Savingdogs-Saving the chickens

[ksalvagno]

Over 400 foster dogs! That is amazing. I would love to get to the point where I just have foster dogs and none of my own anymore. There are fosters that take a long time or never get out of foster care so I figured I would have a permanent dog of some sort. But my youngest dogs are 4 & 5 so we have a ways to go for that. I figured by then I will be older and when I'm too old to have a dog, I just quit fostering. I don't want to worry about a pet when I go.

Anything that the buck can get up on and do his thing is fine. I happened to have a hay bale handy so that was what I used.

By the way, since it is your journal, write about whatever you want! I love hearing the fostering dog tales.

 

[savingdogs]

Actually 352 were dogs, and there have been more than 50 cats, but I count them all. We did also once rescue some chickens, a goat and three rabbits, too, but I only count the companion animals.

We sold Sebastian today, Yay! Yay! Yay!
and the people who bought him seemed real happy to have him. They said their nubians are not that much larger than my mini-nubians. So they were not as worried about him reaching. They liked his face and his blue eyes (my favorite things about him) and bought him after about 15 minutes is all, gave me the full amount I ask without bartering and away he went down the road. His work was done here, he has some new ladies to entertain.

Since they are making mini-nubians, I now know who to ask when I'm looking for a buckling next year, at least for my current two does, who after all are not related to him. The doelings would all be part Sebastian, but that is okay, maybe I will have a little herd with his pretty faces and blue eyes.

I did pay my younger son 10 dollars for all his help, and Sebastian ate quite a bit of hay, at least a bale, but other than that, I got my stud service FREE!

 

[freemotion]

AWESOME!!!!

Oh, and told you so!

 

[savingdogs]

I was thinking about YOU the very second that they handed over the cash........I was thinking, I can't wait to tell Freemotion.....

 

[ksalvagno]

Congratulations!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

great work!!

did you say "smell you later"??? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

i'm so glad it worked out. yay Free!

Most "bad" dogs are just displaced and untrained. Very few dogs are truly bad.

aint that right!! we got Dog#2 b/c the family couldnt/wouldnt/didnt take care of him.. and now he's a darn good farm dog. right now he's totally taking care of Kai - they are totally loving each other. i'm so glad!

did you get your corner feeder put up? its easy peasy, just use those big roundy staple thingys.

K - i'm not sure if i should be making fourth-grade-level jokes about the bale of hay... or hiding under a desk. ha! you know.. sometimes all this 'wild kingdom' stuff is just too much for me. ha! after Nibble's 'performance' at the breeder I coulda died of shame. sheesh!

 

[savingdogs]

I've decided to write the story of my foster dogs, but to make it personal, I'll do it one by one, the way I knew them.

The Story of Chloe

Chloe came into my home as an 11-week old greyhound/lab mix puppy. At that point in my volunteer life, I was not only fostering dogs, but helping maintain a list of dogs being held by private owners, who needed homes soon. My duty was to call and encourage the people to attend our events and find out which dogs really needed to go into foster care and which ones could stay where they were at.

So I see a picture of a puppy in a DIAPER which is the photo the owner has sent to us of Chloe to advertise her on the website. She also marked not housetrained, but we were talking about a very young pup. So I call this person up. I thought perhaps the puppy would be adopted quickly if not pictured in a diaper. So I ask her for another photo and about potty training, and she responds, "Well I keep hitting her with a stick every time she pees in the house but she just won't stop!"

My response was, "Well, I just heard about an opening in our foster care system, would you like to bring her over immediately?" So Chloe was at my house a few hours later, and legally signed over to me, away from that evil woman. One of those moments that make all this worthwhile.

I see right away the pup is thin and has a kind of cough. Her long face gave her a droopy, sad demeanor. Very good natured, too placid. Not playful like a puppy.... perfectly behaved. So the next day I take the dog in to my work (a different vet, but a good surgeon) and she says to me, "This dog has been kicked in the chest"....hard enough to give her something called a diaphamous hernia, which needed to be surgically repaired. Usually dogs get this being hit by a car or squeezed in a car door, something like that!

So I arranged for my group to pay for this surgery, and we prepped Chloe for the procedure. She came through with flying colors, but during the surgery the doctor detected a heart murmur had formed. It was bad enough, you could feel it with just your hand on the side of her ribs, Thump-whoosh dump, Thump-woosh dump, instead of Tha-dump, Tha-dump.

After the surgery she recovered nicely, but still did not have much energy although she was growing big. We had her heart checked again, and they called her a grade 4.....grade 5 is the worst. They were not even sure if her heart would last until she was an adult and were afraid she might just keel over dead any time.

I was torn. Was it fair to give her to someone, not even knowing if she would grow up? She was so SWEET. Should I just put her down? Keep her? I didn't really know. So I wrote up an appealing description of her for our website and included the fact that the pup needed to go to a heart specialist and be further diagnosed to find out how bad her heart was and that donations were needed more than an adopter. This, of course, included her long, black sad face looking mournfully at the camera.

Well, people came forward for Chloe. Several made small donations, but one lady donated 900.00. She had a dog that had died of heart failure and could not take it to the heart specialist in time....so she felt it gave her closure to raise money for Chloe's MRI. So we take the pup over the bridge to Portland to see him, together, despite the fact that the lady cannot adopt Chloe herself. The doctor was really awesome, and after extensive tests, felt that Chloe would possibly never be very active, but she would be able to live a normal lifespan, probably until the early geriatric stage at least, and at that point medication would be able to help her. She basicaly had a hole in her heart but not a large one, so her heart will always have to work hard, but it should work.

So we were able to put her up for adoption for reals, and after a time, a person came forward who not only had a heart murmur herself, but she had a cat named Chloe with a heart murmur too and she had the money to support a medically compromised dog. So Chloe became Zoey and got herself a forever home.

At the end of the story is a side note or two...one is that three years later the family that adopted Chloe, now Zoey, contacted us for help because she had gotten so big, unruly and overactive! They had spoiled her rotten and I directed them to train her and treat her like a normal dog, and I hope they did.
By now, Chloe must be around 8, so I don't know if she is still around or not, but I sure hope she got better behaved! But she certainly wasn't keeling over dead or lying around listlessly...it sounded like she was ruling the household!

And the other side note, one of the people who donated to Chloe's fund is the very same person who just recently adopted my little Harry that I have told you all about, we had stayed friends.

I wish I had the pictures but they are lost inside a computer that crashed, that I'm still saving hoping I can get the pictures out someday. But her story and before and after pictures (one skinny and sad as a pup and another as a grown up, homely adult) were the very best fundraising tools I ever found, except perhaps the story of Prince, which I will tell too. About four years later I used her story and pictures in a presentation, along with Prince and other dogs and pictures, that raised 9,000 for that group. Afterwards, everyone told me they donated "because of the poor kicked puppy!"
All I can say is God works in mysterious ways.

And by the way, greyhound lab mixes are UGLY....she came out really homely........lol

Did you guys like that one?

 

[savingdogs]

"Smell you later".....OFG you are too funny....

and Karen, I told them about the bale for a boost up.....it was a little hard because their pre-teen children were there, but we managed the conversation okay. I only turned slightly pink and did NOT mention what a long thingy-ma-jiggy he has!

 

[FarmerDenise]

I love your foster stories.
I foster also. I mostly have taken in kitten bottle babies for our local Humane Society. This year I only fostered two for a short while, I was just too busy with my goat bottle babies and everything else going on. Our dog is a foster we adopted.
I hope to foster more dogs in the future. I have also sheltered many other animals in my life.
I always recommend to people to take a class to learn how to train your dog. We took the one at our Humane Society and I really liked it. So that is the one I recommend. What we learned has been very effective for us. The basis was: don't let your dog practise unwanted behavior and use treats and praise to get the behavior you want. For more agressive discipline she suggested using a spray bottle filled with water. You spritz the dog in the face and say a sharp NO. This worked like a charm with our dog.
And as with children, consistency is the most important thing.

SO complains about the dog begging, when he eats. I point out that the dog does not beg from me. I don't feed the dog from my plate, he does. The dog is smart

I am glad you mentioned the MD. I am going to have to research that, because maybe that is what is wrong with me.

 

[savingdogs]

Usually meniere's disease is not so bad, PM me if you want me to tell you more about it, I have talked about it enough here on this journal but to a meniere's patient I would have different things to say. I know how they diagnose it certainly.

I like bottle babies too...we did one litter of kittens but there was a litter of five puppies that stole our hearts. I have been leaving that type for others lately. We just had a litter of kittens over the summer and we decided AGAIN that we just want to do dogs, kitten accidents smell so bad and it is so hard to get rid of that odor. But we have three rescued cats, one is a real character, our great mouser. One has a little story of her own I'll tell here sometime, Smidgen the miracle cat with more than nine lives. And one is a bottle baby himself, although a friend of mine bottle fed him, not me. But he still drools when you pet him.