the great escape

we have many old, decrepit pens in our shelter. many of our pens are the cyclone fence style pens; pieced and patched together with duct tape, wire and oven racks. once they chew, and tear apart the woven cyclone wiring it is virtually impossible to reweave the wire. so. we get old oven racks and wire them back together. we have some pens that the metal poles that hold the wire is rusted through, then we have to duct tape or screw in more pipe to the remaining pipe.

these cyclone pens are not the best for shelter life. the dogs living in them 24/7 get bored, want to explore and chew them apart. our preference is a welded wire pen made specifically for shelter life. we buy (when we can) a pen manufactured by a company called PRIEFERT. fairly escape proof.

at the shelter is a new momma and her 5 pups. helen. helen is very scared and confused by all the chaos of shelter life. it can get loud and rambunctious. sometime during the night last night, helen made a break for it. I don't know if she was trying to get out to do business (she likes to keep a very clean pen) or was overwhelmed by (a) being a new mom and (b) all the dogs barking. for whatever reason, she escaped from her pen and somehow pushed out some of the metal siding on the building and got stuck in a yard. not one of my yards, but one of the yards belonging to the shelter from whom we rent. we think she was out there for most of the night. she was cold and scared when they opened up the roll-up doors to the yard. they were confused as to where this dog came from and how to catch her. she was in no mood for these strangers to get their hands on her. no sirreebob. and she is fasssttt. she is a short dog. part corgi and part border collie. picture a border collie with 8 inch legs. that is helen. but for all of helens shortness, that girl can RUN.

at some point the shelter manager found out about the strange momma dog in her yard and her employees all running around the yard trying to catch her. shelter manager called me, we were already on the way out there - just made a side stop to buy dog food. described the dog, was it ours? yes, sounds like helen. at this point panic set in. these pups are too young to go very long without food, and it was under 20 degrees last night. they need mommas warmth. they are in a childs plastic swimming pool, with a blanket on a heating pad, but they still need momma.

we rushed out there, got helen back in our area, repaired the wall of the building, repaired the pen yet again, and hopefull fixed any opportunity for escape.

those puppies were not happy with the milk machine going missing but seemed to have kept fairly warm on the blanket with the heating pad. helen looked at me with such sad eyes, I am banking on her escape attempt being a bit of post partum depression. I certainly wouldn't want 5 young uns hanging on my tits all the time. perhaps she was sad because she just wanted to pee and get back in to her babies and couldn't. she was very concerned for the babies, checked them all out upon return to her pen. the babies were fussing at her and demanding breakfast.

all thing considered, it turned out ok. could have been much worse.

our dream is to have our own building, with decent pens for all our dogs, a building for cat rescue so we can also take in cats. (currently, we have to find foster homes for cats or send them to other rescue groups). a building for seperating the sick from the healthy, a site for a trainer to hold classes for our orphans and the public to come for education of responsible pet ownership and to have an on-site caretaker, security cameras on all areas of the shelter; so if emergencies happen at night, someone will be there to fix the problem.

that's our dream. along with a mississippi that understands the dire need for required spay/neuter laws.

posted by Elizabeth @ 6:20 PM