Yes, yes, I know, I am a bad blogger. It has been two months since I last posted and I apologize. I was on vacation for a couple of weeks and spent most of the time with family and since my family makes up the majority of the people reading this blog, it seemed kind of stupid to be posting about the stuff I was doing with them. However, I have gotten at least one annoyed email from a friend that thinks I have fallen off the face of the earth - I have not. Things have been pretty similar from one day to the next here in Kanab. In ways, life seems to ceaselessly change at the Garden and yet, most days feel remarkably like all the ones that came before it. The last couple of weeks we have been under "quarantine" with kennel cough. In the first couple of days of the quarantine, we were bending over backwards to follow the kc protocols to ensure that it didn't spread. However, it has an incubation period of up to about ten days, so the dogs were already being exposed before we knew we had it in the area. Our current total of coughing dogs is at about eleven spread between the two buildings in such a way that all of our dogs are quarantined because they have it, live with someone who has it, or are immediately next to someone who has it. Our volunteer numbers have been slightly limited because of the kc, most days we have been kept to four or less, which has been nice but it also reminds us how much we depend on our volunteers. Carin and I have finally figured out a way to organize our days so that we are actually getting dogs out for walks, which has been wonderful. Since I have been at the Garden, I have only walked a dog on a handful of occasions and most of those have been for short potty walks. It has been really nice this week to actually get out and just walk the dogs and spend some time with them. We have a lot of new dogs and there have been a good number of adoptions since I last posted. I was gone on vacation for two and a half weeks and there is now a dog on our adoption board that came and went while I was away, I never met him. We have three upcoming adoptions that I know about, this weekend one of our older dogs, Chico, has some people coming out to meet him and if all goes well they will take him home on Sunday.
(Not to be confused with Chico Rodriguez, who was adopted just before I left on vacation and is doing great in his new home.) RC, our puppy mill Shiba Inu, is slated to leave in the next couple of weeks, too. He broke tradition a little bit and chose his family instead of the other way around. He is quite shy, having spent the first four years of his life as a breeder in a puppy mill, he was never socialized with people. A few months back, a father and daughter came to volunteer for a few days at the Garden. Their first afternoon they went in a sat with Ruth and RC. Ruthie is an instant love bug, but RC tends to stay just out of reach, sniffing and watching from a few feet away. The 12-year old daughter went over and sat on one of the beds and after about ten minutes RC crawled up on the bed with her and cuddled up for a nap. The following night they took RC on a sleepover and then again the next night. After the second sleepover, they put in the paperwork to adopt him. And Moccasin, whom we like to call Karl, because he looks like Karl Malden, should be leaving the middle of next month as well.
He is a very sweet dog and someone fell for him back in the spring but couldn't bring him home until September. We generally don't hold dogs for that long, so she was crossing her fingers for the last few months that someone else wouldn't snatch him up before she could bring him home.
That is about all I have for today, but I will try and post again tomorrow or later this weekend. I hope everyone is doing well.
(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)
