Everything about this pup catches your eye – her striking blue eyes, her unique coloring and then when you meet her, she exceeds nothing but positive energy : )

Icicle came to us from the San Diego Humane Society in late Jan where she was brought in by a Good Samaritan about a month prior.  She was noted at that time to have episodes of respiratory distress.  During these times, she would turn blue and struggle to breathe. Providing her with oxygen would stabilize her and her distress would decrease.  Over time, these episodes became infrequent and then ceased.  Despite medical work-up at that time, a cause was never clearly identified.  She also was diagnosed with parvo shortly after admission to the humane society and pulled through that uneventfully.

She moved to a foster home with LCAL where she still had congested breathing when excited, but it was getting better with limiting activity. Just as her breathing started sounding better, she got excited for breakfast and jumped wrong, fracturing her left back tibia.  Fortunately her fracture did not require surgery.  Instead she was placed in a splint which required weekly changes for a duration of four weeks.  Once the last splint was removed (4 weeks after the injury), she demonstrated significant atrophy of that leg and was very hesitant to use it.  Her foster began working on ROM exercises, stability exercises, and gait training and we got her on the rehab schedule at Tsavo’s Canine Rehabilitation.  She has been attending sessions there twice a week for soft tissue work and underwater treadmill.  She is showing great improvement, enough so that we feel it is time to start searching for her forever home!

Icicle is a great dog……for someone looking for a dog to work with and to engage with.  She is easily excitable, on the high side when it comes to energy, food motivated, and toy motivated.  She is a confident dog who is social with people and other dogs.  We have been working on house manners as well as basic obedience. For example, she knows to sit and wait at the door to go out, sit for her collar and leash to be put on, and lie down for her brace to be applied. She knows her mark (the “kiss” noise), sit, down, leave it, touch, give paw, place and a few other fun actions  We are working on adding duration to things like down and place as she is always ready for the next thing and will quickly move out of a position if not handled carefully.  

Her leash skills are coming along but it was very challenging at first. She was easily distracted and it has taken a significant amount of work to get her to walk with a relatively loose lease at your side.  That can quickly go by the wayside if a passerby says “Hi” to her.  That being said, she is starting to look consistently to her handler during walks and can demonstrate a focused heel position for short periods of time. Continued work on increased handler attention will help move this area in a positive direction.

Icicle is not a great dog…..for a setting with high traffic, high energy or lack of quality time to spend with her.  As said above, she is easily excitable which makes her not a good fit for a home with young children or high traffic patterns.  While she is very friendly with all people, the added energy of children and their spontaneity is more than she can handle.  Also as said above, she is toy motivated….very toy motivated.  While she shows no resource guarding of any kind, she is tenacious with her play.  She loves to play with her toys AND YOU which is awesome but it takes a certain amount of skill and knowledge to do this with a young, high energy dog in order to avoid being bit. She does not require miles and miles of running every day to address her energy and emotional needs but she does require dedicated time spent physically exercising her and mentally challenging her.  She is a very smart dog and picks up on things very quickly.  For her, mental stimulation will rank right up there with physical activity requirements in her new home.

She is very stimulated by movement – like a child running past, a bug flying around, a shadow moving across the pavement or a bird flying – and can move from 0-100 mph in a nanosecond when one of those things occurs.  This would make her a fall risk for someone if that individual was not steady on their feet so this should be considered.  We do not know how she would be with cats but do know that birds are at risk around her as she has already caught one : (

Icicle would be a great fit for someone looking to do competitive obedience training, rally, scent work or even some of the dog sports, provided there is strong consideration given to the appropriateness of the sport given her previous injury.  Her left hock remains a bit weak and repetitive hard cutting activities might not be in her best interest.  She absolutely LOVES water so even dock diving could be on the list!

Icicle is house trained, crate trained and rides well in a car (in a crate).  If there are children in the home, they should be over the age of 12.