Cats and Dogs

On the lighter side of things at BF, being at the Garden puts me right in the middle of the most adoptable dogs at BF and they fly out the door so fast I feel like my head is spinning sometimes. For the vast majority of our dogs the most serious issues are cats and possibly other dogs, though we only have one dog that lives alone and probably couldn't go to a home with other dogs. A lot of our kids are either picky about other dogs or just don't meet new dogs very well but can at the very least tolerate certain other dogs. One of our dogs, Anahi, a twelve year old Akita mix seems to have a very specific preference in her friends, she likes only males, which is not uncommon, but she also specifies that her run mates be hounds (insert joke here). They tried her with an older shepherd mix because her run of three young hounds seemed to be a bit much for her at times and we were worried that their antics might injure Anahi, but after a few days she decided that she wanted nothing to do with him and let everybody know, so she is back with her hounds. Last week we had two dogs leave for their forever homes, a little pointer mix named Poinsettia. Her new family came to visit and took her on a sleep over and fell in love and put in the application the next morning after they returned her to the Garden and she was on a plane a few weeks later. We also had Grady leave, finally. He was originally scheduled for transport on June 5, but there was a mix up and it got postponed to June 19. Grady is at least the fifth run mate of a dog named Mercy to be adopted.Mercy has been at BF for about a year now and seems to be a good luck charm for her roommates, they just keep flying out the door but she is still with us. We are all hoping that she will soon get her own family. We just introduced her to two new dogs and found out a couple of days later that one of them is already adopted, though I don't know when he will leave. We have had a couple of other big adoptions this week, Cupid, a sweet brindle pittie got adopted after a long time at the sanctuary and a shy boy named Ohio Patches also found a family after years of BF.

I had a question in the comments from Fernando about how we do the cat testing, otherwise known as cat encounters. Generally speaking, we don't arbitrarily test dogs with cats because we use live cats and while they are always well protected, there is always a small risk of injury, not to mention the stress on the cats. We usually use a trainer's personal cats, most of the time, their cats have been exposed to dogs and are comfortable and dog savvy. When a dog has a application from somebody that has cats, the dog must have a cat test before the application is approved. To begin the encounter, the trainer brings the cat into the room inside of a carrier. The dog's interest in the carrier is gauged and if they are too fixated on the carrier and its contents then that is the end of the encounter. The encounter continues in incremental steps, gauging the dog's interest and watching their body language the entire time and if at any time they become too intensely fixated on the cat, to the point that their attention can not be drawn away, the encounter is stopped. If they are okay with the carrier, then a trainer will remove the cat from the carrier and hold it in their arms, up away from the dog and let the dog get close enough to sniff the cat. From there, if behavior continues to be positive, they will put the cat down on the ground, sometimes holding it in place so they can quickly pick the cat back up if the dog decides it might be snack time. At that point, if all continues to go well, they will release the cat and see how the dog interacts with the cat, are they respectful if the cat hisses or swats at them, how does the dog respond when the cat moves around the room, things like that. If all of this goes well, then the dog is approved to go into a home with cats, if they are too aggressive toward or fixated on the cat then the application is declined and the dog can not go to a home with cats. Dogs are generally only given one cat encounter, unless the caregivers or trainers can show that there has been some specific work with the dog on its behavior with cats, such as being fostered by staff in a home where they are exposed to cats. The tricky part here is that a lot of dogs don't necessarily behave in a new situation the same way they will after they are comfortable with new surroundings. So just because a dog has a positive cat encounter at the sanctuary doesn't mean that when they get to their new home and settle in they won't decide to go after a cat. We also have occasional requests for bird and rabbit test, too.

Hope you all have a great week!

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Marge, Luther, Maggie, and Obed

My apologies for my lack of blogging these last few weeks, it has been an exceptionally difficult time and I just haven't had it in me to sit down to the computer and write about it. We lost five sanctuary dogs and one personal dog in the past two weeks, four of whom I knew.

It all started with Marge, she was a very special dog to me and so many others at BF. She lived for ten of her twelve years at the sanctuary and never managed to find that forever home in spite of her green collar and great personality. She didn't like other dogs and probably would not have been good with cats either, but she was so very sweet with people and would smile when she was excited - not just a happy little face but a full on lips curled up, teeth showing grin. As I mentioned in my last post, we were trying to lift her quarantine so that volunteers could, using the correct protections, walk her and spend some time visiting her. We were able lift her quarantine in the last week or so of her life and she went on several walks with volunteers. She had a lot of staff come to visit her leading up to her last day and so many people came to say good bye, it was a horrible moment that brings out the best in everyone in Dogtown. She had an appointment with Dr Mike on June 8 and he said, based on the size of her lymph nodes, she probably only had a week, maybe two. In fact, it was less than 24 hours after that appointment that we decided to let her go. The lymph nodes that are situated next to her windpipe were extremely swollen and at some point would begin to cut off her airway. When I came in the morning of the 9th she was laying on her bed panting in a building that couldn't have been more than 65 degrees. We made the phone calls and people started arriving to say their final good byes to Margie. She never lost her appetite, in those last hours we fed her about two and a half cans of wet food, an entire bag of duck jerky, a handful of chicken jerky, some Pupperonis, and who knows what else. So many people stepped up that day to help out, it was very comforting to know that when it really comes down to it, we look out for each other like family. We opted to keep Margie in her run at the Garden and Dr Mike said that he would come to us, the staff at the Fairway stepped in to help, one of them coming up to take over the Garden so that Skip, Carin, and I could just spend the morning with Marge, Jen, our trainer, came by to lend a hand as well and Don, a volunteer coordinator came over to help get the volunteers reassigned for the last hour of the morning so that we could shut the Garden down at 11 when Dr Mike would get there. I have gone through these losses too many times recently but this one was unexpectedly difficult for me. I realize now that up until Marge, I had never been involved in the decision making process. Niblet is the only Lodge dog that died while I was at the Lodges and I wasn't there the day they decided to let him go and all the rest of the dogs have been since I left the Lodges and the decision was up to the caregivers in the area. Marge, on the other hand, was in my area and I was part of the handful of people deciding whether to give her some more time or let her go, I was the one that made the call to Dr Mike. It was an incredibly difficult morning and I couldn't stop crying. Margie went out surrounded by the people she loved and before her condition got really bad, she may have been a bit uncomfortable, but she certainly wasn't in the pain she could have been if we had waited any longer. She was a good girl with personality coming from every pore and we miss her deeply. Marge's service was the following Tuesday at 11:30 in the morning. It was a beautiful service, filled with as many laughs as tears and the wind chimes weren't quiet the entire time.

That same afternoon, it became apparent that Luther, another Lodge dog, was not going to make it much longer and the decision was made to let him go as well. He was a great dog, not the best eye sight and a big fan of treats, not always a good combination. When we went into his run, we always had to show him our open hands so that he wouldn't mistakenly bite our hands thinking we had treats. Even in his old age, he loved to play fetch and any time he started acting weird, all you had to say was "Luther, where's your ball?" and he would go get it and drop it at your feet. A black lab mix, he would stare at the ball and wait for it to move, wait for you to pick it up and throw it for him. He could have played fetch all day. One time, I was in visiting with him and playing some fetch and I accidentally threw his ball into the neighboring run. Luther just ran to the fence and stared through longingly at his ball and would look back in my direction every few seconds as if to say "What the hell man?!? Get me my ball!!!" When I retrieved the ball and tossed it over the fence to him, he went over and sat under the tree and it was day or two before he decided to trust me with his ball again. He was a good kid, misunderstood, but good.

The afternoon after Luther's death, my friend and coworker had to put her fifteen year old dog to sleep after having her since puppyhood. Maggie had not been doing very well for several weeks and we knew it wasn't going to be much longer, but it was a very hard blow after Margie and Luther. Mags was a funny old lady, I pet sat for her on several occasions and she never ceased to crack me up. She was a black hound mix with long floppy ears and she was deaf, so when she walked she was less subtle than most dogs as she plopped her feet on the floor. She was always hungry when I was there and was right beside me every time I went to the kitchen, making sure she was there to clean up anything I might have dropped. She was a sweet girl.

The following Monday, I got a call from Megan telling me that Serene, another Lodge dog, was on the table undergoing emergency surgery for bloat; Bodie Boy's lymph nodes were suspiciously swollen; and Obed had a splenic tumor that had ruptured and was slowly bleeding into his chest cavity and he might also have a mass on his heart and he would be having surgery in the morning. Serene made it through her surgery and is back to her old self now, terrorizing the clinic staff until she can go back to her run. Bodie Boy is starting chemo for his lymphoma which could buy him a few months to a year, but they have caught it early and are hoping that it will be closer to the year end of the spectrum. However, Obed didn't come out so well. On Tuesday morning, after an ultrasound, the vets determined that surgery wouldn't help him and he probably wouldn't survive the sedation in his condition, they gave him 24-48 hours. At the end of the day, he was still doing okay, so I offered to take him home with me for the night so that there would be somebody there if he went into respiratory failure. After a few hours at my house, his breathing became more labored and his gums became more pale. He rested for a little while but was taking very rapid, shallow breaths the entire time he was laying down. The build up of fluid in his chest cavity was putting too much pressure on his lungs and he was clearly uncomfortable. I called Megan and Mike, two of his caregivers - Mike is the one that named Obed in Tylertown, Mississippi during the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina - to come and see what they thought. I hadn't seen Obed for several months and I wasn't comfortable making the decision on my own. They came over to my house and agreed that it was time to let him go, he was only comfortable standing up and his breathing was more labored than it had been earlier in the day. We made the calls and everyone that wanted to say one last good bye came to my house and we sent him on his way. All this on the evening of the day we buried Luther.

So, you can see, it has been a bad couple of weeks and I can only hope that it will soon stop. I hope you all have had better weeks than I and hopefully tomorrow I will find the time for a happier post.

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)