfortunately, he does try to hump any dog he sees. My personal dog does not allow this and after just two warning nips, he never tried it again with her. The foster parents who watched him while I was on vacation said he tried to hump their dogs, but stopped when they told him “no”.

Tweed came from a home where it seems he was never socialized, and because of this he is very afraid of new people. Because he is afraid, he clings to his person and does not like to be left alone. I am working with Tweed, with the advice of a professional trainer, to fix his issues but it is a slow process. Besides these problems, he is a GREAT dog! His foster family adores him and although they love him, they want him to find his forever home! At the moment we are only considering homes with a good amount of dog training experience, where he will not spend time alone during the day. Because he likes to chase things, we will not consider homes with young children.“

Because this question gets asked a lot, I’ll answer it right now – No, he is not at risk for being euthanized. Dogs in our rescue do not have a set number of days until they’re euthenized, like they do in many shelters. Like any other dog in our rescue, he will be safe with us until he is adopted, and we DO NOT settle for the first applicant. For every foster dog I have, I wait as long as it takes for the perfect home to come along. Sometimes a dog gets lucky and that perfect home is available right away, and they’re adopted quickly. Other times, we reject a lot of applications – I had a dog that had herding/nipping problems, and we rejected something like 20 applications before he found a suitable home.

Because I have high expectations for Tweed’s potential adopters, it will probably take a while to find him his forever home.
But we can cross our fingers and hope that it happens soon.