Charleston was turned into High Country Basset Hound Rescue on Oct 18, 2003.  With her came along 6 other hunting hounds: 2 foxhounds and 4 other Walker hounds.  All of them were emaciated, starving, dehydrated and riddled with 3 types of intestinal parasites/worms.  None were fixed.  They were taken from a woman in very rural Colorado who was a collector.  This woman had 90+ dogs as well as other animals such as horses, cows, donkey's, cats etc.  While her intentions were good, with this many animals, she couldn't afford to feed them.  Charleston came to us 4 weeks post-partum.  Another "rescue" group out of Colorado Springs took her puppies, but left her behind (for the name of that group, feel free to email me!).  She was very ill and we weren't sure she would make it.  She had mastitis in all her teats and was dripping milk.  We called everyone we could and got some giant crates from St. Bernard Rescue (thanks Nina!!) for the other dogs and talked to Jess (with ATHFAR kennels - Thanks Jess!) and got her on antibiotics that night and started with cold/warm compresses to help the swelling.

At 18 months old - as the vet predicted her age - Charleston was very much a puppy.  Within the first month of her foster care, she ate through many pillows, stuffed animals, tree branches and anything else she could get her mouth around.  We crate trained her and she was soon very attached to her crate and it's 'safe zone'. She had severe anxiety and even though we walked her many miles a week, she had fears of the unknown and many other anxiety related issues that walking just didn't seem to help.  We started her on Rescue Remedy and that seemed to ease some of her stress.

Charleston was then adopted to a woman who lived only one block away from us!  However, after 6 weeks this adoption did not work out.  Even though her adoptive mom had had coonies her whole life, she worked many hours a day and Charleston, without any entertainment created her own.  She happily restructured the couch.