Getting the Hang of Things

By and large, it has been a good week up at the Lodges. After the chaos of the first week of the two Lodges, we have worked out a bit more of a routine and we are finding our rhythm as a team. Admittedly, I wasn’t so sure about the whole division after the first week, on paper, it is a great idea, but in reality, I was concerned about the frequency of unexpected and time consuming projects that would completely throw the day into mayhem (like flooded buildings) and the lack of a safety net. While the safety net is still a little thin for my taste, now that we have more of a handle of the timing of the day and when we can run late and when we can’t, should such issues arise, I think we will be better equipped to handle them. At the moment, there are a couple of openings around Dogtown and we have some caregiver candidates doing their two-week evaluations, which is a good sign that sometime in the (hopefully) near future we might be getting a little more help up at the Lodges to strengthen that safety net some more. Management had been approved before the separation to hire one more full time staff person for the Lodges and in the meeting when they unveiled the new plan for the Lodges, they said that they were going to lobby for the hiring of a second full time caregiver for the Lodges to give each team a total of four staff and three people most days. For now, we have a pretty good feel for things, but it would be nice to know that there is someone else to help pick up the slack if something goes wrong or someone calls in sick.
Ophelia successfully left for her forever home on Friday morning. I have not heard anything about how it is going yet, but hopefully we will hear something, soon. As a side note for anyone adopting a pet, keep in touch with the rescue, at least occasionally, to let them know how your new family member is doing, it just makes our days to get emails and photos of the dogs that have gone to homes. Knowing that they have a caring and loving family makes all that we do worth while; there is bulletin board in Dogtown headquarters that holds photos and letters from the families of adopted dogs and while I don’t know most of the dogs on the board, it makes me smile just to stand and look at the photos of family pets and read the tales of their antics. We got a really nice email this week from Rex’s new family and it sounds like he is settling in better that we could have imagined and his people love him very much. He even goes to the dog park and seeks out other dog playmates. Last year was a good year for adoptions and this year has started off with a bang, so here’s hoping that it will continue. Later this month we will have a woman coming to meet Oreo and from the sounds of things, pretty much everything with the application has been finalized and, unless something catastrophic happens when they meet, she will be taking him home mid-February. And Sophie’s people are coming near the end of the month and will hopefully be taking her home if all goes well with the meeting. I don’t know if they have other dogs, she can be a bit of a brat with other dogs sometimes, but when it comes to people, she is great.
After the extremely long blogs of last week, I figure this one is long enough for today. I should have time tomorrow to get more stories posted. I hope everyone had a great week.