Please Welcome Manuel!

This handsome boy arrived in late August from Puerto Rico. We don’t know when or why Manuel lost his right front leg, but we do know he had been languishing in a noisy and crowded (500+ animals!) Puerto Rican shelter since 2022.

A lady named Nicole in Massachusetts who runs her own shelter was working on bringing a large number of dogs from this shelter in Puerto Rico to the mainland for adoption. She knew about Manuel and the fact that he’d been in a kennel there for three years. She contacted us to see if we could take him.

So several weeks ago, Manuel left the island bound for Florida, and then the next day a nonprofit called Wings of Rescue flew Manuel and more than 100 other dogs and cats on a chartered airplane to a local airport in southern New Hampshire. There, a dozen or so animal rescue groups and shelters from across New Hampshire and Massachusetts were waiting to meet the plane and pick up the homeless animals they had offered to take.

I was helping unload the crates from the airplane and carry them out to the tarmac. Here’s what he looked like when I saw him:

After the nearly three hour drive home, I turned him loose in the dog yard. He ran around for a bit, sniffing and exploring, and then sat down on the grass in the shade. He just kept looking around, taking it all in. That’s when I took the photo at the top of the post. He seemed mesmerized by his surroundings. Green grass! Fresh air! Peace and quiet! No concrete!

The entire time lying in the yard he had such a happy, joyful look on his face. We finally had to bring him into the house to begin the introductions with the others.

He is the very sweetest of dogs! Absolutely a friendly, loving soul who enjoys the company of the other dogs and who adores his new people. He’s a very affectionate boy and comes running to greet us when we come out of the bedroom in the morning.

Amazingly, after all those years in a shelter kennel, Manuel turned out to be house trained! Often the dogs who have been in shelters for a while lose their house training skills — so we need to work on that issue after they arrive —  but not this guy.

At first he wouldn’t even take a dog cookie from us — he apparently didn’t know what they were. Now he’s waiting in line with everyone else at cookie time.

Something else he couldn’t believe were all the dog beds in the house!  The first time he got on one of these, he kept looking around — like he did in the yard — as if he were thinking, “this can’t be real, can it?”

His favorite bed is this “double-decker” — a big bumper bed from Orvis that’s sitting on top of a 6-inch foam bed. He rarely leaves that thing.

Here he is with his new buddy, our other tripod, Tanner:

With Manuel missing a front leg and Tanner missing a rear leg, we tell them they’re a matched set! The dark patch on Tanner’s snout is from his radiation treatment over the summer in Boston. That hair loss is the only side effect we’ve seen so far, and he is doing great!  He’s full of energy, has a great appetite, and you’d have no idea watching him that he has cancer.

Here’s Manuel giving me the side-eye. “You’re not asking me to get off this bed, are you???”