the struggles of animal rescue

I never knew running and keeping running a shelter would be so hard. there is never enough money, there are too many sick dogs and cats needing help, there are too many stray dogs and cats needing rescue and not many people who seem to care enough to help.

currently, I have more than 15 dogs in vet clinics needing to be somewhere not costing us $15 to $20 per day per animal. had we not taken them they would have been left out in sub freezing temps, sick and wounded. 3 of the vet boarded dogs are the puppies left on a roof in a box to die. they had sarcoptic mange, we are not allowed to bring them in to the shelter because it is highly contagious and we, and the shelter from whom we rent, can not afford to put the other dogs in danger of catching it.

we owe vets multiple thousands of dollars for treatment of the rescues in our care. i get calls daily from people who want us to take in a rescue they have had and can't keep anymore, and then they get angry with us for not being able to help.

I have too many dogs in my shelter already, I have no room for more. there is no money. when someone calls us and wants us to take the stray that they had picked up and can't keep anymore, I usually ask for them to make a donation if we take it, I have been yelled at for the audicity of such a request. to take in a stray with no known medical care it can cost as little as $500 or as much as $1500. to ask for a $100 donation is apparently rude and unacceptable.

there is no room and I have one employee with no volunteers. Dog food runs us about $25o per month.

there are many needs in the world for people to be pulled toward to help. unfortunately, not many are pulled to help ARF.

posted by Elizabeth @ 5:18 PM 0 comments

petey the optimist

when running a shelter, one has to figure out which dogs fit well in play groups with other dogs.

one dog we have is a good fit with all our dogs, he has gotten moved from one pen to another, due to adoptions or crowding or foster care. in each move he has made fast friends with his new group. this dog is Petey.

petey is a beautiful black shepard. not to be confused with a german shepard, a shepard is a long haired dog with gentle, beautiful waves in his hair. generally, they are friendly, cheerful dogs - good with children and other pets. petey is all that and more.

he is funny, playful, generous, kind, intelligent and loving - to all that he is also quite handsome.

we wonder why no one has snatched up this love of a pet and taken him home to their family. he wonders that as well, but being the ever optimistic that Petey is, he just keeps on making friends and being happy.

right now, petey is in with dixie and trixie. the mices love him. they play; down dog, i got it - you don't, catch me if you can and find the toy that i am hiding but don't look under my belly. all favorite games with dogs at the shelter. the girls usually let him win, but he never ever gloats about it. he just grins and starts a new game.

he knows he will have a forever home one day, just not THIS day, meanwhile - he is busy figuring out a new game that can be played in a 10x10 pen

posted by Elizabeth @ 8:05 PM 0 comments

hey there georgie girl

tonkas girl georgia is a dirt eating girl. (if you ever watched designing women you would understand).

she is quite the flighty blond girl. about 6 months old and very much into fashion. she keeps trying to start a trend with the girls by wearing her ears flipped out backwards. some of the girls tried doing it with one ear, but they don't look as cute doing it and never with both ears at the same time. trends are very hard to start.

she also likes to wear outfits. loves bows, bandannas and capes. she is a total dress up kinda dog. jay leno wouldn't approve. she doesn't care.

she flits through the shelter leaping by the various pens on her way outside to play. she will grin and jump past the others who have to stay in while she plays with HER MAN. she thinks he is the cats pajamas, do dogs care about cats pajamas? i don't know. but, if they are cute, georgia would care.

posted by Elizabeth @ 6:10 PM 0 comments

tonka and me

one of our babies at the shelter is a dog who always gets a second glance from prospective families, but not necessarily to adopt, but just because he looks so funny.

once you get to know tonka, you love him with his funny antics and the playful puppy machine he is.

tonka looks like he was made from left over pieces parts of other dogs. he has a bassett body, but it is so round and large he appears to be a stuffed sausage in dog skin. he has a block head lab head, and the biggest brown puppy eyes you will ever meet. we named him tonka cause he looks just like a tonka toy.

when tonka first came to us he had a bit of an attitude. he had been abused and he had learned that he could intimidate those who scared and/or abused him. including other male dogs. his bark is huge and powerful, as his body which can knock you around like a pinball. and his mouth is large enough to put a whole head in.

as tonka has become accustomed to us and the other dogs, he has relaxed, become so very friendly and never ever meets an enemy. (there was this one time i will explain later).

due to his size and strength, he didn't have any playmates for a long time, he would go out in the play yards by himself and run and run. but he always seemed sad.

recently, we noticed he was playing with other dogs through the pen so we tried him with a playmate group and the boy came out of his shell. he became ecstatic with joy. he now plays with multiple dogs, and has a girlfriend in his pen. little miss georgia brown. they are quite smitten.

a year ago, i was working my part of the shelter by myself. I had let tonka out to run (he so loves to run) and in letting him back in he knocked me down, I hit my head on a support beam in the building and was knocked out. this guy with the other shelter from whom i rent, came running up to help. tonka had seen me go down and climbed on my body and was licking my face trying to help me. this guy came running up to help me and tonka was NOT LETTING that stranger get near me. he growled and barked and barked. the guy was trying his best to get to me, but tonka was intent on protecting me. finally he let the guy get to me, but he was not so convinced he should. when i did get up, we both gave tonka tons of good boy love and kisses for his protection of me, and in that he decided the guy was not so bad. from that day on until he quit, that guy had extra treats when he passed by tonkas pen. now tonka wants all the workers to get to know him, most do, and his large sausage body shows the results, he has them convinced that he NEEDSSS some treats.

it is such a joy to see a dog evolve from scared and aggressive to playful puppy full of joy and love. he has so much puppy time to make up for, all that time before us, he had to be grown and tough to survive. Now, he has acclimated to shelter life and has developed trust. now, he is ready for a home and a family with tons of energy to run, romp, play and laugh. he so loves to laugh.

posted by Elizabeth @ 12:57 PM 1 comments

todays installment brought to you by the letter L

posted by Elizabeth @ 6:08 PM 1 comments

beauty is fleeting.

it seems that even dogs know when they are pretty and when pretty gets messed with.

two of our dogs are thelma and louise. blond perky girls who love to party. they are pretty and they know it. other girls out there are a bit jealous. across from their pen are the dixie chicks. sisters also. dixie and trixie. dixie is a freckled black and white, and trixie is a black with white chickie. they love to play and party and dance. but seem a bit jealous of thelma and louise.

when running out to play, it seems the boys always notice thelma and louise more than the dixie chicks. that is so like men, always noticing the blonds first.

well trixie had her fill with that and wanted a piece of the blond with attitude. thelma is more dominate than louise. thelma is who she wanted.

she got her last friday. took a big chunk of blond shiny hair from behind her ear as well as a small piece of ear. thelma had to spend the weekend at the hospital. quite a costly event for a jealous brunette.

today, thelma came back home and was not pleased. she has to wear this ugly elizabethan collar and has all her pretty blond hairs shaved on the right side of her head, tons of stitches in her ear. all in all, not so pretty. which makes for a not so happy girl.

louise was very upset with her sister/pen mate going away after being injured and spent the weekend barking at the back wall of her pen. when thelma came back she was full of kisses for her. thelma must have been a bit upset with being gone, and coming back looking different, she growled at louise; giving out her best elvis impersonation and snapped. poor little louise went and sat quietly in the corner watching her sister.

then the other dogs started barking at her. at first she was all happy and barking back, but they must have been making comments about her looks because all the dogs were barking at her and waggin tails and she started barking back snarling. eventually, she went and sat in the corner facing away from all the other dogs. louise went and gave her more kisses and they curled up in the corner together facing away from the other dogs.

the pretty blond hair will eventually come back, the e-collar will come off in about 10 days, the ear will be a little different, but not that noticeable. but a girl knows. a girl always knows.

posted by Elizabeth @ 6:24 PM 4 comments

gypsy queen dog - or why i rescue

seven years ago i had never spent much time around dogs. cats, yes. been rescuing cats my whole life. dogs, i never paid much attention to before i met the gypsy queen dog.

my husband and i have an architectural salvage business. don't work it much anymore due to the rescue work, but then we were very active. june 2000, we were taking down a two story house built in 1800. the house was in a town a little over an hour away from jackson. it was backbreaking work, but full of interesting finds. we had been working on the house for about 6 months. the whole time we were doing the tear down, there was a stray momma dog and her two pups from the previous season hanging around the empty house. there were several side buildings on the property full of treasures and junk. in one of the side buildings there was a very very old feather mattress. the momma dog loved that mattress and that shed. when she went in there and got on her mattress, she looked like she just knew that this was the life. she was up on the mattress looking like a queen. her pups would be on the floor of the building in front of her throne. i would go look in on them, dropping some food or treats and she would just grin and grin at me. if i got too close they would all dart out the back of the building in an opening of some missing boards.

as the year warmed up and spring approached it was apparent that she was pregnant again. we continued to try to catch her, but it was of no avail.

then on june 4th, we were up there working on preparing to take down one of the buildings and I was pulling stuff out from under the floors. i saw a little animal in a dug out hole shivering. at first i thought it was a rat, then i thought it was a mole - because it was too hairy for a rat, then i thought it might be a puppy. i called my husband over and sure enough it was a puppy. we gathered him up. he was cold and hungry. no telling how long he had been there. it was late in the day and momma dog had not been around all day. we took him back to jackson. i fed him with a straw and water the whole way home. i would pull up some water and drop it into his mouth.

when we got home all the vets were closed and we had no idea of what to do next. we called a vet, he walked us through we we should do to try to keep him alive, and warned us that he probably wouldn't make it.

well, make it he did, and he is happy and living in my back yard now. Lucky Dawg.

however, the next week we returned to the house to work again, and the gypsy queen was dead. she had stopped delivering her pups and developed gangrene in her uterus and died just in front of her wonderful throne. we never saw the pups again and soon finished our project there.

i think of the gypsy queen everyday when i go play with my lucky dawg. i know so much more now about rescue and had the timing been different, i could have gotten the gypsy queen and her pups.

stray/unwanted/unknown dogs die everyday in mississippi. painful, scary, unnecessary deaths. i can't imagine what goes through their minds as they lie dying.

the dogs at the shelter appear to love their makeshift beds in the same manner. you can see them when they run back into their pens from recess. we have cleaned their pens, put out fresh food and water, and put fresh blankets in their most wonderful beds. beds fit for a queen or king.

posted by Elizabeth @ 5:41 PM 6 comments

one more stray off the streets of jackson

there has been this stray in my neighborhood for over six months that we have been trying to capture. he is quite elusive. twice i have had him caught only to have him escape in 2.3 minutes flat.

he has obvious signs of abuse. he is fearful, yet hopeful. he will come very very close to you with a willing look in his eyes, but when you reach out to touch him, he leaps sideways and just out of your reach. he loves other dogs and will follow people walking their dogs in the neighborhood. it is the people who scare him.

many many people have been trying to catch him, all to no avail. there is one man in the neighborhood who somehow got through to him. he walks his dog at 5 a.m. and this dog would walk with them. the neighbor man finally (with food and treats) got the dog to let him pet him. yet even after a week of pets and cuddles, the dog still would hit the ground in a prone position when he raises his hand to pet him. the dog has been sleeping curled in this mans flowerbed this past week when we were having 20 degree nights. he would try to get him to sleep on a blanket on his porch but the poor guy wouldn't do it.

today, the man got him leashed up and brought him to me. i in turn took him to the vets office. he has gotten shots and will get neutered on monday.

while i had him in the crate in the vets office, i was petting him, rubbing his back and belly and speaking very softly to him. he was refusing to look at me, instead looking toward the top of the crate and appeared to be thinking: "if i try really really hard i can leave my body and won't be scared. if i try really really hard, i won't be here."

he is a young dog, probably under a year. he has some puppy play in him, i have seen him playing with other dogs in yards. he can be brought out of his fear, but it will take someone who has lots of patience and love.

posted by Elizabeth @ 10:20 AM 0 comments

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 0 comments

dogs on Easy Street

part of the tough side of life in rescue work is what to do when the shelter is full and there is a stray that needs rescue and help.

that is our situation right now. we are more than full, I have multiple dogs that we are paying for boarding at vet clinics because the need was immediate and dire. we had no room at the inn, so, we scooped them up and took them to the vets office. currently there are 10 dogs being boarded at Dogwood Animal Hospital until we can either make room at the shelter, adopt them out or ship them to another shelter where adoptions happen more frequently.

when the need is not as dire, we try to get the strays to remain in a location out of the way of traffic. We then set up temporary shelter on vacant land and feed them daily.

on the way to the shelter we travel through a depressed part of town where strays are prolific. the poor things are abused, starving and scared. right now I am working with a pack of beautiful mix breed dogs hanging out on Easy Street. that's right Easy Street.

Easy Street is about 4 tenths of a mile long, the only structures on Easy Street are the backs of two warehouses and one abandoned, falling in house. the dogs hang on the front porch and in the yard of the house. all around the house is very tall grass, similar to hay which provides warmth. we have put out blankets in the tall grass and feed them daily and sprinkle wormer on the feed.

earlier this week on the way to the shelter, my heart stopped for a beat. one of the dogs was hit and died in the middle of the road. he was a beautiful big red dog with some shepard in him. long wavy red hairs. a strong body and kind soft eyes. he was the most responsive and the one I had thought would be the easiest to catch. he would hang back when we came down Easy Street, and look at us as if he were considering coming up to us.

tonight it will be 19 degrees in Jackson, Mississippi. we have put out food and water for the remaining dogs and hope they continue to hang on Easy Street away from the busy road that took away the big red dog.

posted by Elizabeth @ 5:31 PM 7 comments

let's get this party started

welcome to the ARF blog site.

by adding this fabulous new blog site to our website, I hope to be able to share more of what we are doing with our rescues.

some of our stories will be joyous, some tear jerkers and then some just a slice of the day in the shelter, or a slice of the personalities of our rescues.

come back frequently, ask questions, give feedback and help us grow.

posted by Elizabeth @ 1:56 PM 12 comments