Tess Black Labrador Retriever Female 3 Years Old ID #2882

January 25, 2021

It has been about two weeks since Tess’ last update after she had her spay surgery. Luckily, just the night of the spay surgery was rough for her. She bounced back very quickly and was less than thrilled with us for that first week that we were not taking her on long walks or letting her play with her best buddy Bubba because of her exercise restrictions. We got a lot of sad looks and tail wags begging us to let her be more active. Thankfully, the week went by really quickly and she has been back to normal activity for the last week and she could not be more excited.

She is pretty content doing whatever her people are doing whether it is being lazy or active, but she does seem to be happiest when she is active whether it is going for walks, playing with her humans or her foster fur brothers, Bubba and Charlie. It is so interesting how she engages in different play with Bubba and Charlie. Bubba, she plays with the most and loves to run around with him and rough house. She will give a whimper at him and paw him to get him to engage in play. It is adorable. He will play bow or paw Tess to get her to play with him. With Charlie, she loves to play tug with him. Quite a few toys have been sacrificed during their games of tug as they are both strong tuggers!

Now that Tess is all healed from her surgery, as much as it is going to break all of our hearts, it is time for her to start looking for her forever home. We are going to miss our sweet Tessy terribly! Look for Tess to be posted as available in the next day or so.

January 13, 2021

Our sweet foster Tess had a bit of a rough day as she had her spay surgery today. The vet staff said she did really well and actually come out of the anesthesia pretty well considering her excess weight. We picked her up late this afternoon and she is really sad tonight. She can’t seem to get comfortable and is whimpering quite a bit. It is heartbreaking. She did try some water this evening and she could not hold that down, so right now we are just trying to help her stay calm and get some rest.

The good news that came out of this rough day for poor Tess is that she weighed in at 87.6 pounds today. That means she has lost at least 7 pounds since coming into rescue. We were all so excited to hear this! Yay, Tess!! Our exercise activity will be a bit limited for the next week but hopefully, we can resume normal activity next week after she is healed up from her surgery. She is going to be bummed not being able to run around with her fur brothers and play ball for the next week, but luckily, she loves to just hang out with her humans on the couch too!

The longer she is with us the more we get to see her goofy side. She has always liked her belly rubs but just recently she has started just hanging out and laying on her back with her belly exposed. It is completely adorable and silly.

More lobby love and antics to come from Tess soon…

December 29, 2020

It is hard to believe that Tess has been with us for two weeks already! Her time here with us is flying by! She is just such a love. We cannot say enough wonderful things about this sweet, sweet girl!

Here are some things we have learned about her over the last couple weeks…

Tess loves, loves, loves water! I so wish it was not winter so we could take her to go swimming. She is so intrigued by the water running down the storm drains when we go on walks especially last week after that rainstorm with the snowmelt. She goes straight for big puddles which is the exact opposite of her foster brothers who step over or around them.

She is not a huge fan of having her wet muddy paws cleaned after playing outside. She just gives you this look like hey not a fan of this. Can you hurry it up?!?

She absolutely adores our 1-year-old. resident dog Bubba. She plays with him in any way she possibly can. They rough house together, play fetch, play tug with each other, chase each other around and snuggle. It is so funny because at first, he was the one she was the least sure about when she arrived. Now they are best buds!

She will alert bark. She sometimes joins in when our other resident dog gives an alert bark and other times, she starts it herself.

She gets soooo excited anytime anyone comes home after being out but especially with our daughter who is her person. Her back end wiggles and she gives the cutest whimper in all her excitement.

She had a blast Xmas morning going through the Chewy box of presents with her foster brothers.

She loves to carry around toys, stuffed animals, and slippers in her mouth. She does not chew them but she is very proud and happy when she does carry them with her tail wagging!

She is surprisingly agile (and sneaky!) for a girl her size. She jumps up on us when she gets overly excited or when she is trying to catch a ball and she will on occasion put both front paws on the kitchen counter. We are working on trying to keep all four paws on the ground except when she is playing ball.

She enjoys going on walks and does pretty well on leash. We do walk her with an EZ-walk harness as she pulls on the flat collar. We are slowly but surely increasing the lengths of her walks. She will on occasion bark at other people or dogs we pass while walking.

Tess still on her weight loss plan – less food and more exercise. We think she is starting to lose some weight. I had to cinch down her harness a bit the other day. Here is hoping that was because she lost some weight and not because I had it set too loose to start. We definitely have noticed that it seems like her body shape is changing and that we are starting to maybe see a teensy bit of her waistline. We will know for sure when we take her in to get spayed in a couple weeks if she is actually losing weight or if what we are seeing is a figment of our imagination.

Tess is such a sweet, adorable, and friendly girl. She is going to be a wonderful companion for one lucky family!

December 17, 2020

Tess has had SOOOO much fun the past couple days! This white stuff started falling from the sky yesterday, and who knew it would be so exciting for Tess!!!! We went for a walk at the height of the snowstorm yesterday, and Tess was practically running the whole walk zig-zagging anywhere trying to check out as much snow as she possibly could. Her tail did not stop wagging the whole time! We have been playing out in the backyard as much as we can in the snow. She loves chasing and running around with her foster brothers in the snow. She noses and digs in the snow and she really loves chasing snowballs we throw for her! Finger crossed that the snow sticks around for a while and does not melt so Tess can get more snow play time in!!!

December 16, 2020

Meet Tess, a gorgeous and unbelievably sweet 3-year-old black purebred female lab who is a bit silly and has a ton of personality. She was surrendered by her family who were unable to give her the time and attention they felt this friendly girl deserved.

Tess has showered our family with kisses and lots of love since arriving into foster care. She really truly believes she is a lap dog, and she will even give us hugs when she is super excited to be with us. She has really latched on to our college-age daughter. Tess curls up with her in her bed, on the couch and even on a chair which is quite a feat! Tess was a little unsure of her two new labby brothers at first, but over the last day or so she has decided they are kind of interesting if not a bit silly sometimes too and they can be fun to play with and chase around the yard.

Tess is a full-figured girl and will need to lose some weight while in foster care. She went to the vet this evening and weighed in at 94lbs, so it is looking like she could stand to lose about 20lbs. So, we are on a weight loss plan to limit her food and treat intake and have lots of play and exercise time. We go for multiple walks a day and on the first few walks she pulled some when she wanted to get to something and zig-zagged quite a bit. The last couple of walks we have already seen an improvement in her leash walking. We did learn today too that she barks at other dogs when she sees them on a walk. She was excited with her tail wagging when she saw the other dog and barked. I was able to distract her with the next dog we saw on our walk by just having her look up at me.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more updates on Tess!