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).