Gilligan leaves the island

He wasn't voted off the island, survivor style - he could have had immunity forever. But last Saturday we were at a PetSmart adoption event and a young couple fell in love with him. They passed every step of the adoption process; application, vet check, personal reference and my scrutiny at a home visit. We liked them and they obviously loved little Gilligan. So tonight at 6PM I took that awful drive... and left my little buddy with two people I hope will love him like I do, care for him, and give him the very best life they possibly can.

Gilligan had a rough start in life. He was born around November 20th, '08, and on December 29th his owner surrendered him to a Shelter. Happy New Yeah, huh? Usually owner surrenders are euthanized immediately, but they gave these puppies a chance. By early February no one had adopted them and Gilligan had developed a "cherry eye", so he was considered unadoptable and made available as a rescue only pull. That means if no rescue stepped up for him by the "euth date", he would be killed.

The day I saw the email with his listing, I had a recently vacated puppy crate. Jim and I agreed we should take him in as our foster, and on February 11th, a few hours before his euth date, I pulled him.

He was obviously scared in the shelter. Usually they take the dogs out of the kennels before they hose the concrete down, but if the animal is scared or refuses to come out, they leave them in there while they hose it down. Consequently everything that is on the floor is sprayed on the animal. A027007, as he was known in the shelter, was handed to me a sticky mess, with a thick film of urine coating his body. Why would they do this? Because they can. Though I'd like to think differently, I'm convinced that sometimes the workers torment the animals so they can feel power over something. And besides, he had a cherry eye, and they were going to kill him anyway.

But he was now mine. I took him straight to our wonderful vet, Dr Shaw at Indian Land Animal Hospital, and he got a checkup, puppy shots and dewormed. She said she would fix his cherry eye at a rate a rescue could afford. I took my little castaway home, with the new name, Gilligan, and scrubbed the indignity and filth off him and covered him in a warm towel, and lots of hugs and kisses.

Later that night, when looking at the listings on the shelter's website site, I discovered to my horror that Gilligan had a sister... and I had pulled her brother and left her there all alone. The next day I went back and got her. We named her Ginger.

And then we got to work, preparing them both for adoption. We took photos and listed them on Petfinder.com with cute bios. Ginger was adopted after the first PetSmart adoption event she attended. But week after week Gilligan was passed over, and the most frequently asked question was, "What's wrong with his eye?"

Finally he was old enough to be neutered and have his eye surgery. Unfortunately the first attempt to fix the eye failed. It happens sometimes. The cherry eye had become fibrous and was not going to lie down. So we waited a few weeks and he went back to surgery and this time it worked. A week later he was healing nicely and looking beautiful.

So how did I know this was the right couple to adopt him? They saw his puppy picture with the cherry eye and thought he was cute then, too, and the eye didn't bother them at all. They adore him.

It's been a long time, since Feb 11th, and Gilligan has gone through a lot. He grew from 15 pounds to 31 pounds, developed strong muscles and runs like a deer. He's had two surgeries, several urinary tract infections, lots of adoption events, lots of learning, and through it all he was an adorable little wiggle worm who loved to be held and give kisses as much as he loved to play with his foster aunts, Casey and Noir. Every morning he would whimper at 6:30 or 7am to go out, and when I opened his crate door he would stagger out half asleep and flop on the floor wiggling and wagging his tail, begging for a belly rub.

Tomorrow morning will be quiet. Our other foster puppy, Hershey, is sweet and calm, not at all a wiggler like Gilligan. Tonight I'll sleep in fits and starts, knowing that he is in a strange place, confused, and wondering why his world has been turned upside down. I'll sob, as I am now, and hope he knows that I fulfilled my promise to him, I loved him, cared for him, and found him a wonderful home and today he started a great life.

I hope he knows I will always love him. He took a huge chunk of my heart with him, and I will miss him for a very long time. But my work continues and there are other puppies that need our help. It seems the more chunks of my heart that I give away, the more of them I have to give.

Goodbye, little buddy.

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.

I can't believe she made that U-turn!!

Meet Cesare... Cesare the dog, that is, not the dog whisperer! Cesare hitched a ride with me today on the transport and since I didn't have a crate big enough for him, I tethered him and he rode in the front seat. What a traveling companion! This is my kind of dog! 80 pounds, friendly and funny as can be. And boy once he knew I had a stash of Milk Bones under my seat he wouldn't leave me alone. Kept looking at me with those pitiful eyes... "I'm SOOOOO hungry!!" What a dog!

I took this shot of him while we were waiting to make a U-turn to our transfer spot in Salisbury, NC. Looks like he was wincing at my driving! "I can't look!!!!"

Other passengers with me today were a strange looking dog named Daffodil - from the neck down she looked like a boxer, but her head was all Shar-pei! Next to her were 5 lab mix puppies who rode like little champs. No pooping or peeing in this group! Right behind me was a German Shepherd that weighed 40 pounds but should weigh 65. She was gorgeous, a great rider - got in her crate and laid right down and chewed on her milk bone. She was great on a leash too. Someone trained her... then turned her out and broke her heart.

I'm a fan of big dogs. Especially big black dogs, the ones that are hardest to adopt. More black dogs are euthanized in shelters thank any other color. Not sure why, I think black dogs are beautiful.

Today everything went really well. Mari, Alex (our friend from Animal Adption League) and I each drove down to Spartanburg, SC. Alex dropped off in Charlotte to take her foster dogs to an adoption event, and Mari and I continued on to Salisbury. In case anyone wonders, that's 255 miles for me. Thanks to Jim for letting me use his car - a Toyota Highlander. I couldn't get many crates in my Mercury Grand Marquis, though the dogs would probably love the leather seats and upgraded sound system. In the Highlander they usually suffer through me singing along to XM Radio 60's and 70's stations. Today I took along some CDs - Don't laugh - I took the soundtracks to The Littlest Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I know roughly every other word and alone in the car I sing super loud.. and super off key! POOR BABIES!! I wonder if they missed the cacophony of the shelter!!

And speaking of black dogs, Mari has to have a little rider sitting on her lap or she's not happy. This week she had little Socks, a black ShiTzu with a dust mop for a head, photo at right. I think the dog has eyes in there somewhere. He was a sweetie. In all we moved about 30 dogs to rescue and adoptive homes today. A lab mom and her 4 pups, and the lab dad; a Pomeranian named "Puff Puff", a cinnamon colored dog that was just striking. Redbone-coonhound mix named Ziggy, but he was an unbelieveably beautiful color. A paralyzed dog that had its own wheels. More puppies. More Shar-Pei mixes, Boxers and Pit mixes and a cute little border collie that reminded me of my Tippi. Any questions why we do this? It was a good day. Rewarding. All were experienced transporters and everyone knew what they were doing.Tomorrow morning Mari and are are doing another transport of a red bloodhound. Single passengers always seem so simple after the Saturday runs. And on the way tomorrow we're going to drop Marvin at his new forever home. If I can stop sobbing long enough I'll write about that tomorrow!!

The top ten reasons to spay and neuter your pets were euthanized in shelters last week.