Gigo, Our Mascot

Gigo was a street dog from Puerto Rico who was rescued by a group called "save a sato" and made available for adoption at Buddy Dog Humane Society in Massachusetts. He was adopted by us at the age of 7 months. He weighs 15 lbs and looks like a big Chihuahua and particularly likes to be referred to as "big" <grin>.

Gigo knows all kinds of tricks and is a very enthusiastic learner - he has learned for instance, that although I intended to teach him to ring a bell to go out to *potty*, that he can also ring his bell for "service" such as needing to go in a room that has the door closed or a refill of his water dish.

A few months ago we almost lost our precious Gigo. He was bitten by a tick and we didn't see it for 2 days (bad humans!). Two weeks later he was rushed to the hospital and stayed there for 4 days. He was diagnosed with Immune mediated hemolytic anemia, triggered by Ehrlichiosis (a tick-bourne disease). He was unresponsive to medication at first and just before his second transfusion we were preparing to use even more aggressive therapies when he began to improve.

He is currently improving daily although he remains on fairly high doses of immunosupressants which we hope to reduce over time. Alternative therapies have helped immensely with the side-effects and may have attributed to his finally beginning to improve.

He enjoys his daily training (playing!) and our new trick in progress is "squeak": find a toy and squeak the squeaker. I plan to be enrolling in Helix Fairweather's online course "cyberagility" since we both enjoy training so much.

Pictures of Gigo abound on the site as he is a patient and reliable model and product tester. There is a picture of him on the homepage modeling the Easy Walk harness.

01/10/06: We were forced to euthanize our beloved Gigo due to a horrible relapse in his disease. We miss him everyday and are thankful for all of the wonderful memories we have of him.

Goodbye Gigo