Roosevelt is a 12 year old border collie mix. Justin rescued him from the Humane Society when he was 5 ½ weeks old. He is named after Roosevelt Leaks, a record setting running back for the University of Texas. Roosevelt is very smart, and knows many tricks, including “talk”, “shake”, “high five”, “knuckles”, “crawl” and “stand”. You can see him talking in this video
It’s been a tough few years for Roosevelt.  He just tore his left ACL and will need surgery in the next few weeks. In the fall of 2014 Justin noticed that he didn’t want to go for walks and seemed to be in pain when he walked more than a few minutes. The vet discovered cysts on all four paws that were preventing him from bending his ankles properly. In October 2014, he had surgery to remove the cysts. Things seemed to be going well, when in February of 2015, he was running through the yard and his right rear leg gave out and he yipped in pain. He had torn his ACL, which was most likely weak from a previous injury. After 6 weeks of bed rest and careful watching, the vet decided that Roosevelt needed surgery. Roosevelt had surgery to repair the ACL in April of 2015. His surgery went really well and Roosevelt was recovering nicely, but still had limited mobility when the house fire started on July 4th, 2015. When Justin woke up to find that the house was on fire, he quickly looped the gentle leader around Roosevelt’s neck and took him out of the house to safety. Roosevelt got some singed hairs on his back and tail, but escaped without any major injuries (Justin was not so lucky). Roosevelt lost everything except for the gentle leader (which he desperately hates and secretly wishes had been destroyed in the fire) and one leash. He lost his puppy pictures, dog bed, collar, leashes, treats, medicine, the 1,000 poop bags that Justin just bought on Amazon, and all his toys (including a blue whale hand puppet that was his first puppy toy). The whale puppet was his first toy and remained his favorite. Justin kept it on a shelf and they would play with it for a couple of minutes every few months before it was put away again for safe keeping. Justin wanted Roosevelt to be able to keep his first puppy toy for his whole life.


Roosevelt spent a week in an emergency foster situation while Justin was in the hospital. He is currently staying with a family friend while Justin recuperates and looks for a new place where he can have Roosevelt with him. Roosevelt also misses Sammy (his friend who died in the fire), they were good buddies and Sammy looked out for him when Justin wasn’t home.


Roosevelt is grateful for the friends that are watching him, but he misses his dad; he has never been away from him for this long! Roosevelt is looking forward to being with his dad again and getting a new dog bed and new dog toys. He is also hoping for a swanky new collar and “pimp coat” to replace the ones he lost in the fire.

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