Our family has several pets, but one of the oldest and my favorite is Max. Max is a Golden Retriever that is 16 years old. Since I am 17, Max has been around my whole life. When I was a little kid, my parents said Max would stand over and protect me, even when I was pulling his ears and biting his back. I guess he made a pretty good chew toy for me and apparently when I was teething and would start screaming, Max wound lick my face until I giggled and fell over. My Dad really appreciated Max for that. Max has also watched over many of our other animals, like Trix our calico cat (with a bad attitude) Tobias, the Pug dog and Samantha the Chinchilla. Max has never, at least as far as I know, hurt any other animal in our house. He’s been in a few dog fights though and that’s why I’m writing in about Dr Shuster.
My little sister Caity was playing with some of her friends in our back yard last week when several pretty wild looking dogs came out of the woods behind our house. We live in Hingham Massachusetts and there are some thick woods and bands of a few bully packs of dogs that don’t appear to belong to anyone. Anyway, this group came snarling out of the trees when my sister and her friends took their Saturday picnic along the back of our property. I was in the kitchen when I heard the screaming and barking. When I jumped up and opened the door, Max flew right past me and headed right toward the group. He was barking and growling and hauling to get to my sister. At first the pack stopped and started to turn away, but I guess they realized Max wasn’t too young and alone, so they spun away from my sister and her friends and went after Max.
It was pretty quick, all in all, Max was down, biting and howling and yelping, but Max kept fighting. I keep a BB gun in the back and I grabbed it and shot a couple of the dogs at close range which sent them off screeching, but even the brief fight left Max beaten and not moving. My sister wasn’t saying anything but her friends were crying pretty loud.
My mom came out and calmed the girls down and I brought Max to the Vet – Dr Shuster. Most vets would probably say Max was too old to save, half blind with arthritis as he is, but Dr Shuster knew how much Max meant to us all. He started an intravenous and gave Max some medication then got out his suturing tray and went to work on Max. About 45 minutes later he looked up and said “ Chuck, I know how important this old boy is to you and I’m gonna do my best to send him home to you, now head home and check on your mother.”
I didn’t hear anything for a couple of days, and despite my desire to call, my mom said wait and pray for Max. When the phone call came and Mom said she’ll be back in a bit, I thought she looked pretty sad, and I was sure Max didn’t make it. About a half hour later mom came in with a limping but smiling Max. I went down to the Vets the next day to say thanks to Dr Shuster. I don’t think most people say thanks to their Docs or their dogs docs, cause he looked up at me for what seemed like an entire minute, put his hand on my shoulder and smiled, “ anytime Chuck, anytime.” Thanks Doc and thanks Rock Hopper for putting this on your site for everyone to read, our hero, Dr Shuster.
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Our family has several pets, but one of the oldest and my favorite is Max. Max is a Golden Retriever that is 16 years old. Since I am 17, Max has been around my whole life. When I was a little kid, my parents said Max would stand over and protect me, even when I was pulling his ears and biting his back. I guess he made a pretty good chew toy for me and apparently when I was teething and would start screaming, Max wound lick my face until I giggled and fell over. My Dad really appreciated Max for that. Max has also watched over many of our other animals, like Trix our calico cat (with a bad attitude) Tobias, the Pug dog and Samantha the Chinchilla. Max has never, at least as far as I know, hurt any other animal in our house. He’s been in a few dog fights though and that’s why I’m writing in about Dr Shuster.
