Thirteen Months

Yes, as Clair so astutely observed, my hair is getting quite long these days compared to what most of you remember of me. I have been at Best Friends for 13 months now and I am starting to see more and more familiar faces, especially the folks that use their annual vacation to come volunteer at the sanctuary. In January, I wrote a post about a volunteer named Nicole that came to volunteer for three weeks and spent most of her time volunteering at the Lodges (Changing Plans and Visiting Angels). She arrived at Best Friends only three days after her last radiation treatment for breast cancer and on her second to last day she went on a shopping spree and brought back a car load of goodies for the dogs of the Lodges. Well, Nicole is back to volunteer some more at the Lodges and I saw her in the lobby yesterday. This time, instead of a fuzzy, pink hat to keep her chemo-balded head warm while she walks dogs, she is sporting a full head of curly black hair and is looking great. We had a good laugh in the lobby because she didn't recognize me with my long hair and I probably wouldn't have know her had Megan not tipped me off that she was back in town. It is wonderful to have her back at the sanctuary, even though I don't get to work with her anymore, now that I am at the Garden. She is a wonderful woman and I am so happy that she is doing well. It is always great to see the faces of the volunteers that we know and love.

It has been a bit of a week for blast-from-the-past stuff. I got an email from Tasha's mom saying that Tash is doing great and went to a place called Ewetopia to start learning how to herd sheep. This is a newer concept in the dog world, not sheep herding, but the facilities that let people bring their dogs to learn and practice herding sheep. It is a really good way to exercise a dog's brain and body and let them use some of the instincts that most dogs never get to use, except on neighborhood squirrels. Tasha did a really good job and was so exhausted by the experience that she fell asleep sitting up during the car ride home! Here are some photos from her day at the farm! (They are kind of blurry, but still cool!)

Thursdays with Brenda

Every Thursday (my Saturday), I go up to the sanctuary for a few hours to hang out with Brenda. She is a red collar pit bull from the Lodges that has lymphoma; when she was diagnosed a few months ago, I asked about fostering her, but because she has two recorded bites in the county, the managers of Dogtown said no. Recently, there have been a few dust ups with the local animal control officer over allowing red collars with bite histories (red collar doesn't automatically mean they have a bite history) to come into town with staff. In the last couple of years, Brenda has sent at least two people to the emergency room for stitches from her bites, so she is not allowed to leave property. I was told I can drive her off property, but she is not allowed out of the car, so usually I load her in the car and take her away from Dogtown to one of the numerous hiking and walking areas around the sanctuary. Sometimes we go to Angel's Landing, a natural amphitheater on property, where there is grass and lots of shade; when we are there, she like to graze on the plants like a cow. I recently bought myself a new point and shoot digital camera, so last week, when I took Brenda out, I brought along my new camera for some experimenting. We had a very nice time and I got some really great shots of Miss B and the canyon.

Brenda is taking a break from grazing to smile for the camera . . .

. . . and enjoy the view.

After some more grazing by the pond we headed up the path to the amphitheater . . .

. . . where there is lots of grass for lounging . . .

. . . and rolling . . .

. . . and sniffing!

Just another one of Dogtown's vicious, red-collar pit bulls waiting to attack and lick your face off! Have a great week! (All photos copyright Allison Martin. Finally.)

Ronnie and Corey

It is that time of year again, the seasons are changing and we are once again saying good-bye to a lot of dogs that have decided it is their time to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I attended two services yesterday, one for a dog that I knew well and one for a dog I had never met.

Ronnie was one of my guys up at the Lodges.He got very sick about a month ago and required emergency surgery to remove his spleen. A tumor on his spleen had ruptured and was bleeding into his abdominal cavity, the vets were confident that they had gotten all the visible tumor but because of the rupture, cancer cells had been leaked into his abdominal cavity and it was only a matter of time before they invaded another organ. Last Thursday he was out on a walk with Megan and a volunteer had his run mate Tina Louise, it became quickly apparent that there was something seriously wrong, so Megan scooped him up (all 60+ lbs of him) and carried him to the clinic. They euthanized him shortly after he arrived at the clinic, but he was calm and peaceful for the process. He will be dearly missed but I am happy that he is finally at peace. There is a possibility that his run mate, Tina Louise, is going to be fostered and everyone has been very concerned about how Ronnie will handle the loss. Perhaps he knew what was coming and decided to take his leave with the full moon before winter set in, saying good-bye to Tina on one last walk.

We also buried a little boy name Corey this week, I couldn't find a photo of him. He was only about eight months old and his death was entirely unexpected and remains a bit of a mystery. Based on the exterior signs, the vets would have guessed that he had sustained some kind of trauma - an impact or an electrocution - but he was in a run all night and there wasn't any exposed electrical wiring that he could have gotten into. The admissions staff left Wednesday night and he was fine, when they arrived in the morning, he was dead. They did x-rays, but didn't really find anything that would indicate a cause of death; they opted not to do a necropsy. From everything I have heard, he was a very sweet boy and it is a very sad loss. Most people believe that we have his sister over at the Garden, a happy, silly pup named Malibu. They didn't come in together but they both probably came out of the same area, looked almost exactly alike, sounded just like one another, and looked to be about the same age.

In the last couple of weeks we have put down several more dogs that I did not know. This is how it usually goes, as winter prepares on the horizon, dogs decide to take their leave before they have to survive another cold winter. And for those that decided to hang on a little longer, once spring rolls around and they feel the warmth again, they take pleasure in the sun and head for the Bridge. According to Lenny, one of our officiants for the placement ceremonies, the combination of the coming winter, the full moon, and the strong energies associated with October, it is not surprising that so many dogs have decided it is time to move on.

They are all wonderful in their own ways and they will each be missed for their unique characters.

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

The Amazing Wink

Yes, I know, I am captain of Team Bad-Blogger. It is a weird thing to say, but this job and life is pretty monotonous a lot of the time. Pretty much the only thing that changes is the people that show up to volunteer and occasionally the dogs. So, we get a lot of same-poop-different-day talk that just seems like it would be boring to read over and over and over again. I admire Clair's dedication to her blog, at least the weather changes and the birds sing where I'm living. I just got caught up on her blog and decided I should get about the business of writing one myself.
At the moment, I am feeling a little bit sad because I have some very good friends that are moving to Hawaii next Wednesday and they are in those final stages of packing and good-bye-ing and I am really going to miss them. On the up side, it gives me a reason to go to Hawaii.
I have been pet sitting like you wouldn't believe lately - I haven't slept in my own bed since September 17th. I am sitting for a co-worker's pets at the moment and it turns out she has a magical-genius foster cat. His name is Feldman, but we call him Wink. They have two other cats who tolerate (at best) Wink, so when I am not home and at night, Wink stays by himself in his own room, but during the day he can come out and socialize with the dogs and me. The other two cats, Ashes and Cinders, aren't really big fans of mine; they usually sleep on the bed but since I have been here they have been steering clear. So last night, somewhere in the middle of the night, one of the cats decided that I am the best ever and is all cuddly and purring and rubbing all over my head and face. I like cats, I don't like when they pull this stuff in the middle of the night - I am not a nice person when you wake me before I am planning to get up. So I kept gently pushing the cat off my head or rolling over, but there was a level of dedication and persistence that one would admire were it not sleeping time. I was very surprised by the behavior and I didn't really want to pick the cat up for fear that it would remember that it doesn't like me and decide to use any of the very sharp tools at its disposal to remind me of its dislike. But at a certain point, enough is enough and I reach out from the covers to grab the offending feline and gently plop it back on the floor, only to realize that the individual that has been pestering me is much too small to be Ashes or Cinders and should in fact be locked in another room at the moment. Bear in mind here that Wink knows how to open the door to his room, so there is a bungee cord on the door handle that (theoretically) keeps it from opening when he launches himself at the door. I figured he had taken enough shots at the door that he jostled the bungee loose or it broke or something like that, but I was way too groggy and tired to get up and investigate. I dozed for a few more hours until the sun came up, keeping an ear out for any unfriendly cat encounters, of which there were none. When I got up this morning, I wandered into the hall fully expecting to find the door open, the bungee hanging from its anchor point and all the cat food eaten by the Dakota (dog). So you can imagine my shock and amazement to find the bungee still in place and the door open about three inches. What Wink the Genius figured out last night is that if he reaches under the door and pulls the towel (for drafts) on the floor outside his room under the door (which he does regularly) and wads it up at the base of the door, it will create enough pressure on the door that when he jumps on the handle, it won't latch again and then he can use the towel to wedge the door open far enough for him to escape. I am guessing at the series of events here, but what I found this morning was a wadded up towel holding the still bungeed door open from Wink's escape. Pretty impressive little cat. I moved the towel away from the door to prevent a recurrence.