Not Just Another Day . . .

Thanks for the good thoughts, Clair. They travel faster than your average mail, so they got here pretty quickly!
It was an interesting week this week. On Wednesday evening I was working until 6 pm and as I was just finishing things up around the Garden I heard a couple of the other caregivers on the 6 pm shift chattering on the radio. They were the two caregivers on either side of the Lodges and I was surprised to hear them because I was running a bit late and figured I was probably the last one around. One asked the other to please come to lodge 7 to look at a dog. A couple minutes later there was a call to see if anyone from the clinic was still around. Unfortunately the clinic staff usually goes home around 5 unless there is an emergency, so there was no answer. Then they asked if there was anyone left in DogTown. I answered that if they needed me to, I could try and reach the on-call vet, since there aren't phones in the individual lodges. They asked me to please call and then asked if I might be able to come look at the dog, Akila; they thought she might be bloating, but neither of them had seen a bloat before, and they wanted another set of hands and eyes. I drove up there and it seemed pretty clear to me, and them, that something wasn't right and based on how hard her stomach was, I agreed that it was probably a bloat.
The on-call vet said she would be right up and to meet her at the clinic. I drove Akila down to the clinic while her caregiver finished up the meds for the rest of the dogs. Once the vet and one of the techs got there, they confirmed that she was bloating and needed emergency surgery. However, they were having trouble reaching any of the other vet techs to assist with the surgery. So, Akila's caregiver and I were drafted into service to help with the little stuff during the surgery. While the tech prepared the surgery room for the procedure, we helped hold Akila so that the vet could place the catheters. Then, once she was sedated, we helped move her into surgery and while the tech was getting probes and nodes attached and the vet was scrubbing, they handed me the clippers and I shaved her abdomen for the procedure. By the time they were ready to start the procedure, another vet tech had arrived, so I just stood back and watched the surgery and fetched various tools and things when necessary.
Just before she stared cutting, the vet warned us to get out if we started feeling light headed, even a little bit, because a lot of people get a little woozy and think they can muscle through it and two seconds later they are on the floor and she didn't have time to be worrying about the people in the room, she had to focus on the dog. At that point it was about 6:45 and I hadn't eaten since noon and I was getting quite hungry so I was a little nervous that I might be the dork that passes out in surgery, but I didn't get woozy or nauseous once! Not when she pulled out chunks of fat and cut them out so that she could get to the abdominal cavity, not when the large intestines started pop out a little bit, or when she pulled the small intestine out to inspect it, not even when she pulled the entire spleen out of the body cavity to check for a pulse and inspect it - I did not pass out! I didn't even get nauseous when they were draining the contents of the stomach . . . I am pretty proud of myself here.
It was actually really interesting. I have been wanting to see a bloat surgery since I got here, but it isn't really something you can schedule, so when the opportunity presented itself, I ignored my hungry stomach and stayed to watch. As far as I know, Akila is doing well. She came through the surgery fine and did not have to have her spleen removed. When the vet initially pulled it out, it was the color of an eggplant (it should look about like a tongue) but by the time she was ready to close her up it was more of an Easter purple kind of color, heading back in the direction of pink. It was a good catch on Akila's caregiver's part, her only hint that something was wrong was that Akila wouldn't come to the fence for a meatball at the end of the day. It was a very cool learning experience and I am happy that Akila is okay. I am also very thankful to the vet for letting me observe the procedure, it was so interesting.

A Life Well Lived

Well, I have been putting this post off for a while now . . . for 40 days to be exact. On Saturday, April 10, 2010 at about 4:45 pm I said my final good-bye to Brenda. She was surrounded by people that love her and I miss her everyday. She lasted longer than any of our other dogs that had been diagnosed with lymphoma and it was a testament to her spirit that she held on, happily, for as long as she did. She was her same sweet and feisty self right up until the very end. I am grateful that we didn't have to watch her take a slow and painful decline until she was no longer the dog we knew and loved. We had lunch together on her last day and many others came from all over the sanctuary to see her smiling face one last time. It was the only time during her long fight that she really seemed like she was getting uncomfortable. When I took her out on Thursday, she was still spunky and curious; there had been more and more signs over the preceding weeks that we were probably getting close to the end, but it was all physical. There was never a change in her personality, she never stopped being happy to see her family of people and she definitely never stopped looking for a cookie! But, in spite of her great personality and drive to squeeze everything out of every moment, her body was no longer in the fight. She was a wonderful dog, sweet and funny with a personality that filled the room and a tongue always ready for a good, sloppy kiss. She seemed happy and, I suppose, that is all we can really hope for. (All photos copyright Allison Martin.)

Girl's Night

First of all, I suck at this. I am going to stop making passing promises of more posts later when I have more time and motivation. They will happen when they happen and we are all going to have to accept that.

Now to the post, back in January I took Brenda on a sleepover and while there were some hiccups in the experience, she had a great time. As it worked out, I ended up doing the sleepover during the worst winter storm of the season. I was staying in one of the BF Cottages because Brenda is not allowed to leave the property due to her bite history (she can go on car rides, but she isn't allowed out of the car off property). She appeared to have a magnificent time, she loved the couch and the beds and despite her weakening back end, she had quite a time launching herself on and off the furniture. There was a power outage, the TV didn't work, and there was no wireless or cell service, so I did a lot of reading. There was a land line but it had a cordless phone, so when the power went out in the middle of a conversation with my Mom, I decided I might as well head to bed . . . at 8:15. Brenda really enjoyed all the cuddle time and I am so glad she got to have a nice night out, I wish I could have enjoyed it a little more myself, but we had a nice time together. She slept next to me on the bed all night and wasn't very excited when I made her get out of the warm bed in the middle of the night to go potty - twice. Every time we would head back to bed, she would have to take a few minutes to rearrange the bedding exactly to her specifications. I had a great time with her, I wish she could be in a home for whatever time she has left. (All photos copyright Allison Martin.)

Birds

I have a few photos I wanted to share tonight. I will try and write up another post soon about my recent sleepover with Brenda and post some of the (many) photos I have taken when I am hanging out with her.


When I left my house the other day to go up and get Brenda for an outing, this little roadrunner was hanging out in the front yard. I went back inside because I forgot my camera and when I came back out he was wandering down the driveway.

Then it ran across the road (go figure) behind my car and into the yard across the street . . .

. . . where it proceeded to climb a tree, not very gracefully.

When I got up to the sanctuary, I took Brenda for a little drive down to Angel's Landing and we wandered around for a while and then just sat in the car and enjoyed the view and she got some good belly rubbin's. While we were in the car, this flock of turkeys made their way down from the canyon walls and started grazing on the horses' leftover hay. I don't know how many there were exactly, but I can count at least 16 in this photo. When I got out of the car, they all started nervously meandering back to the canyon wall. I am sure five minutes after we were gone they were right back to the buffet.

(Photos copyright Allison Martin.)

Moving

Well, a lot has changed since I last posted. I moved back in with my friend Carissa - in a different house where I have my own room. I have mixed feelings about it, I spent the last year living alone for the first time in my life and I really liked the freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without the concern of disturbing a roommate. However, with all the pet sitting I have been doing, at times if felt like I was paying $500 a month for an oversized storage unit and I almost felt guilty for taking up such a nice little house that somebody else could really use - especially in Kanab, land of overpriced, craphole rentals. So, I have bid farewell to the solo living thing for a while and am actually enjoying the company of a roommate, and her dogs. Since I last wrote (I know, bad blogger!), there have been a lot of adoptions from the Garden. While I was on vacation over Christmas, three dogs, including two of my favorites, were adopted. Bo Bo went home on Christmas Eve to a family here in Kanab, he was one of the Spindletop dogs that came to the Lodges last February (Sweet Freedom post) and then moved over to the Garden a few months ago, where he quickly became a favorite of visitors and myself. Jimmy went to his forever home on Christmas Day, he was a very special little guy to me; he had developed a tendency to run in a large circle at the back of his run, probably to deal with the stress of the shelter life. If made me so sad to watch him constantly circling in his run, so I decided to start taking him to the staff room with me for lunch every day. It was a good way for him to get out of his run for a while and be around people, which is all he ever wanted, I am so happy he is home, but since he left on Christmas Day, I didn't get to say good-bye. We also had a little three-legged cattle dog mix, Penny, that got adopted between Christmas and New Year's Day. And on top of all that, a dog that arrived at the Garden while I was gone, Yadon, was adopted the day I got back to work. I have been taking a new girl with me to lunch since I got back. Cassie is a very high energy dog and we are having a difficult time getting weight on her because she spends so much of her day running along a fence line. We have a new program at the sanctuary training dogs to be Search and Rescue dogs, there are a lot of guidelines that the dogs have to meet in order to be considered for the program and I think Cassie would be a great candidate, as do many of the other people that know her. She has an incredible toy drive and very high energy (evidenced by all the running), she is young and, other than being skinny, she is healthy. At this point, the only variable that we don't know about is her hips, which will need to be x-rayed before she can be admitted into the program. Originally, she wasn't going to be able to be in the program at this time because there were already two dogs in the program, but one of them isn't doing so well, so I got a call yesterday that the trainer running the program was going to come by the Garden today to assess Cassie as a potential candidate today. So I have my fingers crossed for her that her assessment went well today and her x-rays come out clear. She needs a job so badly and it makes me so sad to watch her running all day long.

I know this has been a weird, rambling kind of post, I will try to do better next time. I have Internet access at my house now, so I should be able to get more regular about posting in the future.

(All photo's copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

Thirteen Months

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

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

Thursdays with Brenda

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

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

. . . and enjoy the view.

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

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

. . . and rolling . . .

. . . and sniffing!

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

Ronnie and Corey

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

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

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

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

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

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

The Amazing Wink

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

I Didn't Fall Off the Face of the Earth

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

That is about all I have for today, but I will try and post again tomorrow or later this weekend. I hope everyone is doing well.

(All photos copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)

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.)