Is This Your Dog?

Stray dogs end up at my gate. This means they get a free meal and a free ride to the shelter.

Last year a mother and her 3 big pups showed up. I was on the way to work, or they would have gotten in my car. One detail is that they were not completely catchable.

The 3rd pup panicked and ran off to the underbrush. I was glad that I hadn’t taken the others away. Imagine the terror of being separated from your family.

There was also the boxer, which finally had a happy ending.

There was this guy who showed up on December morning when I was hustling out to meet Leslie for an appointment.

He was there when I returned that evening, and again the next morning, and he and I and Leslie took the scenic route to the shelter.

Every time we drop off a dog or a cat, Leslie gives a donation.

This past weekend we were sitting on his yard enjoying the spring day, when one of his cats stared across the yard, her head swiveling on her shoulders like an owl. We saw nothing out of the ordinary. Another of his cats perked up and stared in the same direction.

We looked again and saw a dog peeking in his yard between the gate and gatepost.

We didn’t know this hungry boy. Leslie got a bowl of food and a leash and the keys to the van.

He finished the bowl and was enticed into the van with the promise of a treat.

Oh, that sweet face.

The tricky part for a poor county is that the shelter is usually full of animals and short on resources. Recently our county shelter had a shortfall when expected donations were not available, and they appealed to the county council for emergency funds to finish out the fiscal year. That is scary to see the bottom of the barrel. The county awarded the funds after the shelter proved that they had exhausted all sources of revenue.

Nevertheless, we took the dog to the shelter and they made room for him. I asked if they needed food. They said they were low, and were waiting on a shipment. I gave a donation and said that we would be back the next day with food.

And we did return with cat and dog food.

This guy. Leading by example.

Want to Help A Kitten? Donate Here!

 

Help! I don’t want to even admit how many cats I’m taking care of right now. ‘Cause y’all might still be holding on to one last hope that I’M NOT CRAZY, and that would kill the deal.

I have hungry babies and would appreciate your donation, however large or small…

Sugar’s New Neighbor

Sugar has a new neighbor.

She comes to visit him often.

 

I thought perhaps she was pregnant, but when I palpated her abdomen, I found nothing.

A whistling from next door told us that her people were looking for her.  When we returned her, we asked if she was pregnant.

Oh, no, they said.  She had 3 babies 3 weeks ago.

It was a good thing that I hadn’t spirited her off to be spayed.

But really?  She’s no bigger than a squirrel.

To Feed A Dog: Part Three

I sat on the  passenger’s side of the van, staring in disbelief as the door to the trailer opened slowly inwards, a pale hand clutching the knob.  A middle-aged woman appeared and leaned on the door frame. Her right foot was encased in a cast.

I hissed, “There’s somebody there!” to Sugar, and he looked up, one sole of his shoe still with dog poop on it.

Let me say here that Sugar is one of the shyest persons you could ever meet.  We were so busted, sitting right in this woman’s driveway, and rather than slamming the doors and speeding away, Sugar stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and hit a home run.

Sugar:  Oh, hello, maybe you can help me.

Woman:  Hello.

Sugar:  Does Mr. (insert random name from his mail route here) still live here?

Woman:  No, nobody by that name has ever lived here.  This is my place.

Sugar:  Oh, he used to live over there (waving his hand Miz-Florrie-style), but he told me he was moving over here.

Woman:  No, nobody lives here but me. Sometimes my nephew stays here.

Sugar:  Oh, okay, thanks.  By the way, is that your dog?  He’s a nice dog.

Woman:  No, that’s my nephew’s dog.  I can’t get around so I can’t take care of him.  Sometimes he needs food and water, but I can’t do anything about it.  My nephew comes and goes.

Sugar:  Okay.  Well, thank you.  Sorry to bother you.

*****

Well, this was awkward.  So apparently someone DOES live here, someone without a car who is unable to get the mail out of the box.  But she didn’t recognize Sugar as her mail carrier.

The next part of the plan became to visit the dog on Sunday mornings, and when Sugar was on his mail route, he thought he could stop perhaps on Thursday afternoon.  It was a long time for the dog to go without proper food and water, but it was the best we could figure out.

So on Sunday mornings, we went into stealth mode.  We drove slowly down the dirt road, so as not to stir up much dust, and we drove by the trailer to the next driveway, which was where this whole dog episode started.  We backed in the driveway of the abandoned trailer, which incidentally was now sporting a bright green notice that back taxes were due on the property, and slid open the back right door of the van. There at the ready were a container of water and an already-bagged-up bag of food.   Sugar would grab the food and water, walk across the yard, down into a drainage ditch, and back up the other side of the ditch to where the dog was tied.  If the food bowl was not there, he simply dumped food on the ground. We didn’t want it to look like someone had been there, because people don’t always take too kindly to others tending to their business, crappy as though it seemed.  I set the timer each time to see if he was shaving off any time during the process.

As time went by, he noticed the the blinds on that corner of the trailer were being left up.  If the blinds were up, he did not stop while on his route.  Sundays seemed safer because we were parked on the next driveway, and there were lots of trees between the vehicle and the trailer.

When Sugar would drive by on his mail route, the dog recognized his truck now, and would bark and prance happily when he drove by.  One day the dog broke loose somehow, and ran after his mail truck, barking and wagging to the end of the dirt road and back.  Sugar heard a man call after him in an effort to get the dog back, and he learned that the dog’s name was Bruiser.

At some point this has to come to an end.  I was driving my car, a bright yellow jot of color, like we had convinced ourselves that we didn’t need to be seen in the same vehicle all the time.  I had pulled into the driveway just past the trailer, and Sugar slipped through the trees with food and water.  He came hustling back in a panic and said that he’d been caught. He got as far down in the floor as he could get, and it looked like I was just out and about on a Sunday drive.

I started the car, and attempted to back up when the car died and I had to start it again.  Fortunately, the engine held that time, and I puttered on past Bruiser’s trailer, where two men in hunter’s garb stood on the front deck.  I looked at them, they looked at me, and I kept driving.  We were on solid pavement before Sugar crawled up out of the floorboards.

Not long after that, Sugar reported that Bruiser was gone.  We never saw where he was turned in to the shelter, so maybe the nephew moved away for good and took Bruiser with him.

And we hope that, if only for a brief moment in his shabby life, Bruiser knew that he was loved.

When Pups Fly

This morning, I drove on over to Sugar’s grooming and boarding business to help out with all the pups.  They are boarding, in addition to ordinary boarders, a mother dog and her ten pups, aged four weeks old.

I considered pulling right in front of the front door, because the folks that are going to the spay/neuter clinic next door will many times park right in front of Sugar’s business, and take up a spot that rightfully is not theirs.  I thought that I’d claim the spot to save for the first client of the day, but thought better about it because, after all, I’d have to move my car and I might be far too busy helping pups to have the presence of mind to move the car.

So I pulled through and around and parked by the play yard, and stared at the mass of pups already in the yard.

How was this possible?  How did those boarding puppies get outside?  Why were they huddled in a mass outside?  How had they climbed out the window?

Well, this was weird.  I went over to the fence, and saw that I did not recognize them.

One of them growled at me.  Poor scared pups.  I know I look a little rough in the morning, but this was doing nothing for my self esteem.

So perhaps you’ve realized that if I had parked in front of the front door, and not pulled around, I would not have known the pups were in the yard, and I would have let boarding dogs out into the yard.  All the boarders are harmless, sweet dogs, but the pups wouldn’t know that.

People worry about stray animals  bringing disease.  They probably have intestinal parasites, like roundworms, which I learned from an animal rescue specialist about ten years ago – all puppies have worms – but if your dog is on monthly parasite prevention, not to worry.  Actually, the bigger danger is to the pups themselves.  They are too young to vaccinate, and I estimate their age to be younger than the four-week-old pups that are boarding.  I mixed up a concoction of dry kibble, water, and canned food, and they could not eat the kibble at all until it became soft.

After they ate their fill, Sugar and I took them to the animal shelter, and told what little we knew about them, and bade them good-bye.

Far better to fly over a fence than to fly into a river.

Sugar’s Good Deed

Sugar’s BabyDaughter knows a family that needs a good deed, and she proceeded to hammer away at Sugar until he agreed.

They have a dog, which you probably already guessed, and the dog is on a chain.  They really want the dog to be in the house, but he’s an un-neutered male, and he marks territory.

I was surprised to learn that the dog is a Pomeranian.

Really, a Pomeranian, on a chain?

Poms are little guys, although they can act quite ferocious, and the accompanying chain for this particular Pom is a lightweight chain, like the kind we might use for hanging a porch swing.

The house is not completely surrounded by the chain-link fence, but the fence begins at the front right corner of the house by the front door, and encircles most of the lot in a clockwise fashion, and ends about halfway on the right side of the house.  The house is an old one, and was inherited by the current residents.  The original front gate was set into brick pillars, and the original latch system that was set into one of the pillars broke off many years ago, and there’s no good system for securing the gate.

The dog learned that he could push on the front gate, and be gone in search of a girlfriend in an instant.  The owners couldn’t keep him in the house, couldn’t keep him in the yard, and the chain system seemed to be the only solution.

A dog on a chain can easily drop to the bottom of the list of things that need to be taken care of.  The chain was secured to a large trash can in a freestanding garage that had no front door, so the dog had shelter and water, but not much else.  He had a crate to sleep in, but no bedding because he would destroy any bedding that he was given.

Sugar surveyed the situation, and all parties agreed that a gate on the far left side of the house could be added between the house and the existing fence.

As luck would have it, the hole that Sugar dug next to the house could only be dug so far down until he found the concrete footing.  He chipped away at the footing with a metal bar and his five-pound sledge until there was room for the pole to go deeper.

There’s the trusty red and white cooler that goes with us on every day trip.  We got there about 10:15 AM and it was already HOT.  This event happened while we were having that hot spell that lasted several days and got up into the 70’s every single day.

Next, a bag of concrete mix get dumped into a kitty litter bucket for mixing and adding to support the gate post, which you can see has been inserted into the hole next to the house.

Then he adds the other gate post in the hole next to the fence.

The bricks stacked around the base of the pole give an extra element of support while the concrete dries.

We left, and went back the next day.  The owners were not there, but had given us permission to go on the property and finish the job.  (We?  Sugar did all the work.  I stood around and fanned myself.)

After hanging the gate and making some minor adjustments, we stood back and admired the work.

There was a gap between the gate post on the left and the fence, so Sugar took a section of hardware cloth to patch over the gap.  No one was home by the time he finished, so keep your fingers crossed that the dog gets off the chain!

Maybe It’s The Weather

I am happy to report that my most-viewed post for 2012 was called “Ticked Off; Or Not For The Faint Of Heart”.

That’s right.  Ticks.

Perhaps I should start a new Tag and/or Category.

I am also happy to report that yesterday I found a tiny baby tick on my left hand.  Inside the RV.

Which leads me to why there would be a baby tick alive and awake in December, 2012.  Why, indeed?

The winters are fairly mild here along the coast of South Carolina, which is not to say that it doesn’t get down to freezing occasionally here at the Swamped! Plantation and Tick-Conserving Facility.  But I’ve read that for the insect population to be slightly abated, there needs to be 30 consecutive days of freezing weather.

We don’t get that kind of consecutive cold here.  It’s only been in the last week that the temperature actually dipped to right at the freezing mark.  The low point tonight is projected to be in the mid-50’s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for a mild winter because that means a lower electric bill for me.  And since I’m still financially embarrassed, every little bit helps.

I’m just hoping that my top post for 2013 is not about ticks.

Because *you know*, that is SOOO last year.

Christmas Greetings, One Day Later

On Christmas Day, Sugar had a two-pronged plan.

First, we were to go to Garnett to take dog food and treats to Richard.

Second, we were to go to check on the two stray dogs that Sugar is still feeding on his mail route.

Sugar has a bag full of Milk Bones that he emptied easily, and then refilled several times from the box in the van.

These are the two semi-feral dogs that live under his house.

The red one does not have a name. The one on the right was trapped several years ago in Sugar’s big dog trap and taken to the spay/neuter clinic. She had to have a name for her paperwork, so we called her Heidi.

These two littermates are MoDo’s children. She’s a big white houndy-looking dog that Richard trapped a few years ago. She had been roaming the area, getting into garbage cans and eating roadkill.

Then on to Hardlyville.  We turned the corner in the van, and there they were waiting for us.  They trotted alongside the van, then stopped by a Christmas tree that the local folks had decorated here at this little community area.

The second dog is to the left and back of the tree, but he blends in with the leaves and is hard to see.

I turned the van around and headed back out to the main road, and the dogs trotted alongside the van back in the direction of the food.

The cows are across the road. Sugar says sometimes that the dogs hang out in the field with the cows.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Flannery, Part 2

Sometimes in the rescue world, you just get really lucky and get to meet up with a former rescue.

Such was the case for me last week.  I’ve gotten a bit of work back at the boarding kennel where I worked, but only a bit on a Saturday, in case you are monitoring my unemployment claim with the state.  Yes, I am claiming the work on my weekly reports.

Moving along.  Flannery was boarding for the Christmas holiday!  Everyone there loves her and can’t believe that she was a semi-feral dog once.

 

 

 

I seriously love this dog.  Or am I just enamored of her because I love her story so much?

Lucille Catches A Break, Part 2

Lovely Lucille went back to the vet on Monday for a follow-up visit. Sugar and I were pleased to see that she had put on 1/2 pound. The vet was not so pleased, for she said that the weight gain might just be the way Lucille was standing on the scale (I must remember that line. “I haven’t gained weight, I’m just listing on the scale a bit”.).

The vet recommended that Lucille be euthanized.  I have to say that I don’t agree with her one bit.

Lucille is old.

Lucille has arthritis.

Lucille has worn-down nubs for teeth.

Lucille is thin.

BUT…

Lucille eats well.

Lucille wags her tail.

Lucille is mobile, although shaky.

Lucille has good control over her bowels and bladder.

Lucille has bright eyes.

Lucille responds to people.

Lucille has a home.

*****

Euthanize?  I don’t think so.