ahhh the easter blush is gone from the rabbit

it seems that people think that pets are a good gift.

THEY ARE NOT. one never knows how a person you know and love will bond with an animal. never ever give an animal as a gift without the recipient having met the animal and being "on board" with the gift.

I have rescued dogs, cats, birds, mice, gerbles, pigs - and now rabbits.

if you are looking for some good clean family entertainment, put 10 older adults out in a yard and have them catch a rabbit.

very entertaining.

tonight, after working all day at my real job of real estate sales and animal rescue, I headed home looking forward to taking care of my menagerie at home and then curling up with a cup of hot cocoa and the computer.

welllll. that ain't it kid.

got a call. a client of mine had some smart soul drop a rabbit in his front yard. full grown beautiful black rabbit.

he told me the rabbit was tame.

he told me you could walk right up to the rabbit and touch him.

he told me it would be a piece of cake.

he lied to me.

but it was fun nontheless.

we caught the rabbit. said rabbit is in a cat carrier on my nieces back porch with a bowl of water, a bunch of celery and several carrots. tomorrow we will search for a kind person with knowledge and experience in the care of rabbits (this is one time i don't want the rabbit to die - if you are of a certain age you will get the joke) and hopefully find a home for the rabbit.

posted by Elizabeth @ 7:29 PM 2 comments

springtime in the shelter

it is springtime. flowers are blooming, pollen is dusting, dogs and cats are roaming and babies are being born.

it is so very important to spay/neuter your animal. there is an abundance of animals in our area, and more are being born everyday. we at shelters bear the brunt of irresponsible ownership. even if you keep your animal in a fenced yard or in the house, the unexpected happens. when an animal gets out and is not neutered, he can "meet up" with an unspayed animal in heat. if the female is a stray, then she is going to have her litter somewhere and someone may or may not find her. sometimes (often times) when a female with a family, gets pregnant, the "owners" don't want puppies, so they dump them. they will dump them where they can be found - sometimes. or they will dump them where they don't expect them to be found. expecting them to starve or die wherever they leave them. sometimes they do die, sometimes they get "lucky" and some kind stranger brings them to us. when they do, more than likely the babies are going to be in poor heath, the momma will more than likely have heartworms and a myrid of other health issues.

when a shelter takes in these poor souls, the shelter is responsible for getting the animal healthy and ready for its forever home. it can take an abundance of time to get the momma over fear of humans, it also can cost many many dollars to get a dog healthy, add that to the cost of a litter and you have got a shelter dependant upon donations struggling. struggling to make it from one day to the next. struggling to help a scared sick helpless lamb of God.

if you are reading this and your animal is not spayed or neutered, please make an appointment immediately. get it done. and if your animal is spayed or neutered, thank you. won't you please consider making a donation for some other lost soul needing help?

in order to survive, the rescued animal and the shelter depends upon it. do it in honor of your beloved pet. do it in honor of some lost soul hoping for rescue and protection.

posted by Elizabeth @ 6:57 PM 0 comments

goodness, been gone awhile

shelter management is time consuming work; add that to regular life and a girl gets behind on some of the stuff needing attention.

the dogs at the shelter have had an exciting week. Otis, a very fat young beagle got adopted and now lives the life of riley with his marine. wonder if otis will learn the marine crawl. ..

rocky has someone coming by on a regular basis starting today to consider adopting him. rocky needs someone who understands abused animals and chow temperaments for his forever home. she is going to take it slow with him and give him time to get to know her and then we will decide if it is going to be a love connection.

we took in a new beagle last friday, thought she was pregnant, but she is just fat. she is currently being fostered while we try to find her owner. if no owner is found, we have several people interested in giving her a home. funny. otis lived with us for over a year with no interest in anyone adopting him, then, boom he gets adopted, and we suddenly have beagle applications right and left.

ruby had been adopted, but came back to the shelter, she like many rescue dogs - became very very protective of the woman who adopted her. so protective that she would not let anyone or any animal near her. the woman had other pets and children and grandchildren. it was not a situation that worked for her. so. ruby came back home and is back in the pen with her favorite child. she would make a great home for someone who can give her lots of time and work with her through her "issues".

rescue dogs, like any pet, need attention and proper training. we at ARF don't believe in or condone training using hitting, food deprivation or breaking the will of the dog. there are good ways to train a dog and there are bad ways. if anyone is interested in getting literature on the proper way to train your companion animal to be a productive member of your family, just drop us an email and we can guide you to some very informative literature and good dog trainers in our area.

posted by Elizabeth @ 8:37 AM 1 comments

forever after

I love getting feedback from some of my babies after they get to their forever after homes.

I received just such a call last night. A local newspaper did a story on ARF and our growth and desires. I was hopeful it would stir up some chatter about our organization and would (a) generate donations, (b) generate volunteers, (c) generate help to obtaining our own facility and last but not least (d) generate some interest in adoption into great homes.

all of these issues are important, not one is more or less important than the other. a side bonus of the article is to hear back from some of our already placed pets and to hear how fabulous they are all doing in their blended families.

we had rescued this sweet little dog last summer. he was running down a very busy highway and was close to getting hit. a good Samaritan stopped and got him, called me, we took him in. I then showed him on our television segment on channel 16, WAPT -TV.

I had hundreds of calls on him, and had people working hard to convince me that they were perfect for him, but one family had their vet call me and tell me it would be a travesty of justice if they didn't get the dog. well. they did. the family has spoiled him rotten and he has them trained to do his bidding. a better match can only happen in heaven!

it makes all the hard days easier. the days when the bills are piling up, the days when I am pulled in a hundred different directions; to hear of a great ending for a great family and an even greater dog.

posted by Elizabeth @ 1:40 PM 1 comments

stress

we have some of the most adorable, smart, cute, sassy puppies ever born in our shelter.

helen, the sawed off border collie is the mom to these five pups/ she is the one who a few weeks ago got out of the pen and then got out of the shelter into a play yard and was stuck outside all night in subfreezing weather. it seems her pups are apples who fall not far from the tree. they get stuck where they should not as well. I fear for their safety at the shelter.

one of the pups keeps getting her head stuck in the diamond shaped openings of the chain link fence of thei pen. today, was a close call. had my son and our ever valiant employee, bouge, not been there, she would have been dead for sure. choked on the pen.

seems that she can get her head through the opening and can't get it back out. it is at just the right size opening to allow her to get her head through it, but not back out, then she wiggles and starts to choke.

bouge saw what was happening and got to her in time, he knew to get behind her, after jumping over the top of the pen to the inside (she was stuck in the gate) and gently pull her skin back through and then her head.

if we had the shelter grade pens for all the dogs this would not be an issue. but we don't have the funds, so we have to improvise. tomorrow I will tear up strips of sheets and weave them through the diamonds so the pups can't get their heads into the holes.

improvising and creative retrofitting is a daily exercise for our brains. now, I will sit here and worry about the pups until we can get into the shelter tomorrow morning.

posted by Elizabeth @ 8:21 PM 0 comments

Luck of the Irish

sometimes, I feel as if the babies I rescue have a bit of the Irish.

one of the rescues we took in was this little Maltese named sugar, but changed with his new family to truman. he is a very very pretty little boy dog, but a bit aged. 11 years.

the family who took in this sweetie had never owned a dog before, only cats. but from day one, they were smitten with him. load him up and take him to the beach, to the mountains, everywhere they go.

truman had stayed at our house for two months until we found him a home. I don't like to put the small, older dogs to the shelter, it is a bit too traumatic and stressful for them there. younger dogs handle the excitement better.

anyway, truman stayed with us, at our house, with the cats, and the dogs, for two months. he handled it pretty well for an only child. we thought he was happy. after a week in his forever home, I went by for a visit. he lives in a beautiful queen anne home, large azalea bushes out front, lovely sun room where his plush bed stays...

I walked in, truman saw me, grabbed his bed and drug it into another room and proceeded to bark at me to please don't take him back. please oh please don't take him from his lovely home.

a month later truman was diagnosed with bladder cancer. a death sentence for an eleven year old, small dog.

however, the husband of the new family for truman is a leading architect in the state who was doing a huge project for a university vet school. he called the head of the vet school, they connected him with the vet oncologist, who saw truman, worked him up a treatment program and got truman all set up.

what would have been a three week prognosis has turned out to be so far, 6 more months of fabulous quality of life.

we don't know how much longer truman has, but we do know he is one lucky, happy little world traveler who would have most certainly been dead a painful death had we not had the opportunity to find him his home for life.

posted by Elizabeth @ 7:43 PM 0 comments

BEST BUDDIES

dogs and cats are much like people; having particular ones that they like much much more than others. it is an interesting study in behaviors to watch the animals in our care and to discover who they like, who they hate, and who they love and trying to figure out why. I am sure that there is probably a study grant there somewhere for this.

and, like people, they get tired or upset with their friends from time to time, or decide that they can not stand their up to then very best friend. at this point, we have to find another playmate for them to share a room.

Lil Joe came to us from the Mississippi gulf coast after Katrina. he was scared and confused. he is a beautiful dog with some springer spaniel in him, however, he has other breeds there as well. Lil Joe didn't like many dogs at the shelter, he loved Charlie, a chocolate lab from the coast, but Charlie found a home pretty quickly. other than that, he thought all the other dogs at the shelter were useless and they got on his nerves. he loves people and is quite affectionate. he just didn't care for any of the dogs. he spent close to a year in a pen alone, going out to the play yard alone, and finding ways to entertain himself in this lone existence.

then along came Otis. a short, fat, funny beagle. when Otis came to us, we tried several pens for him with other dogs. he got his butt kicked by several pens, and Lil Joe kept sticking his nose out the diamond openings of his cyclone pen wagging his tail watching the little fat boy. so. we gave it a try. THEY BONDED IMMEDIATELY. they started romping and chasing in the pen, rolling over each other, and then falling into a pile and giggling (dogs DO giggle) and licking each others faces. it was a great match.

they have little spats, like people do, and like people who really like each other, they get over it. however, they seem to get over it faster than people do. that is one of the special things about dogs, they can forgive a minor dispute and forget the hard feelings pretty fast.

Lil Joe has a terrible fear of thunder storms, which is understandable for a dog who has gone through one of the worst hurricanes in history. He is scared to death to go outside when it is raining in the slightest amounts. Otis is working on helping him get over the fear, he will go running as fast as he can to the yard, rain or shine, looking back barking for Lil Joe to follow him. and Joe does!

this week we had some tremendous storms and were having to get the dogs to go out to the yards while we cleaned their pens. Joe ran out with Otis following him showing no fear or trepidation. they were outside about 10 minutes. when they came back in, they gobbled up their breakfast as they always do and then went to play. A few minutes later I looked over at them - Joe was standing straight up at attention in the middle of the pen while Otis licked him clean and dry. He was slowly and deliberately getting Joe clean and dry from top to bottom. I think he understood that Joe didn't like being rain wet and was taking care of his best buddy.

posted by Elizabeth @ 7:55 AM 1 comments