The Coming Changes

Well, here I am just wasting time in the Charlotte airport while I wait for my flight to Las Vegas and playing with my new little computer that I got from my mom for Christmas, it is a pretty neat little thing and it is hardly bigger than the average hardback book! It is a nice diversion from the people-watching and reading, I thought I would just write up a quick post and save the reading for the plane.

While I must admit that I was really not looking forward to heading back to the desert today, I am slowly getting more excited to see what has changed since I was last up at the Lodges. There was talk of trying to get Jerry Lee into a new group before I left. I hadn't really gotten to know him since I started at the Lodges, due in large part to the fact that his former run mate Coconut can be a little bit . . . bratty (or something else that starts with a "b") and she would get mad if he was getting attention and she was not.A few weeks ago his eye started looking really bad, it was getting cloudy on one side of the eyeball and really blood shot on the other side and seemed like it was starting to bulge out of the socket a little bit. I took him to the clinic and they asked if we would be able to get eye drops in him, which I was not very optimistic about and then they said he needed them four times a day and I got really doubtful that we would be able to safely do eye drops so many times a day before he got fed up and decided to eat one of us . . . he is a pretty big dog, probably some kind of Shepherd Akita mix and probably in the 70-80 lbs range. When I told Terry and Jorge that we were supposed to get the drops in him four times a day, they both laughed and said we should just ask for the oral medication - Jorge said he would call at the end of the day the next day to find out if I still had all my fingers. So you can imagine everyone's utter surprise when Jerry Lee took the eye drops like a pro . . . sort of. He does take every evasive maneuver he can think of, but he also knows that there are treats involved in these encounters and inevitably the treats win out. This dog, whose assessment says that he is a bit head shy (doesn't like his head to be touched too much) and is especially sensitive about his ears, is letting us man handle his head several times a day to get it into just the right position for the drops. Just before I left, he went back to the clinic and now has two different kinds of drops that he needs twice a day five minutes apart, but not more of the four times a day stuff. I have been just so very impressed by Jerry Lee's patience through all of this - not once, not on a single occasion has he even made any hint of an aggressive move toward any of the caregivers, in spite of all the man handling, not even a little growl over the course of two weeks! A few days after the start of the eye drops, we decided to take Jerry Lee out of the run with Coconut and put him by himself until we could find him some new run mates. We were told that he is not very good with male dogs, but they have since tested him and he has done just fine with males and females, which means that he can probably go into a group run, which would be wonderful for him. The day after I left, I am told they tried him in a run in a different area of Dogtown with another male and a female, but the other male didn't like Jerry Lee and went after him (from what I have heard, Jerry Lee again just took evasive measures and didn't really fight back). I am excited to see what has changed with Jerry Lee since I left and to find out if he has found some new run mates yet. He is a really great dog and I am really hoping that we can find his forever home soon.

I am sure there will be many changes once I get back to the Lodges, two days away always means moved dogs or new dogs, so I can only imagine what may have changed after a week away. I'll keep you posted! I hope you all have a safe and happy New Year!

It is time to board the plane, please excuse any typos or other weird grammar, I didn't have time to reread it before posting.

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Trash Cans and Traveling

Trash cans have been taking up entirely too much of my brain (and blog) space lately, but I am happy to announce that I finally found small, lidded trash cans that I could afford. Well, I don't know if afford is the right word here, but I am just not going to spend $30 on a fancy pants trash can that would hold three pieces of paper, a juice box, and a banana peel, just because it has a motion sensor that makes it open when you are nearby, so you don't actually have to touch it (which, I have to say, totally defeats the purpose of having a lid on a trash can to keep curious critters from using it as a snack bar in the first place). So, anyway, I found trash cans at Bed, Bath and Beyond that I really like. Not only are they small and simple with a swinging lid, but they are made of biodegradable plastic and they were $10 each - I just love the poetry of biodegradable trash cans. Plus they aren't ugly! Following Barrie's advice, I bought two, one for the bathroom and one for the kitchen. I almost went looking for them at Wal-Mart, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. We hates the Wal-Mart, we hates it! Anyway, that will hopefully be the last post about the state of my trash cans, we will now be leaving all the "Trash Talk" to the Clair the elusive Southern Polar Bear.

In other news, I am in Ohio for the holiday with my family (aka most of the people who are reading this blog), I arrived in late last night after a very long day of traveling. I left my house at 5:50 am to drive eighty miles to St George where I took a shuttle van to the Las Vegas airport two hours away and then proceeded to wait for three hours for my flight to take off . . . blah blah blah, we all know how these airport stories go. Anyway, I finally got to mom's house at about 11:45 pm, making it about sixteen hours of traveling, all after a long day up at BF and a short night of sleep. You may recall an earlier post talking about Sage, the dog with the head tilt and either a brain tumor or an inner ear infection. Well, I have been remiss in my duties here and I have forgotten to tell you all that our wonderful volunteers, Jeanne and Robin, offered to foster her in their home, she finally has her forever home in her old age. She has been doing amazingly well in their care, her head tilt is gone and she stopped circling (something that often accompanies the head tilt), she made herself at home immediately in their care and they fell in love with her the minute she walked in their door. She knows she is home. So you can imagine how distressing it was to be heading for the door, ready to start my vacation and hear that she was coming in and was not in very good shape, her head tilt was back, she was circling, and she was trying (unsuccessfully) to both vomit and poop. The last two things are classic signs of bloat, which, as it turns out was what was happening. She went through emergency surgery to reposition her twisted stomach and staple it to the abdominal wall so that it won't twist again. She has not been eating well for weeks, she had only had about a cup and a half of food the day she bloated, so the vets think she may have been "trying" to bloat for a while now, and it just wasn't until Monday night that she went into a full twist and bloat. With many dogs, you can actually see the bloat happening as their stomach distends, but Sage has an incredibly bushy, thick coat making it very difficult to see small changes in her shape. My co-worker, Terry, and I decided to stay with Jeanne and Robin while they waited for results from the surgery, which, thankfully, went well. Yesterday, she wasn't up and moving, yet, but she was giving kisses and seemed to be feeling somewhat better. The vets said that if she made it through the first 24 hours after the surgery, we were basically out of the woods. Thank goodness that Sage is such a stubborn, tough old broad; it was difficult to leave knowing that she was in such a precarious position, but there are a great many people that know and love Sage dearly and she does appear to be recovering well (Knock on Wood!), I just keep sending her all the good thoughts and healing energy I can muster.

While it is nice to have a break from work, it is strange to think that I won't be back at the Lodges for a whole week. Coming back from a two-day weekend can often mean new dogs, moved dogs, changed meds, and different routines, I can't imagine what it will be like to come back from a week away. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season and I will try to get a few more posts up in the coming days. Best wishes!

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

When the poo is covered in snow . . .

Thanks, Barrie, for the wastebasket advice, this has become something of a quest for me of late. There is, apparently, an alarming shortage of small wastebaskets with lids in Kanab, UT, big kitchen size ones are no problem, but I don't want one of those, I want a nice little one with a lid that can serve as a bit of a deterrent for any dogs I might bring home for a night. A little one can be tucked under the sink in my bathroom, not so with a big one, so, the wastebaskets are continuing to occupy too much of my brain space.

In other news, we are getting slapped around something fierce by Mother Nature this week, which has led to much snow-covered fun-filled shenanigans up at the Lodges. For those of you not experienced in golf cart driving in the snow without a windshield, let me tell you, it is both fun and frightening all at the same time. As the snow began to pile up (we are probably currently over a foot of snow right now - in the desert . . .), the golf carts did as well. One could find carts abandoned in several not-necessarily-road areas over the last couple of days, just piling up with snow and waiting for rescue (as a side note, let me just say, none of them were mine).

As for the ones still running, actually moving (especially from a stop) could be problematic, too. As I was coming around a turn, I saw co-worker Keely spinning her wheels and trying to "kick start" the cart (keeping one foot on the gas and pushing at the ground with the other foot). In an attempt to be helpful, I shouted up to her to pick up her feet and I would bump her with my cart to get going. Immediately after I finished yelling, she put her foot back in the cart, leading me to think she had heard me, but that was apparently not the case. When I bumped her, she jumped so far off the seat I thought she might hit her head on the roof and then turned around to see what had just happened. Upon seeing me, she began laughing and announced that I was lucky I didn't make her pee her pants, we couldn't stop laughing as I continued to push her struggling cart down the road.

There is just something about snow that makes it a lot easier to just let it go and laugh. It cushions you when you fall and provides easy ammo when you are annoyed, there is just something fun about snow - of course Clair may beg to differ, if I were surrounded by snow 24/7 as far as the eye could see for six months, I would probably not be so fond of it. But for us desert dwellers, it is kind of fun.

Snow does lead to a lot more maintenance work and throws the normal schedule at the Lodges into a blender. When we knew the first storm was coming in, we got all the normal first thing in the morning stuff done and then went out to start poop scooping - frozen poop has a lot of good qualities, less stinky, not mushy, etc, but I was told to keep my mouth shut when trying to whack frozen poo loose from the frozen ground (I haven't made the mistake of learning this lesson from personal experience, yet). We also get to go around and beat the ever-loving crap out of the shade tarps to knock the snow off before they collapse under the weight of the white stuff. It really is quite fun beating on them with broom sticks and throwing your whole body weight into the sagging tarps and jumping around to get the higher up parts, but boy do your legs hurt in the morning. And you do tend to accumulate other casualties during the process, we managed to punch a small hole in one tarp - turns out wooden broomsticks are better suited for not damaging the tarps - though, we did lose a wooden broomstick to a frozen tarp, snapped it like a toothpick which also led to nearly peed pants at the hilarity of it all and an wonderfully puzzled look on Theresa the dogs face at the two spastic nut jobs in her yard.

Sort of like this, but more puzzled.

Finally, I thought I would include a few more of the Favorite Photos of the Week from the BF Web site.

A view of the canyon in the snow.
A co-worker's dogs, patiently waiting in the snow for mom to go home.
How can you not smile at a face like that? His name fits him well - Charmer!

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Tough Question

Well, I should have known that when I tell folks to ask questions, Ben would ask the one question that I really can't answer - who is my favorite dog, aside from Shelby, of course? There are some really great dogs up at the Lodges and I don't think I could pick just one favorite. I do have some favorites though, Tasha, Marge, and Batman come to mind immediately. Then there's Archie and Ogy and Pinky Bear (aka Pinkerton), we can't forget Astronomy (aka Tronnie or Stinky Face - he eats poop) and Paris (Par Par) and Ophelia (the little Black Bean) and Ursa and Diego (the Crazy Kids), Buddah, Annie, Tex, Savannah, Rex (Sexy Rexy), Sophie, Twyla, Niblet (Nibbly Nibs or Nibnib), Rueben and more that I just can't think of right at the moment.

It was a good week up at the Lodges for the most part. One down side to the week is that Sage has been in the clinic all week with a very pronounced head tilt which generally indicates one of two things, an inner ear infection or a brain tumor . . . big difference. So we are still waiting on diagnostics to find out which it is, being that Sage has one ear canal that is completely closed up and another that is partially closed and she is deaf and has been subject to chronic ear infections in the past, we are really hoping that logic and history will win out over a brain tumor. In addition to our worries about Sage, Old Friends sadly lost a sweet dog named BJ a couple of days ago to bloat. Bloat is a very strange condition and vets really haven't been able to figure out what makes it happen, though there are a lot of theories. We always check on the dogs first thing in the morning and last thing at night to make sure (among other things) they aren't showing signs of bloat. When a dog bloats, the sphincter between the stomach and esophagus malfunctions and/or their stomach rotates either partially or fully (this is called torsion) closing off either end of the stomach causing fluids and gases to build up in the stomach causing it to bloat. If it is not caught soon enough, the stomach can become necrotic and the dog can die.

On the more positive side of things, Synergy continues to do well with Mowgli. They had a bit of a spat yesterday afternoon, so we decided to hold off on leaving them together for the night for a bit longer (when a new dog is introduced to a run, they are pulled out for the first seven nights in an effort to prevent any fights when there aren't staff around to break it up). The day of the disagreement was supposed to be the first night they spent together. We are also putting Tex and Savannah together and so far (fingers crossed!!) all seems to be going well. Tex is a Bloodhound mix, probably has some Shepherd in him, too and they think Savannah is an Aussie, Shar Pei mix, in person, she has got a face you just won't believe.

Savannah has been tried with several dogs, but always seems to get herself into trouble after a few days. Today will be day five of their living together and I really hope it continues to go well. Tex lived with Valentine for quite a while and has been solo for about a month since she got adopted and so we are really hoping that Savannah can be his new buddy.

And on a non-work related note, in the final days of my 26th year (no that is not a hint -seriously, not a hint!) I have taken a very big step. I will, in the next few days, be taking up residence in a house that I will have all to myself. That's right, for the first time in my life, I will live without any roommates; I have never lived on my own before, so I am both very excited and a little bit nervous about the whole thing. It is a one bedroom, one bathroom house and it is very nice and clean with a nice little yard and I can't stop obsessing about all the stuff I have to get. There is all the obvious stuff - bed, couch, table, etc., but then there's all the little stuff, too. One night, I lay away for an hour mostly debating with myself about whether I needed one waste basket or two, I may have driven myself completely insane before I have the chance to enjoy the house. As always, I hope you all had a great week and I will do my best to get back to the library tomorrow for another post (though, much of the day may be occupied by preparation for the new house and moving). If I don't get another post on here, have a wonderful week! (All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

The Not Macy's Holiday Parade

Nothing too exciting to report today. We had a holiday parade in Kanab last night, let me tell you, what a show, we are giving Macy's a run for their money! The streets were closed at about 6:55 pm so the parade could commence at 7:00; local businesses made "floats" (decorated cars for the most part) and of course there were the fire trucks and a mildly frightening Smokey the Bear tossing candy to hoards of onlookers. A bunch of Dogtown staff walked dogs (mostly their personal dogs) that were sporting a variety of holiday decor - flashing collars and twinkling lights - and Trixie the miniature horse pulled her pint-sized cart, all aglow with holiday cheer. It was pretty fun, Echo, one of the dogs I was pet sitting a couple of weeks ago was there and I think she licked the face of every kid in the crowd, twice. We walked down Main Street for a couple of blocks, then turned around and went back in the direction from which we had just come. It was quite a show, the streets were opened back up by 7:35 pm.
Elsewhere in life, I am working on finding a more permanent living situation. I am trying to find a good balance between being rational and too picky, which is a surprisingly difficult feat here in Kanab. I have been avoiding the task since I have been here, mostly because I knew that I had some pet sitting jobs lined up and I would be leaving to go back to Ohio for a week around Christmas and it seemed silly to rent a place that I wasn't going to be utilizing for all that time. But I am getting impatient and ready to find somewhere that I can make my own space and worry less about roommates - which is not to say that I don't like my roommate anymore, we are good - I am just ready to be more on my own . . . and get the rest of my suitcases unpacked, I have forgotten what most of my wardrobe even looks like.
That is about all I can think of at the moment, sorry for the shortness and the boringness of the post - it is kind of like Kanab in that regard. Hopefully I will have more exciting stories to tell next week (good/happy exciting, not the other kind, a book I am reading is talking about being careful what you wish for). Again I say, if you have questions, I would be more than pleased to address them and have something more to write about than just random thoughts.
Take care and have a great week!

Good News

Another week has come and gone and it is very hard to believe that it is already December. We've had some great news this week up at the Lodges and there are some exciting things happening. We found out yesterday that Ann Allums, one of the trainers, has chosen our lovable Mason to be her project dog in an upcoming season of National Geographic's "DogTown" TV series.The film crew arrived yesterday and spent the day getting acquainted with Dogtown and discussing which dogs will be filmed for the next batch of shows. I believe the next season of "DogTown" is already finished being filmed and is somewhere in the post-production process now, the filming that will be happening now will continue for several months, (in my completely unofficial, simply speculating opinion) I would guess that these episodes won't be airing until sometime late next year at the earliest. Mason has been without a home for quite sometime, I was told that he arrived at Best Friends when he was about a year old and he is now about eight. He is really great with people and CGC certified, but he is not so great with dogs or cats which is a stumbling block for many of our dogs. For those of you wondering, CGC stands for "Canine Good Citizen", it is a nationally standardized training and evaluation program to promote responsible dog ownership and well behaved dogs.

Elsewhere at the Lodges, one of our solo girls, Synergy, has made a new friend!All week she has been going on play dates with Mowgli, and after several years of living the single life, she may have found herself a run mate. After several days of short play dates, she spent the entire day with him yesterday and from all accounts, so far, things are going quite well. She has been solo for so long, because she is a very dominant female that has a tendency to hump other dogs (an expression of dominance) and get very overbearing. I don't know Mowgli personally, but I have been told that they have somewhat similar personalities, in other words, he won't take her nonsense, and it seems to be working out well. So if everything continues to go smoothly, Synergy will be moving up to Conrad's and Leopold's, a pair of octagons near the Lodges, and we will be getting one of their dogs.

Well, that is about all I can think of for today. If anyone has any questions about BF or Dogtown or what I do everyday or the nature of the universe, feel free to post them here or email them to me and I will do my best to answer them. Questions are good, they help me find things to talk about when I am trying to come up with ideas for posts. More tomorrow . . . (All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Tasha's Progress

Well, I know I have been talking a lot about Tasha, the adorable cattle dog that has some issues with human affection, but she is just making so much progress that I can't help but be excited for her. This past week was a very good one for her. She loves to go for rides in the golf cart (or cars, whatever), she just sits on the seat and watches the world go whizzing by, she loves it. Last Saturday, I took her for a ride around the Lodges on my golf cart (yes, they are still letting me drive one) and went up to the kitchen to say hi to some of the other caregivers. Tasha is really good with other dogs, so she got to meet Mini, our team leader, Michelle's, adorable and super laid back grey-blue pittie (she acts more like a cat than a dog sometimes) and even let Michelle pet her a little bit. Later in the week, some of our regular staff walkers (aka staff that work in other areas of BF, like the Welcome Center, that come up and walk our dogs, because they are staff, they are able to take out the red collars that volunteers can't take) had Tasha and her run mate Chow Baby out for a walk when I crossed paths with them on my golf cart. Tasha immediately climbed up into the cart and sat with me for several minutes so I could pet her. Another staff member, Mike, who has known Tasha for many years, was also standing there and commented on how much she has improved over the years, saying that they used to count to ten and then stop petting her. He said he always knew how long he could pet her before she would start growling and snapping and it is amazing to see how much progress she has made (not just with me, but since she initially arrived at BF). I have also gotten approval from management to take her on an off-leash hike sometime soon. The trainers have been organizing several weekly off-leash group hikes and I just know that Tasha would love to go and would do great off-leash (she used to go off-leash all the time), but because she is red collar, I had to check with a lot of people about it before I could get the okay, since volunteers and interns are often on the hikes. Now it is just a matter of finding some time to do it. Schedules have been a little up in the air of late and so the Dog Day thing hasn't really been happening, but hopefully over the next few weeks things will calm down some and we can get back to doing it, if she hasn't done an off-leash hike by the time I have my next Dog Day, I will do my very best to make it happen.
I might be able to get another post in tomorrow, it will just depend on whether I have time tomorrow night or not, don't hold your breath, but I will try. If I don't get it done, have a great week and I will get another one up on Thursday. (Photo copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Being Thankful

Well, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and ate some good food with good friends and/or family. I had a really nice time eating myself stupid with some of my coworkers, it was cold and rainy here yesterday which made for a really nice day to stay inside near a fire chatting and eating and then going to bed early.

It was another good week overall at the Lodges, there were a few bumps and bruises along the way but I have come out the other end of the week still moving forward. The bumps and bruises came into play on Sunday with Tina Louise. She is an incredibly sweet pittie that has some issues with other dogs and can be very reactive on leash. She is walked with a chain leash for this reason, because she tends to jump around and bite the leash when she sees other dogs and can't get to them.

I was delivering food, when Jeanne, one of our regular volunteers, came into the lodge I was feeding and asked if I could please come help right away. Another volunteer had taken Tina out for a walk and missed the path back to Tina's run and ended up coming down in between a bunch of other dogs' runs and Tina was becoming too much for this volunteer to handle. I went out and took Tina from the volunteer and got her back up to her run, where I took her in through the side gate instead of taking her in through the building where she would be passing some other dogs and might get even more worked up. As we walked through the gate, she pulled hard and fast to the right heading for the building, however, I wasn't yet through the gate and she ended up whipping my right forearm into the gate post and latch. It was incredibly painful but fortunately I was wearing four layers of clothing on my arms and it didn't break skin, there was a little bit of what looked like a rub burn but that was it. There was, however, some concern that she may have broken my arm. It was very sore for the rest of the day and my manager offered to take me down for X-Rays but I told him I wanted to give it a day and see how it felt. Since the swelling was minimal, there were no deformities, and there was no numbness or tingling I didn't really think it was broken. It remained quite sore on Monday, the thing that concerned me most was what was painful and what wasn't - lugging a full water bucket didn't bother me at all but holding a can of dog food like you would hold an open can of soda was surprisingly uncomfortable. By the end of the day Monday, I still wasn't convinced that I needed to get X-Rays, so I told my manager that I would have a final decision for her on Tuesday. (Side note: For those of you keeping track, I have two managers, one him and one her.) When I got home Monday night and unwrapped it (I was keeping it wrapped with an ace bandage for the rest of the week to provide some extra support for my wrist at the suggestion of manager John, who is also an EMT), it began feeling much better and by Tuesday it was feeling almost entirely better. I kept it wrapped for the rest of my work week, but it is doing just fine now. Right after it happened, everybody was saying that I was going to have a big nasty bruise from it, but I have never been one to get big nasty bruises - got one in hurricane force winds on a volcano in Guatemala, but that has been about it. So, I have been watching my arm intently for any signs of a big nasty bruise, and it looks like I have skipped that step in the healing process again (I am, admittedly, a little tiny bit disappointed).

So in the spirit of this Thanksgiving tradition, among all the regular things for which I am thankful - a loving family, great friends, cool dogs, etc - I am also very thankful for having two functional arms and two functional legs, none of which are broken (knock on wood!). I am also thankful that I got to have a little IM chat today with my great buddy Clair, the rare and elusive, South Polar Bear!

Clair and Fernando: Thank you for the Thanksgiving wishes! More tales from the Lodges tomorrow! (Photo copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Hello all!
Just wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!!!
As it turns out, the person for whom I am pet sitting this weekend has Internet access, so I will be able to get some more detailed posts up over the next couple of days. It has been a pretty good week with the dogs, I will go into more detail later.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, wherever you are! I will be at a coworker's house eating myself stupid on her twice-baked potato casserole and homemade bread - Thanksgiving, the holiday of Starch . . . for vegetarians, anyway :)

A Few More Ups and Downs

There hasn't been a lot of new and exciting stuff going on around the Lodges this week, so I am at a little bit of a loss as to what to talk about today, but I do have a few more little tidbits to tell about the past week. It is pretty mundane stuff, but this is what I do and these are the things with which we concern ourselves on a daily basis.
To begin with, one of my special buddies, Marge has decided that she isn't so fond of me or any of my coworkers at the moment. As I mentioned last week, she is being tested for ringworm on her ear flaps and we are treating her with a topical anti fungal solution. There are two ways to apply the solution, either squirt it directly on the sores or soak a piece of gauze and dab the solution on that way. It has become quite clear that Marge is not so fond of being "messed with" in these ways. Fortunately (knock on wood), she isn't aggressively making her displeasure known - no biting, no growling - but she is refusing to get anywhere near anybody right now. We have to follow her around her outdoor run until she seeks refuge inside and then get in there and get the stuff on her ears before she can get back out. She absolutely hates having it done and I can understand, I have a few splits and cuts on my fingers and I have gotten the solution in there and it doesn't feel very good. It makes me sad though to walk into her run and have her go in the opposite direction instead of barreling across her run grinning and then mushing her face into my legs. She doesn't like us very much right now. But on the up side for Margie, we had some absolutely wonderful volunteers up to help us out for a few days and they were staying at the BF cottages so we asked them if they would like to take Marge on a sleepover. I would like to try to get her on sleepovers at the cottages more because she can be a little "leaky" and a lot of people don't want to worry about that in a regular hotel room, but it is not big deal at the cottages. It took a little convincing, not because they didn't want to take her, but because they were going to need to be heading out of town by about 8:30 am to get back to Vegas in time for their flight, but they said okay and they just loved her to pieces. While I wasn't there to receive her when she returned, Keely told me that they said she was their "Heartbreaker" and they just didn't want to let her go. I was really happy that in the middle of this unpleasantness with her ear treatments, Marge was able to have a very special night with two very special ladies.
Elsewhere at the Lodges, we have been having some concerns about Heidi's weight, it has been fluctuating a little bit and she has been having some "poo" issues (not everyone that reads this is as okay with bodily functions as I am, so I will just leave it at that). A poo sample showed some bacteria (I think) that were either not supposed to be there or too abundant, so she was started on a ten-day course of meds and we re-weighed her on Wednesday. Over the course of two weeks since she was last weighed, she has put on about three pounds! We will re-weigh her again in a couple of weeks to make sure that she is either gaining or maintaining her weight, but this was a big step in the right direction for her. It's the small victories. :)
I am not sure what my schedule will be next week, I haven't been told that it will be different due to the holiday, so I will probably have Thursday and Friday off as usual. However, the library is closed next Thursday and Friday, so I will try to find some time earlier in the week to get over here and put in a post, but if I miss it, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Alex

I was just looking through the "Favorite Photos" section on BF Web site and came across this photo of our little Rottie mix, Alex - as you can see from the crazed look in his eyes, he LOVES his biscuits!

He missed that biscuit, but proved very adept at catching flying food. I was on the other end of the leash a few weeks ago when this was taken by one of our wonderful staff photographers, Molly Wald. We were going for a new cage card photo, but I don't think this one's going to be the final pick. More tomorrow, have a great night! (Photo copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Ups and Downs

Hello everyone, I hope you have all had a great week. This week was full of ups and downs at Dogtown and the Lodges. I am told that as the seasons change – fall to winter and spring to summer – we lose a lot of animals. I have known of dogs passing away, but Tuesday, November 18, Dogtown lost three of its charges in a single day. While I did not know any of the dogs personally, I know their caregivers and it was very sad to see the toll it takes on them. The loss of one of my charges is a day that I have dreaded since before I came here and I know it will reach me someday (hopefully not soon). One of the dogs that passed away was Trinket, she was a former resident of the Lodges and when she developed a brain tumor and began having seizures, our wonderful volunteers, Jeanne and Robin, offered to take her into their home as a hospice foster, giving her a home and all the accompanying comforts for the last months of her life. She was already living with them when I started, so I did not have the fortune of knowing Trinket, but she was loved by many and will be missed. We also lost Brandi, a dog that had recently arrived back at BF, and Huck, a resident of Old Friends. They will all be missed.
On the happier side of things, I am continuing to make progress with the dogs and have been trying to find time here and there to work with Tasha on her issues with affection. On Sunday, I had a little time in the afternoon and things were pretty quiet around Dogtown, so I got some really good treats, dried chicken and duck jerky broken into little pieces, and took Tasha to headquarters. I asked some of the staff if they would be willing to come pet her and give her some treats, explaining that she has a tendency to growl and snap when people pet her. Patti, one of our volunteer coordinators, was the first to step up (it helps a lot that Tasha is so adorable and people just want to get to know her). She gave Tasha a few treats and started petting her - not a growl, snap, or even curl of the lip from Tasha! More and more staff joined in and for ten minutes Tasha was getting pets and treats from people and took it all in stride. I was so excited I almost burst, though of course I had to keep a calm, cool head and not get her excited, but I could hardly contain myself!
While we had some very difficult losses this week, we are also continuing to make progress and create a better life for the dogs that are living at the Lodges. There are plans taking form that will, over the course of the next two years or so, really improve the lives of our dogs (and caregivers, too).
And, as a final note for today, perhaps the happiest story of the week – after ten years at Best Friends, our lovely pittie, Valentine has gone to her forever home! Strange though it is to see her run mate, Tex, solo these days, I couldn’t be happier for her and hopefully we can find Tex a new friend soon, enjoy Portland, Val!!

My Dog Day

I had my first "Dog Day" on Wednesday which was a wonderful way to end my week, I had so much fun just hanging out with dogs and taking them on extra long outings and walks. My first dog was Astronomy (no photo) of the "Digging Through the Desert" post. Being such a scent driven dog, I thought he might enjoy a trip down to Horse Haven and all the new and different smells that accompany horses, goats, burros, sheep, and pigs. The car ride down was . . . challenging; he was very excited and anxious and insisted upon leaping from the back seat to the front seat at ten second intervals for the entire ride. As we walked toward the horse and goat pastures after parking the car, he seemed to be enjoying the new smells and sounds of the area, until he spotted the goats and sheep and decided that it would be great fun to go chase them around and bark at them. As soon as he started fixating on the livestock, we turned around and went back in the other direction. I took him down into a small valley across the street from the Welcome Center and we took a nice long walk there instead. On the ride back up to Dogtown, I kept hold of his harness to keep him in the front seat and stop him from hopscotching back and forth (disclaimer: my preference is for dogs to ride in the back seat or have a seat belt in the front, however when the choice is seat belt-less front seat riding or risking driving off a cliff due to the distraction of a leaping dog, I choose front seat!).
My next playmate was Twyla, an older dog that is incredibly sweet but has issues with some people. We still aren't sure what gets her going so my team leader suggested getting her out and if she reacts negatively to anybody, make a note of it in her file so we can start working on those issues more. I decided to walk her down to Tara's Run, an open air building that has agility equipment, space to run, and some things dogs might find in a home environment. It is a great place to take dogs and let them go crazy for a little while off leash, even if you aren't doing agility training. Twyla is somewhere around eleven years old, so I wasn't about to have her jumping through tires, but I thought she would just enjoy the play time and did she ever! She did go over the A-Frame and the Catwalk with some enticing cookies from me, she even tried the See-Saw but got scared when it started to move. And the tunnels, oh she loved those tunnels, she was going through them without cookies, she just loved running in and out and investigating the fun sights and smells they contained. There was also the requisite frolicking with the stuffed animal in her mouth, we had a great time. After about fifteen minutes in Tara's, somebody else was in need of the space, so we took a walk down a trail that she doesn't usually get to use and by then she was getting tired and it was her lunch time so we headed back to her run.
After Twyla, I spent a little time sitting in Heidi and Pirate's run. Heidi is a very exuberant Rottie mix, but her run mate Pirate is incredibly shy and will only take treats from me through the dog door (I think there is one caregiver from whom he will take spoonfuls of wet food when she is giving out meds). I had to lock Heidi inside while I went and sat outside with Pirate. He only ever came within about six feet of me and spent most of the time pacing, barking and growling well away from me. Once we get into a better rhythm of Dog Days, we are hoping to start hand feeding him which will do wonders for increasing his desire to be with humans.

After about 25 minutes with Pirate, I went down to give Niblet (no photo) his fluids and then it was my lunch time.

After lunch, I went to visit with some of our new residents, Cole and Bagera (no photos). They are both shy and not able to be leashed up for walks yet. They will come close enough to take treats and Cole likes to stand about four feet away and bark at you. I took some treats and a leash down with me and just sat in their run for about a half hour. They were curious about the leash and perfectly willing to take the treats, but I wasn't able to get the leash on either one of them.
At about 1:40, it was time to take Pickles to his Hydrotherapy appointment.

BF has a special underwater treadmill for physical therapy for some of the animals. Pickles has bad joints and bow-legs, so he goes to Hydro three times a week. It was only just a few weeks ago, after three months of appointments, that they were finally able to get him to actually walk on the treadmill. They were just filling the tank with enough water to take some of the pressure off his joints and letting him wander around for a little while. Over the last couple of weeks he has gone from no treadmill time to walking for a couple minutes at a go with somebody in the tank with him and a belly sling to help him from sliding back on the treadmill to walking for twelve minutes in the tank by himself at this most recent visit. It has been very cool to see him finally get it and be making such great progress.

After Pickles was back in his run, I decided to take Tasha for a special outing. There used to be a caregiver that worked down at Horses that would come up and get Tasha most days and take her down to be an out dog at Horses (out dogs get to walk around off leash and out of runs because they can be trusted not to wander off or get into trouble - usually). I decided that Tasha might like to go visit her old stomping grounds for a little while. Unlike Astronomy, Tasha was an absolute dream in the car, sitting quietly in the back seat watching the scenery go by. When we arrived at horses she was very excited to be somewhere different. We walked all around the horse pastures and even passed somebody else walking their little dog. Not a single bark or growl at anybody (human or animal). She is a truly excellent dog and I would love, love, love to see her find a home someday. She is almost ten years old and is so incredibly well behaved its is amazing, she just has this one issue that has been holding her back. She comes to people like she wants to be pet but then when they start petting her, she sort of panics and starts growling and snapping. I have been working on this with her, and Keely, another caregiver has been doing the same, hopefully, with a concerted effort, we can really start making some good progress with her.

After Tasha's outing, it was time for Marge's clinic appointment. I noticed some crusties on her ears about a week ago and the Dog Tech suggested we take her to the clinic. Now, I will admit, Marge is one of my favorites up at the Lodges, on of our smilers and she just loves to bury her face in your legs ("Itchy Face!") while you scratch her butt and she dances with her back feet. I will admit, I have given her more than a few kissed on the head over the past few weeks, and now it has been determined that she probably has some kind of topical fungal infection (possibly ringworm) on her ear flaps, so Keely and I were joking that our lips are probably going to fall off or something (Keely kisses her, too). Just as the vet was telling me to make sure everyone knows to wash their hands after handling her ears, Keely walked into the clinic and grabbed Marge's head and laid a big kiss on her head. The vet looked at me and said, "Tell her to wash her hands."

By the time I got Marge back to her run, I had just enough time to fill out files for a few of the last dogs I had taken out and then went down to spend a few minutes with Ophelia in her run, since I didn't have time during the day to get her out for some more fun. She is such a cuddle bug though, I think she enjoys just having somebody around for a while to pet her and rub her belly.

All in all it was a great day. I want to get a little more organized about my next Dog Day, perhaps have a bit of a plan in place already, so that I can work with a few more dogs, but for the dogs that I did work with Wednesday, they had fun and really, that is what it is all about. I hope everyone is doing well and has a great weekend!

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Dog Days and Birthdays!

First let me address the comment from "-J.", also know as John Sibley, a friend and fellow caregiver at BF, John: very funny, it was difficult to contain my laughter at the library; everybody else: while I did run my golf cart into an electrical box last week, I am nowhere near as much of a terror on wheels as the lady in the video (I've never bailed out!). It is definitely going to take a while to live that one down, though; more than one person has suggested a helmet and seat belt might be in order for my golf cart.
And to the comment from Ben and Emily, you just let me know when you are ready and we will make it happen!
Now on to the good stuff. It has been a good week at the Lodges. We have had a lot of dogs moving around within the Lodges and a few new arrivals (and departures and rearrivals - it can get confusing). We also have a new caregiver that will be at the Lodges full time and it looks like they are going to start giving us some more people part time, too! This is all very exciting because it means that we will finally have more time in our days to spend with the dogs. Over the last month, there has not been a lot of time to spend with the dogs outside of the time when we are in their runs to clean and poop scoop. But now that we will be having four to six people consistently up there, we are making a plan that is going to make things so much better for caregivers and dogs alike. Introducing the "Dog Days" plan!!! Anytime there are more than four people working at the Lodges, four people will work like it is a normal day, doing the feeding, cleaning, meds, etc and the extra person(s) will get to have a "Dog Day" where they get to spend the whole day with the dogs playing, walking, going on outings, working on issues, and socializing, they will also be responsible for any clinic or hydrotherapy appointments and giving Niblet his fluids. Everybody is very excited about the idea and it is proving to work very well so far! I got to have a dog day yesterday and it was just so nice to get to do fun dog stuff all day long, going for outings and walks and just hanging out with dogs. Plus, when the other caregivers know that there is somebody having fun with the dogs, it makes their days better too.
Well, I am about out of time today at the library, I will have a good long post tomorrow all about my dog day!!
And as a final note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BEN!! Here's to the final year of your twenties!

Part of the Gang

I heard from one of my coworkers yesterday that a pair of our dogs, Ivy and Fiero, are going to be moving over to the Heights today! This is very exciting news for them, they are both great dogs and both green collars, by being moved over to the heights, they will get a lot more exposure to people and their chances of getting adopted will go way up. I hope we can get more of them moved over soon, we get some volunteers at the Lodges, but it is just a drop in the bucket compared to what they get in the Heights. Almost all of the dogs in Dogtown Heights are green collars that are great candidates for adoption so that is where the search often begins for a lot of people (some who don't know they are looking until they've met their new best friend).

This is Ivy, how can you not fall for that grin!

And this is Fiero, he is such a character, pretty short but just full of energy and ready to be friends with anyone who happens into his run.
On the Ballsy front, I am happy to report that I think I might have a better handle on how to read him. It seems that it is all about his tail - if he is unsure, he stands with his tail like a flagpole, straight up in the air and stiff as can be, but if he is happy to see you, it is just wagging away. When I walk into his lodge now, instead of a flagpole I am seeing wags and that is a great feeling. I have been taking an extra minute or two with him here and there, just petting and hanging out when I can. I am feeling more and more accepted by the dogs. I didn't really see it until we had some new people in the area helping out for a few days, we had two two-weekers (people doing an employment evaluation) and then we had some staff from other areas helping us out this past week while some of our regular staff were on vacation/weekends. It is amazing how fast you forget what it was like being the new kid on the block with the dogs, I am so used to being able to walk into lodges now and get a few welcoming and excited barks (especially around feeding time) that it was a bit jarring to go around with the unfamiliar people and see how the dogs were responding to them - not so welcoming barks from a lot of the dogs. While I don't want to sound like the plight of others makes me feel good, it did help me to realize that I am being accepted by the dogs and they are treating me differently now than they treat strangers. I talked about Batman in a previous post, he is barrier aggressive and a lot of people take a very long time before going in with him. These days he is so happy to see me most of the time and just wants me to pet and love on him for as long as I can stay. It is strange to see this wonderfully friendly and affectionate side of some of these dogs and then see how they respond to somebody new. Well that is about all I have time for today, the library is closing momentarily, so I must be going. Have a wonderful week! (Photos are still copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Digging Through the Desert

Sorry for the long time between posts. My roomie Carissa was having a Halloween costume crisis last Friday and so we were running all over town all day trying to create the perfect look for her, quite a chore in Kanab, Utah. And, this week, I changed shifts with one of my coworkers, so I am off today (Friday) and tomorrow, but worked yesterday. It was a long week, we were a little short on staff and I had six days straight, but there were no major catastrophes - a few minor ones (one involving myself, a golf cart, and a big green electrical box that is now slightly out of place), but nothing that can't be fixed :)
Being that things were a little tight on the staffing side this week, though not as bad as it could have been, I was surprised to get to spend as much time with dogs as I did - guess we are getting more organized about things! Overall, it was a pretty good week. I took Astronomy for a walk this week, what a dog (sorry, no photo). I am told that he came to BF from a Catahoula breeder along with a litter of his puppies. He is a purebred Catahoula Leopard Dog and is all grey with dark grey spots and patches (aka Blue or Merle). They are very smart, very motivated working dogs that are often used for hunting and herding but I think they would be great at a number of other dog jobs. Astronomy, Tron or Tronnie for short, loves to dig holes, deep, big holes that he could probably get lost in if given the opportunity. During our walk, which felt more like an archaeological expedition, we stopped to dig a number of rather small investigative holes. Upon reaching a prime piece of digging territory (I have yet to determine the qualities of prime territory), Tron would settle into his mission, digging and sniffing and digging, then repositioning to get a better angle, digging, removing obstructive roots, sniffing, and digging until I could finally convince him to move along, at which time we would begin the exploratory process all over again. I lost count of the number of investigative holes he dug, I think we ended up with three or four big holes, deep enough to fit the entirety of his upper body to his waist or more, at times all you could see through the flying sand were his back legs splayed across the ground, his butt in the air, and his tail going like you wouldn't believe. It was all great fun! There is a construction crew up at the sanctuary getting ready to put in water to the dog park over in Dogtown Heights and I have been thinking about suggesting Tron go over to help with the trenching - cheap labor and he would love it! If you know any excavators looking for a trusty sidekick, send 'em Tron's way.
I hope everyone had a great week and enjoys their weekends! I will try to get back to the library to post again tomorrow. It looks like more people are having success with the comments, keep trying, I like reading them (it can be pretty tricky to decipher the anti-spam codes that you have to enter in order for the post to go through).

Getting Comfortable

Well, it was another good week up at the Lodges. I took Ballsy for a walk this week, just trying to get to know him better. He is a tricky dog to figure out and I am having a lot of trouble reading him. The way he looks at me (and others) through the gate, I never really know what to expect when I walk up to his door. He does seem to be getting more comfortable with me (knock on wood) and since the walk even more so, but I am still catching him momentarily curling his lip at me like he isn't really sure if he is going to wag his tail or growl at me. During our walk, we stopped at a bench and I just sat down to see how he would respond and he came right over to me and was rubbing his head up against me and leaning against me for a few minutes and then it was time to walk again. Later in the week, I was able to go in with him and clean his run and we got along just fine. I was out to dinner with some coworkers this week and one of them asked me which dog(s) at the Lodges is the most challenging for me and the first dog to mind was Ballsy, just because he is so hard to read - there are dogs that are more outwardly aggressive (especially at the gate), but at least then you know what your getting yourself into before you go in.

Elsewhere at the Lodges, I have been making more and more canine friends. The other day, I went into a run with a Chow named Ms. Martha (no photo on the BF Web site). I've been in with her before and she is very nice but had been rather stand-offish, not in an aggressive way, but she just seemed disinterested. So, I was quite surprised when I walked into her run to poop-scoop and she sidled up to me and as soon as I patted her on the head she started acting like we had been best friends for life, rubbing her head against my legs and pawing at me and leaning into me. It was very sweet. When I told my coworkers about it, I learned that I didn't even get the full Ms. Martha experience, she has been known to come flying across her run to jump into people at full speed.

After a long week of work, I was a getting a bit tired and frustrated yesterday around lunch time, so I just decided to make quick work of my lunch and then I went and sat with Ogy for about ten minutes. I just needed a little time to chill out and hang with a dog without 42 other tasks waiting to be done. Ogy is incredibly affectionate with people, he just loves them to pieces, his run is closest to our main building so he gets to see lots of people coming and going. You can often see him (and sometimes hear him) watching people through his fence and whimpering for somebody to come visit him. He is very popular with our volunteers and everybody else who knows him. While I was in visiting him, he was all too willing to just plop down right in my lap, in spite of the fact that he weighs probably about 60-70 pounds. For a while he sat with his back to me and his butt in my lap, I could pet him and he could keep an eye on things. Then he just leaned back against me and sort of flopped over so I somehow managed to have this entire dog sprawled across my lap and chest. He is a really good dog with people, but not so good with other dogs and a very accomplished escape artist, which is why it has been so very difficult for him to find a home.

But, it has been a good month for adoptions at the Lodges. We had three dogs go to forever homes this month, Whitney, Scarlet, and Mr Bones. I didn't know Whitney very well, she is a pittie mix and her family seems very happy with her. Scarlet is one of my favorite dogs that I have met at BF, she is a very soft white pittie mix with tan patches over her eyes. She is a Hurricane Katrina dog and she has the best bark, she will stare at you and if you don't do anything, she will start "roo-rooing". That is the noise she will make, "Roo ROoo ROOo ROOO!!!" That was my nickname for her "Roo-Roo", it took my coworkers a while to figure out who I was talking about when I would call her that. Her new family seems great and I was very happy to see her go (sad too, but mostly happy). And after thirteen years at BF, Mr. Bones has finally gone home. This was huge news and people from all over the sanctuary were coming up in the days before he left to wish him well and send him on his way across country to Maryland. Bones was featured on one of the first season episodes of the TV series "DogTown" and the ladies that adopted him said that all the way from Utah to Maryland they kept meeting people at restaurants and rest stops that knew Bones, he is quite the celebrity in his own right.

As a side note, I have heard that some people have been trying to post comments here with no success. I am not really sure why this is happening, but I am looking into it. If you have questions or comments and you can't get them to post, feel free to email them to me and I will address them here. More tomorrow, I hope everyone had a great week! Again, all photos are copyright Best Friends Animal Society.

A Day in the Life . . .

As promised yesterday, here is a description of what goes on each day up at the Lodges.
The day starts at 8 am - on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we have a Dogtown staff meeting at 8, so we don't get up to the Lodges until about 8:20-8:30. First thing somebody goes around and does the morning check, this involves stopping at all fifteen lodges and making sure that everyone is there and okay. This is also the time when certain dog's doors get propped open for the day and in a few of the two-dog runs we hang one of their beds up on the wall to give them some more room to maneuver and make it easier for caregivers and volunteers to get in and out of the runs. While the morning check is happening, somebody else is going around giving dogs their morning meds, most of the dogs just get a spoonful of wet dog food with their pill(s) stuck in the food, the trick is keeping it all straight who gets which meds. Each dog that gets meds has their own cup in a mini-muffin pan, so it isn't that difficult - unless you hit a big bump with the golf cart and send meds flying, but we usually travel with a towel over the muffin tins to keep this from happening. Also during the morning check and morning meds, somebody is making up and delivering the morning feeding for the five dogs that get food first thing in the morning. Five dogs out of 90+ doesn't sound like that much, but two of these dogs are very picky eaters and it sometimes involves a lot of culinary creativity to come up with something they will eat. Once all of this is done, we have a few dogs that rest for a couple of hours each morning, so we have to make sure they are blocked inside their runs. And then if we are lucky and have enough people and time, we can get a dog or two out for a walk before we have to start the morning feeding. Sometimes, if there isn't really enough time to go for a good long walk, you can go hang out in a run for a little bit and just have some fun there.
Around 9:30 am we usually start "cooking" the morning feeding - we don't actually cook anything, it is more just preparing. All the dogs get a morning feeding (the ones that get fed first thing get a "token" which is usually just a spoonful of wet food in a bowl or a handful of kibble so they don't feel left out). There are two sides to the kitchen so generally one person cooks one side and another cooks the other side. I have found that the fastest and most efficient way to prepare the feeding is to mix everything in the sink. On one side this involves mixing roughly seventy cups of kibble, about seven six-ounce cans of wet food, and about three cups of water, on the other side it is slightly less, using probably about 55-60 cups of kibble, six cans of wet, and two and a half cups of water (give or take). Each run has a food card that goes in their bowl so the people delivering food know which bowl goes to which dog. If there are enough staff, one person delivers the food from one side of the kitchen and another delivers the other side as the food is being prepared. Then they go around and pick up the empty bowls they delivered as they are delivering later groups of food. As the dirty bowls start arriving, the cooks are usually finished serving up bowl and switch over to dishwashers once their sinks are cleaned out. Sometimes we have two people washing and bleach rinsing and sometimes we have one person wash and another rinse the usually 100+ bowls and then they have to be dried and restacked for the afternoon feeding. By the time dishes are all done it is usually about 11:30am, which leaves just enough time for someone to dole out all the meds into the muffin tins for the afternoon and following morning. Other staff are usually out running around letting out the resters (the dogs that have to rest for a half hour after eating, usually for medical reasons), and sometimes somebody might go get a head start on poop-scooping or water buckets before lunch. We also have a dog that get sub-cutaneous fluids each day so if there is time before lunch, somebody may go down and give Niblet his fluids, otherwise that happens just after lunch. During lunch, pretty much everything shuts down from 12-1 everyone eats and takes a break before the afternoon gets rolling.
At 1 pm, if he hasn't already had his fluids, a couple of staff go down to give Niblet his fluids and somebody else gets the food ready for the couple of dogs that get fed at 1:30 and delivers their meals. As these tasks get finished, we start poop-scooping or cleaning and changing water buckets. We alternate days, poop-scooping one day and sweeping out the buildings and cleaning out water buckets the next day, then back to the poop the following day. Depending on how much time we have and how many staff and volunteers, if we can dump the water buckets and give them fresh water each day that is the preference, but some days if we are short on time or staff or both, we will just top off the buckets that are still pretty clean and clear and only dump the really sandy, drooly, and/or peed in buckets.
Around 3 pm we start preparing the afternoon feeding. Only about half of the dogs get an afternoon feeding - either medically they require it, or they need too much food each day to get it all in one feeding (usually anything more than 3 cups of food a day has to be divided into two feedings). In the two dog runs where one dog gets a feeding but the other doesn't, we give them a token so they don't feel left out, so this works out to about 45-50 dogs getting some kind of food in the afternoon and 50+ more bowls to be washed, rinsed and dried.
After all the afternoon feeding is taken care of, we have to do the evening meds, let out the resters from the afternoon feeding, and do the evening check - closing propped open doors, putting beds down, turning on heaters and making sure everyone is present and accounted for and still looking healthy. And the day ends at 5 pm.
I have probably forgotten some things here, but you get the basic idea. Now I need to go home and take a nap because I am exhausted just thinking about it all!

I've met them all!

Well, I have made it through another week at Best Friends and I am learning and doing more every day. I have now been in with every dog in the Lodges at least once. My team leader decided that I should take some time with Roger, a former caregiver now staff dog walker that has worked with the Lodge dogs for the past nine years. He knows them as well as anybody, so Michelle (team leader) decided to have me go on walks with Roger and the dogs I hadn't met yet. Florence was our first challenge, she is a really sweet dog once she knows you, but I am told that she has bitten people in the past as they turn their backs to leave her run.

This is Florence. I have never seen a dog with ears quite like hers - she isn't doing it in the photo, but she often carries her ears directly on top of her head so that the tips and inside edges are touching, it looks like she is wearing some kind of squashed up, misshapen pill-box hat.

This is Charmer, Florence's runmate. He is big and strong and pretty goofy most of the time. While I walked Florence, Roger took Charmer on a walk down a different path, because the two of them can be very crazy at the beginning of their walk. Charmer likes to try and walk himself by biting the leash so he has to be walked with a chain leash (as you can see in the photo) because he can bite through the fabric and woven nylon ones.

I also finally got to know Paris (no photos) a black pit mix with some white on her face and feet. She likes to bark at the gate or the fence when she doesn't know somebody, but after she gets used to you, she becomes all wiggles and wags. I was doing my very first morning check - going around to make sure everybody is present and accounted for and healthy, propping open some doors and putting up some beds - and Paris' door needs to be propped open for her runmate Becket who is blind and has trouble with balance. One of the other caregivers was going to come around to their lodge to open the door since I hadn't successfully met Paris yet. But then, when I walked into her building to make sure everybody was there and okay, she was at the gate just wiggling away and waiting for me to come say hi. After a moment of thought ("Should I or shouldn't I?"), I decided to just go for it, I had been told, if she isn't barking at the gate, she will be fine, and she was. She acted like she had known me for years and just wanted some love. It was a really great way to start the day. Later that morning I took her for a walk with Roger.

This is Waylon, the day after I walked Florence and Paris, I got to take him for a walk. He is a big chow mix and has a tendency to bite, especially when people are leaving his run. On the up side, he is incredibly food motivated, so if you toss a few cookies to the other side of the run or just hold them up out of reach, he will fixate on them and you can easily get out of the run.

Since walking Waylon, Florence, and Paris, I have been able to go into their runs to retrieve their food bowls, which is making life a lot easier for everybody at the Lodges. It used to be that someone would ask me to go do something in 13 and 14 (their lodge numbers) and I would have to say, "Well, I can do everybody except these three because I haven't met them yet." Now, I can just say, "Okay!" and go do it.

I have also been spending time with a dog named Tasha, working on making friends with her. She seems like she wants to be around people, but then she gets nervous and starts growling or snapping a little bit. It is a slow process to get to know her, but she is very smart and knows a lot of commands. Her run mate, Chow Baby, has a trachea problem and has to have three meals a day of wet dog food mixed with water until it is the consistency of a smoothie. He eats pretty quickly, so I have been grabbing a few treats and going in to feed him and then while he eats, working with her a little bit on her basic commands and letting me pet her. Yesterday, when I went into their run to change their water buckets and she walked over to me while I was putting down their outside bucket, so I knelt down to say hi. When I did, she came right up to me and laid down, wedging herself under my my leg as I was kneeling and just laying there for a minute. It was very exciting for me!

This is Tasha, her adoption bio says she is an Australian Cattle Dog mix, she is colored like a Dalmatian, but has the build and coat length more like a cattle dog.

And this is Chow Baby, her run mate - clearly a Chow.

I will try to get another post in tomorrow, I was thinking "A Day in the Life of a Lodges Caregiver". I hope everyone has had a great week! Again, all photos are Copyright Best Friends Animal Society.

Pet Sitting and Photos

I am just enjoying my second day off this afternoon and thought I would take a little time to write up a quick post. I am heading out into the boonies later today - and I really do mean boonies, I will be about 30 miles outside of Kanab just outside the Coral Pink Sandunes State Park. Tamara, one of the trainers at the sanctuary, is out of town for work and asked me to pet sit for part of the time she is gone, so from tonight (Friday) through Sunday night I will be staying at her house in the middle of nowhere taking care of three of her dogs and her eight cats. It is a beautiful drive to get out there, but it is incredibly remote, cell phones are just paper weights out there, but she does have a land line. I am a little nervous about the whole thing, it is getting into deer migration season around here and they are all over the place, plus there is BLM grazing land all around where I will be driving, so not only do I have to avoid the deer, but cows too. And I am told that if you hit a cow on BLM land you are responsible for all the damage to your vehicle and you have to pay to replace the cow! Tamara says it takes about 30 minutes to get from her house to work, but I think I will be giving myself more like 45, just so I can go slow. When I rode up to her house with her, I also noticed the monster pot holes along the road, the locations of which she seems to have memorized and avoids, I will have to go a lot slower to keep from losing my car in one of these holes. I will be careful though, and it will be nice to have my own space and sleep in a bed for a couple of nights (I am sleeping on a friend's couch right now until I find something more permanent).
On my last post, Ben asked if I might be able to add pictures of some of these dogs that I have mentioned. I don't currently have a digital camera, but I will try posting some photos from the BF website. The ones posted here are those that have an adoption bio on the BF website; Meatball, Rex and Archie don't have bios on the website yet, so I wasn't able to find and photos of those three. Please note that all the following photos are Copyrighted to Best Friends Animal Society.

This is Ophelia, she is the master of the puppy dog face!

This is Ballsy, he can be a tough nut to crack, but a lot of people really love him.

This is Batman, the Heinz 57 that likes to intimidate people at the gate.

This is Marge, the picky eater, I really like her a lot though, she is a very sweet dog and a smiler like Archie.

It is back to work tomorrow, so there isn't a lot of promise for more posts until my next weekend. Have a great week!

Making Progress

Well, it has been a nutty week. I worked the last six days, so I took advantage of the sleeping-in opportunity today and didn't crawl out from the covers until after 11. The weather has ranged from wintry last weekend with temps in the 20's-30's and snow to summery this weekend with temps in the 70's-80's and clear blue cornflower skies. Work is going well, I am getting to know more and more dogs and there are only a few now that I have not been in to meet, yet. This week, I went in with Batman, a Heinz 57 type dog, nobody seems to be able to come to a consensus on his lineage, pit-bull, German shepherd, hound of some sort, and a million other suggestions seem to be tossed into the discussion when he comes up. He can be quite barrier aggressive, he barks and acts all intimidating at the gate or fence, but give him a cookie and walk in and he is pretty pleasant, usually running off to investigate something else. I also met his neighbor, Meatball, another barrier aggressive dog. The two of them going nuts at the doors right next to one another is just about enough to make you turn around and walk back out of the building. Meatball is by far one of the most appropriately named dogs at BF, he is a Rottweiler mix, slightly shorter than most Rotties and with longer hair and a gigantic Meatball of a head (his nickname is "Meathead"). Like Batman, he is pretty nice once you get through the gate (with cookies).

A big challenge of the week (and probably every week) is Marge, a black short haired mix that tends to be a very picky eater. She seems to do okay in the afternoons, but in the morning you have to get really creative to get her to eat. I had some success for a couple of days with a new presentation of her regular meal, she ate it up as soon as I put it down. But by day three she was much less interested. I think it is going to come down to coming up with a few different serving methods and changing it up for each meal . . . we all like some variety.

I also got called out by one of my coworkers for picking favorites (everybody has them) and Ophelia is quickly becoming one of my top picks. I had to have my staff photo taken this week, which of course must include at least one dog, so Ophelia came as my canine cohort. She was excellent, I sat on the ground and she climbed into my lap and smiled for the camera, it was a lot of fun. She really is a very sweet dog and I want to find out more about her. She is in a single dog run, which usually indicates that she is dog aggressive, but everyone I have asked has sort of shrugged and hinted that she is probably one of those that can be aggressive in the Sanctuary environment but in a home environment might be fine with other dogs.

In a final note, I have been able to venture back into Ballsy's run to feed him and pick up his bowl. I haven't gone any further than that (ie: poop-scooping, cleaning) but I am working my way in that direction. Knock on wood that things continue to go well.

Making Friends

Well, there isn't a whole lot to report since Tuesday. I have another partial day off, my schedule got all messed up for my first weekend, so instead of having Tues and Weds off, I had Tues and most of Thurs, but I had to go up to the sanctuary today for a training meeting.
Yesterday, I helped a lot more with actually getting out and feeding the dogs (most days I have been preparing bowls while others deliver them). Delivering is a good way to get to know the dogs and get them to like me. I have been having a bit of difficulty figuring one guy out, his name is Ballsy (not because he likes to play with balls . . .) and he is pretty hinky with some people. The first day I went in with him he was great, I gave him his afternoon feeding and picked up the bowl without any trouble. So the next day during morning feeding, I walked up to the door to bring him his lunch and he started barking at me like he would eat me if I walked into his run. Ever since then, I haven't gone in with him because he does the barking thing at the door. If I give him treats through the door, he does okay, but it is weird to be able to go in with a dog one day and have him all snarly and barky the next.
I have, however, been having better luck elsewhere. Ophelia, a little black pit bull mix, is quickly becoming one of my favorite dogs to visit in the Lodges. Unlike many of the dogs in that environment who will bark relentlessly at you for attention, she likes to stand at her fence and wait patiently with a hopeful look on her face. She might whimper or bark a little bit, but mostly she just watches and waits and then gets all wiggly when you come visit her. She just really likes to be around people, very friendly little girl.
In the afternoon yesterday, I poop scooped with Jorge. He is really, really good with the dogs, so he was able to introduce me to some that I hadn't yet met, though there are still some that I haven't met. This weekend when a couple of staff dog walkers come up that know a lot of the dogs really well, my immediate supervisor, Michelle, wants me to go on some walks with them and some of the more difficult dogs to start getting to know them better.
In closing, I just wanted to mention that if you have any questions about BF or dog caregiving, post a comment or send me an email and I will do my best to answer you questions.

Day One and Then Some

So, it has been almost a week since the last post, and oh what a week it has been. In the last post, I promised to cover Day One, but this post will be covering Week One. As mentioned before, The Lodges is very spread out and there are over 90 dogs residing in the area. The day to day schedule varies between three to six staff and yet there never seems enough time to get everything done. Most days I have been able to walk one or two dogs in the morning after getting the early eaters fed and before starting to "cook" the morning feeding. A big part of day one was just familiarizing myself with the area again, getting to know my coworkers (Terry, Larry aka Bob Vila, Keely, Jorge, and Michelle), and meeting some of the dogs. I should also mention here Jeanne and Robin, the wonder-volunteers, they come to the Lodges five days a week in the morning to walk dogs and socialize with them, they are both really great people.
There is a rather odd mishmash of dogs up at the Lodges, many of them are dog aggressive to some degree and some of them are very quirky about people they do and don't like. And then there are those that look like they might try to eat you alive at the gate and as soon as you go in with them they are all wags and sniffs. On day two, one of the dogs at the Lodges, Sophie, had been changed from a red collar to a purple one, so Jeanne and I took her and her red collar run mate, Rex, for a nice long walk (quick rundown on collar color meanings: green - volunteers may walk them, purple - volunteers over 18 may walk them, yellow - okay with volunteers in their runs, but no walks, red - staff only). Rex is one of the most unusually colored dogs I have ever seen; he has a long black saddle over his back (like a German Shepherd), gold and black brindle legs, a white neck with black ticking, some grey on his head - he has just about ever patterning of color a dog can have, and he is a really nice dog. Sunday I met another character up there that just cracks me up every time I see him now. He is a big black lab mix with a white chest; he is a red collar dog and he will stand at the door to his run and bark or snarl at you and between the black coat and red collar, he looks incredibly menacing. That is until you realize that he isn't so much snarling as he is grinning with the excited hope that you are there to play with him, every time he gets excited (especially when running toward somebody) he curls his upper lip into a big grin. Once you get past the intimidating appearance, he is just a big clown. Overwhelming though it may be, things are going quite well, and as I get settled in, I will be sure to share more tales of the Lodge Dogs. I have another day off on Thursday, so I should be able to post again then.

Getting Started

I just wanted to give everyone an update on the last 48 hours. I left Boise at about 10:30am Tuesday to drive to Kanab. It is said that the drive takes about ten hours, but between Salt Lake City traffic, my self imposed 72 mph speed limit (for fuel conservation), and a need to stop at virtually every rest area I passed thanks to the copious amounts of fluids I have been drinking in an effort to bring an end to the cold I picked up, it was about 9:45 pm before I finally arrived at Carissa's house in Kanab. Carissa is another dog caregiver, she works with the Michael Vick dogs, aka the Vicktory Dogs; I stayed with her when I was here in the summer and am going to stay with her until I find a more permanent living situation. After unloading my car - which was packed to the roof (I'm not exaggerating) - and cramming all my stuff into places where her dogs won't eat it or pee on it, I made up the couch and gratefully went to sleep.
This morning, I arrived at Best Friends a few minutes before 8am for the morning meeting and then met with Ed (boss man) to do the welcome back stuff and find out where I will be working. I have been assigned to the Lodges, HOORAY! I spent a lot of time volunteering in the Lodges and they really need the help up there. They are laid out differently that the rest of the dog areas. Rather than having Octogon buildings, there are about 15 small buildings (probably about 100-200 sq ft each) and each building houses a max of 8 dogs; the runs are designed to house many of the dog aggressive dogs that can't live in multi-dog runs. The outside runs are about the same size as those at the Octogons, but the inside runs are only large enough to comfortably accomodate about 2 dogs (with beds, water buckets and toys). Working the Lodges means that I will have a lot of time to tear around the sanctuary on golf carts, as cars are not allowed back in the Lodges and the only way to reasonably get from one place to the next with cleaning supplies, poop scoopers, or lunch for the pups is on golf carts :).
The person I will be shadowing at the Lodges is off Tuesday and Wednesday, so I was taken around and introduced to all the new faces and reintroduced to the familiar ones (people that is) throughout Dogtown. Tomorrow, I will officially start working with the dogs. I was done with my day today at about 10:30am, so I figured the next stop should be the library to investigate the library card situation, check email, and post here. And then I am going to head back to Carissa's for some lunch and a bit of a rest; I didn't know that I wouldn't be working a full day today, but it is working out well, it will give me a little time to recover from yesterday's drive and try to kick out this cold. I will be sure to write a post about day one with the dogs as soon as I can get back to the library (not sure of their hours, yet).