And now appearing in the puppy crate

Well, as I said in the last post's comments, Bob the pitiful pittie puppy was adopted over the weekend so never got to come live with us. Instead, this afternoon we picked up two, yes, TWO, puppies from the York County shelter that had to be out by 5PM today.

They are approx 10 weeks old, male, beagle and who knows what mixes. Cute as all get out, of course, and very sweet. Love to be held and play. Here they are: Smokey and the Bandit!






Bandit has a white line on his forehead and a white dot on his nose just like Molly did. Smokey looks like his toes were dipped in white paint. This is going to be interesting!

>>> Smokey and Bandit's petfinder page

Molly moves on...

Wow, that was fast! in the 4 days I had Molly listed on Petfinder, she got 650 hits, and several great applications were received for her. Yesterday Jim and I took her to meet a man in Lake Wylie, SC, and tomorrow he's going to pick her up and take her to her forever home. He's retired and his wife is retiring next week. She has been begging for a dog for a while, so this will be a little surprise for her. Should make her retirement very interesting!
I'm flying out to Colorado for the weekend, so I won't be here to see her off. All her things are packed - vet records, a few days' worth of food, her first hearguard and frontline. Jim will add in a few of her favorite toys.

As always, I'll miss her. She's so adorable! But I know she is going to a good home and will want for nothing. We'll check in with her in a few weeks and see how she's doing. Till then we'll wonder how she's doing, if she's behaving, and if she likes her new home.

On Monday, Bob will move into the puppy crate. He's a little pitty puppy that was neglected and left for dead, rescued near death by my friend Cindy 3 weeks ago. She hovered over him, giving him IV fluids for a whole weekend. Now he's doing great. Jim and I went over to see him last night. He loves to be held and sat in Jim's lap for a long time. He's on Petfinder as "Cowboy Bob", dressed in a cowboy outfit with a hat and everything. TOO CUTE!

>>> Bob's" Petfinder Page

Good Golly, Miss Molly!

Here she is, our new foster puppy, Molly! She's a trip. Very cute, loves to play. We think she's only 6-8 weeks old, and she weighs 6.0 pounds. Loves to play. Has the prettiest blue eyes. Cried every few hours all night to go outside. :-) She's smart, I think we have a puppy einstein on our hands!

Here comes Trouble!

You knew we couldn't go puppy-less for long! Tomorrow we're taking in a puppy that, of course, was dumped by the side of the road in Rock Hill, SC. Who could do that to an 8 week old puppy?
Well, anyway, the people that found her nicknamed her Trouble. We'll probably re-name her so's not to give her a bad reputation. She's a black lab mix with a white dot on her nose, a white streak on her head, white chest and white paws. Sounds adorable, and I'm sure she is!

Today was Jim's birthday. We had a nice dinner with friends, a quiet day, and this evening Helen invited the neighbors for cake and coffee. We love our neighborhood, and have made some great friends here, so it was good fun.

I also heard from Simon's mom, too!

"Here's some great news for you! He didn't cry Monday or last night at all. We took him out at 10:30 for his last walk and then put him in the crate and said good night. He was pooped for sure :-) We didn't hear a peep from him until morning. I came downstairs and he was standing up waiting for me and we went outside and took care of business. That was about 5:00 am. The early morning is when I do my devotion time, so he then cuddled up on the couch with me after breakfast and chewed on a bone while I read... of course then the kids get up and quiet time is over! He's done great during the days as well. There's been no accidents in his crate and only one in that puppy bed that you saw (such as it is with life... remember we said that we were fine if he messed up the carpet because it was old and coming up soon... so he pees on the NEW bed. Oh, well, that's what they make deodorizer for!) We are doing great! I will send pictures this weekend for sure :-) I can't thank you enough for taking such good care of him for us. He's a joy!"

It's so good to hear that he's doing well. He's destined for a wonderful life! :-)

Coming up - another happy/sad day

Tomorrow morning I'm helping Mari transport 5 puppies to a vet in York, SC, that are on their way to be transported to New York. We'll probably cover a few hundred miles.

Then I'll get home, play with our foster puppy Simon for a while, then Jim and I have the honor/pleasure/sad task of taking him to his new home. The good news is he's being adopted by a wonderful family. The sad news is that our time with him has reached an end.

He has been a wonderful house guest, sweet, funny, bouncy little puppy. Probably a Jack Russell/yellow lab mix. He's a little guy. Took to his crate and house training right away. Always tells us when he needs to go out. Loves to play with balls and stuffed toys, and most of all, loves to play with his Aunt Casey and Aunt Noir.

Tomorrow evening will be quiet. I know I'll cry tomorrow night and wonder if he is scared to be in a strange place where the mom and dad and aunts he's known are no longer there.

And soon there will be another need... another homeless, cast-off puppy will need our help. And the crate will come back into the dining room and we'll be smothered in puppy kisses again.
Here are some photos and a movie of Simon:

Sissy is my co-pilot

It was another large number of dogs and cats on the transport Saturday - 34 dogs and puppies, and 2 kittens.
My passengers were all really well behaved, sweet dogs. First in was Thumper, a 50 pound Australian Shepherd mix. He hopped right up and into his crate like he was ready for an adventure.

Next loaded was Aussie (Austin), a red merle Austrailian shepherd, who had just been neutered Friday. It was a delicate surgery because he was cryptorchid. His testicals never fell, and one was found attached to a kidney. Poor baby! We carefully lifted him into and out of the car. I walked him first and when he had a bowel movement he cried out in pain. I felt so terrible for him, to be just out of surgery and have to travel all day.

I also had two scruffy dogs, Holly and Mickey D. And then there was a little heart stealer named Sissy. She's a scruffy Jack Russell Terrier. I tethered her to the front seat and she curled up and went to sleep. I scratched her ears and petted her all the way to Charlotte, then Mari grabbed her for her lap for the leg to Salisbury.

Thumper

Aussie


Holly

Mickey D

tan puppy

Mari had two puppies who weren't getting along in the one crate, so I put one of them in my extra crate and the cutest little tan retriever mix rode with me to Salisbury.

I love driving transport. I can't imagine a time when I wouldn't jump at the chance to participate. Most of the people we meet are great, and I look forward to seeing them every time.

Thursday afternoon Mari and I drove to the horrible Gaston shelter again and pulled one dog and transported it to Huntersville. This is the shelter we swore we'd never go to again. BUT.... we knew we couldn't live with ourselves if we avoided the place to ease our minds, and left dogs there that could get out with our help. So we went. One of the shelter workers brought the dog out to our car. Then he handed me the leash and said, "Oh, by the way, she's aggressive to strangers. That's why her owner turned her in."

LOVELY. So here we stand, two 50+ year old women, with a 50 pound dog that needs to get up into the back of Mari's Ford Expedition. The dog was scared spitless. We weren't much better! But I finally steeled myself, talked to her in a low voice, and with my very best Dog Whisperer-style calm, assertive mindset, I slowly picked her up and put her in the crate. Then sighed a huge sigh of relief! She hadn't so much as looked at me. :-) Of course, I had pictured myself with a bite to the arm or neck. But she was a very good girl. She was nervous, sat in the crate all the way to Huntersville. She calmed down pretty quick once she got out of the car and went into a pen. She even wagged her tail before we left.

You just never know!

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Thank you!!

Mari and I cried our eyes out

Our usual transport wasn't running this Saturday, and Mari and I decided not to pick up on another one. Instead on Friday we ran two local transports.
It started when an urgent plea and a picture of a border collie came from our friend at theYork County shelter. "Please save this sweet girl, she's out of time!" I love border collies, and my friend that owns Camp Bark does too. I wrote her and told her if she could foster her I would transport her.

Since Mari and I never like to do just simple things, we picked up on another urgent need to pull some dogs from the Gaston County shelter and move them to Huntersville.

We headed out early and on the way to York, my friend from Camp Bark called. "There's a chihuahua there that's terrified. Just bring her." Then the group that needed us to pull from Gaston called and said York has a rat terrier, can we bring it too. So instead of pulling a border collie at York, we also had a chihuahua and a rat terrier.

From York, SC we returned to Waxhaw, NC and dropped off Heidi the Chihuahua and Rita the Border Collie.

We dropped the two passengers at Camp Bark, then stopped at Mari's house to let Buddy and Foxy, her dog and foster dog out. Buddy's an old guy and has to go out every 4 hours. Then we stopped for a quick lunch, and headed to Dallas, NC to the Gaston County shelter.

Gaston is known as a high-kill shelter, not friendly to rescues. We felt it the minute we got there, like they were not happy that we were pulling dogs. The place is so sad. We had to go into the horrible shelter to pull the dogs. The first one was a terrified chihuahua that snapped and snarled and had a sign on his cage "Biter! Not adoptable". The shelter worker wouldn't go in to get it, he was too afraid of the dog, so Mari and I did. He put up a real fight, but once we got him into the crate he settled down.

Next we pulled another rat terrier, then a dalmation mix. No struggle there. Next we got a chocolate lab. I didn't have enough crates so we tethered him in the back. It was horrible there, to see all the dogs that looked at us as though to plead, "Take me too!" Old dogs, puppies, dogs that looked like they'd never had a bath or had spent their life at the end of a chain, dogs that looked like they'd been fought. It was heart wrenching and at times Mari and I looked at each other and sobbed.

We were loaded and started to drive away and Mari started crying. There was another chocolate lab that had been dumped there by it's owner... a mother and pup that were found tied to the gate a few mornings before. I turned around and went back in and got her. We made room for her behind the passenger seat. All she wanted was to put her head between us and nuzzle our elbows. Such a beautiful sweet lab/ basset mix.

The car was packed. Crates were crammed in on top of other crates. We had bungee cords criss-crossing, holding them in place. Finally we left. I never want to go back there again. The images are etched into my brain and my heart.

Once underway, the first chocolate lab that was tethered in the back started to heave. And poop. All over everything, including the dog that was crated next to him. Oh, did I mention I was driving Jim's Toyota Highlander? Yep. What a mess. We couldn't open the windows all the way, either, because in the course of being sick he had slipped out of his slip lead tether and was trying to climb over crates to get to the front, spreading the mess around even more.

It was a stressful, sickening ride, in an hour we had gotten lost twice, but finally arrived at Great Dane rescue in Huntersville, NC. The farm worker held up a remote and opened the big iron gates. He motioned us to follow him back to the kennels. One by one he carefully unloaded the animals, and they seemed calm and ready to follow him. Even the "biting killer chihuahua" that had put up such a fit was suddenly sitting in his lap kissing his cheek. This guy had to be the second coming of the dog whisperer! He was constantly followed by a chihuahua mix named Ricky, that trotted behind him.

He was great, helped us clean ot the car, clean out the crates, and disposed of all the blankets and towels that were too disgusting to keep.

At 4PM we were back home, cloroxing crates and cleaning the inside of the car so you couldn't tell what a mess had been made!

Alas, I have no pictures of the Gaston dogs. But the dogs we transported from there will long be remembered. And the ones we left behind we will remember with our tears. By now they have all been killed.

It is not merely an offhand choice to make whether to spay and neuter your pets. It is a mandate from the heart that has seen shelters like this and know that irresponsible breeding causes an exploding pet population and more of these animals being killed merely because they were alive and no one would take them in. It's sickeing.

Many times I have heard people defend breeding dogs, saying,"I want my child to witness the miracle of birth". My answer is, "Then they should also see the horror of those same animals dying in a gas chamber." Because that's where most of them will end up. But mine are pure breeds, you say? 40% of the dogs killed in shelters are pure bred. Too expensive? Let me tell you where the low and no-cost spay neuter clinics are.

Can you tell I'm angry? Damn right. Come visit a shelter in the Carolinas some time and see why.