SAINTS

SAINTS’ pub night is in 11 days and we have sold very few tickets. I would be so very, very appreciative if some of you that are reading this could post that you are coming to the event and you are just buying your tickets last minute.

Also… we are not sure how much is being raised to save Carol having to loose her hair (since we are all keeping our totals to ourselves until the evening) so please if you can’t make to the evening consider donating the $10 pub night donation to Saving Carol’s Hair.

lucas just walked into the computer room…puked up half an ice cream bucket full of vomit. he then threw himself down on the ground and flailed his legs around up in the air. i helped him up…cleaned the puke off of him and the floor, i tossed out the flannel where a good portion of puke had landed…. (by the way…flannel sheet crises at saints…we need more flat flannel sheets, a lot of them are getting tossed cuz they are just too full of something gross to wash) and while he seems a bit overwhelmed by it all, he seems like he is fine again.
wow lucas..that whole puking/flailing thing was truly amazing.

it is a tough week for a bunch of foster saints…i am making them come home.

gwen had her cruciate surgery today..she is coming back here for her 3 month recovery. she has to be so strictly managed, no free movement, no weight bearing, no stress what so ever on that surgical repair. and she is so going to hate it and mo is not going to be able to stand it that she hates it…but mo works full time and is away from home for 8-10 hours a day..lots of time for gwen on her own to mess things up…gwen is nine years old. we repair that knee, once, only, we have the staff here to carry her in and out and make her completely rest in between while she fully heals and then she can have the life she wants back again….wait patiently for the final “and then” gwen…it will come eventually.

joey and peluchie are coming home. after many months of committed trying…joey just cannot master even minimal housetraining, he is apparently still peeing on everything and causing great damage….it is one of the reasons he lost his first home. a boston/chi mix….hydrocephalic dogs (water on the brain, like downs syndrome, it is how you get that so very cute dome head and buggy eye look)….not their fault, the fault of whoever thought them up. i am just waiting to hear when they can bring them back home.

copper is at the vets..he may not survive. on top of his as yet uncontrolled cushings disease, he has packed and impacted his entire greedy beagle gut with pounds of stolen bone splinters and bits. the vets are trying to clear him out, he may need surgery if we can’t clear him by tomorrow. sigh…there was a reason i made that dog a permanent sanctuary dog..he honestly just cannot live safely in the real world. i am probably breaking lynne’s heart but i am making him come back here if he survives. copper needs to be micro managed in every single way..environmentally, to stop him from killing himself and now with the cushings and the probable looming diabetes coming soon, medically too. i have managed to keep that fat little bastard from killing himself for 10 long years, i am not about to let him finally succeed because he is finally free from my bad beagle eagle eye.

the new cat is here, her name is sidney…..she is a total mess…kidney disease, thyroid disease, abcessed, rotting teeth and chronic gingivitis, she is completely emaciated, (literally skin and bones.) she has an upper resp. infection, and open bed/pressure sores. she is dirty and was covered in mites and fleas….and she is 20 years old. poor thing. she is eating like a horse, drinking well, had a bath because she was incontinent of diarrhea on her way here and is wrapped in a fleece in front of a heater. we have started her on foretkor for her kidneys, thyroid meds and antibiotics and pain meds. we have multi-advantaged her to get rid of the bugs sucking her blood. we will give her a week or two of really good medical and supportive care and then we will reassess her quality of life…. i hope she feels much better. sidney is a purring machine, lovely and sweet little cat.

squeaky and hymie made it over to the house a week early because sidney needed their pen. i am so happy to finally have them over here…i adore them both!

marshmellow went for a trial to my daughters house..i hung around for half an hour to make sure that bella would not kill him. i was pretty proud of her…she is totally pissed and very upset but she is being a very good girl (for her)…marshmellow has whacked her twice for getting too close!

anthony hopkins, the bunny, was rushed into the vets today..he ended up with a hematoma from his neuter and today it started to drain. there was blood all over his cage. he is fine, i picked him up from the vets after work and will keep an eye on his private parts for awhile while it heals.

sigh…too much going on around here right now.

this has nothing to do with rescue or animals so feel free to skip this introspective aging reviewing of life thing.

i had lunch with one of my daughters…she has a diary of all the mean things i did when she was growing up. today she told me i once was mad at her and kicked her out of the family and said she could no longer watch any of my movies. ok..that is the young kids perspective..the adult perspective?..i haven’t a clue cuz i can’t remember anything even remotely close to any of that.

my other daughter once gave me a fridge magnet that said “it is easy to have a clear conscious when your memory is fuzzy”..and yes, we all know i have a fuzzy memory.

hmmm…so i asked lindsey today if i was a good parent? and she said yes i was..(like she is going to say, “no you sucked.”)

anyway, so here i was sitting in a hot bath and pondering the past, trying to dissect the truth of who i was.
and i do remember somethings…

like i was woefully unprepared to be a parent. i was 18 years old when my first was born and 3000 miles away from my family. none of our friends had kids and i was never around kids when i was growing up (except for my god parents son’s baby..once..who i accidently dropped on her head and never told anyone.)
i was in a marriage of mistake with a mother in law who i really believed, ( whether it was true or not) thought i was not good enough to be the wife of her son or the mother of her grand babies.

all three of my little ones were busy, noisy, hyperactive, accident prone horrors..one was with his little pack of kindergarten friends, putting hoses down neighbors fireplace flues and flooding their basements, one little preschool sweetheart was pooping on the nieghbors lawns, and the third who still a babe in arms, cried with colic all night long. all three slept in my bed every night and one of them always peed the bed at night too.

they survived young childhood, barely and so did i…and moved into their teens..one was growing pot in the closet, one was running away, all of them were smoking and driving me insane.

all through the motherhood thing, i felt so inadequate, so ill prepared to deal with what mothering meant. i tried to be suzy homemaker..i had a huge garden and grew tomatoes to make into tomatoe paste (like this was worth the effort and not spending 62 cents on tomato paste in a can) i collected windfall apples and hand picked grapes and home pasturized the juice that they drank…i was beyond stupid, i was totally insane. i had no idea who i was, and who i was trying to be was not even close to me.

no one told me it was ok not to be a perfect mom, no one told me that those innocent babes would grow up just fine with an incompetent mom. no one told me that i could just be who i was..inconsistent, not martha stewart, a child myself at times, make mistakes and still have my childrens love.

i wish someone had told me that..then i would not have tried so hard and in my anxiety as a not so good parent…sometimes messed things up.

murphy went home with kathy k today..one line of the email made me laugh….

My mom is hoarding Murphy and has him on her couch in her room. She
is making it very clear that he belongs to her. lol

the new incoming from california, travel arrangements are now in the making (..still not sure about mommas if her foster to adopt was successful so she may still come or another dog will get her spot if she has a home)

opal is a senior cat dumped at a california shelter when her owner died…i have had quite a bit of guilt over not helping any cats in california because i am sure just as many if not more cats die down there as dogs.

so saints welcomes opal!

larry is one of the little guys coming, he is 12 years old and has a goiter (?) (i think it looks like a tumour)
he does not look like a hot adoption option so he is heading up here.

lola is a 14 yr old with mammary tumours, she also is not likely to be either adopted or rescued so she will be coming to us.

i have asked that they not do the tumour removals down there (which they very kindly offerred to do), i don’t want to deal with post op infections because they are stressed when traveling fresh post op, plus i want to send tissue samples off for pathology so we know exactly what we are dealing with. they can save their money to help other sick dogs who are not coming up to saints.

for the local news…

mandy and max are breaking again. mandy is starting with congestive heart failure so we have her on lasix now to try to clear out her chest. max has hurt his freaking neck again so he is back on all of his neck meds.

little griffin is quite the character…this morning he was snarling at me from the door of his crate so i tipped him out to give him his insulin. tonight he is quite the friendly little guy, the staff said he was following them around and playing with them today…he does however like to bug cats.

tyra pulled down the dish strainer to steal bond’s cat food and broke several cups in the process…then i had to hold off a pack of crazy dogs who wanted to help clean up the cat food off the floor. this would not have been an issue if there was not a ton of broken bits of cups laying around…the last thing we need is a bunch of stupid dogs ingesting broken bits of glass.

one new local cat coming in from one of the emergency clinics..old cat, bad shape, has URI..will probably arrive in the next day or so.

on a lighter note, today was the cockers (murph, nina, shadow) and felix grooming day with sam. kathy took them all over (and stole murphy in the process..i should have sent phoebe so she could have been stolen instead!) anyway…thx kathy and sam..they all look great. now if felix dies in the next couple of weeks, at least he will look well groomed.
next wednsday sam is coming here..yay sam!!!!!…we will sedate and muzzle andy for his yearly shave.

i think that is all of the saints news..at least i hope it is cuz we can’t handle too much more!

so beautiful.

look at those ridiculous poodles.

I just came back from India and got a new perspective of dogs. The pictures below are the crappy one’s I was able to take because 1. I left my good camera at home and 2. These dogs really did not want their pictures taken.

The pictures I took are all the dogs that lived in the agricultural village I stayed in. It had a population of about 200 but there was another village that was almost butt up against it. Which happens when you go to a country the size of off Western Canada but has a population of just short 1.8 billion (yes billion) people compared to our western Canadian population of just over 10 million. I thought Britain was crowded but in the 8 hour trip from New Delhi to the small village there was not one spot that did not have human habitation. Which has nothing to do with dogs but it was astounding to me.

On this very long trip I saw people walking, driving bikes, driving motor bikes with two, three, and yes sometimes four people on the one bike and people being pulled by horses and water buffaloes. It seems everyone lives up alongside the road. In one section I saw garbage in ditches with people scavenging and pigs following just behind them. I wish I had got a picture of that. And I also saw dogs … many dogs walking alongside the people walking and managing to avoid the traffic just like the people did.

The pictures of the dogs above are all outside dogs. At first I thought they were all strays but I started to figure out that some of them belong to certain farms and houses. The ones that are owned are not skinny – in fact some were kind of fatty pattaties. The strays are on the thin side. All these dogs live in amongst the people of the village. They were very wary of me (but not my brother who I went with) because I kept looking at them or acknowledging them as I like to say. I had to learn not to pay attention to them – but even when I did not look they were still wary of me and me only. I think it must have been my body language because they knew I was just lying and I was really watching. Dogs… has my brother explained to me… here are considered animals like the birds and some are household pets but he couldn’t figure out how it was decided which one was a stray and which one would become a stray. With my western sensibilities (I have 4 dogs living inside my house) I couldn’t figure out why weren’t these dogs sad, and pathetic and looking for human love. It is because they got all of that from each other’s company. Dogs in this village were dogs in a way my dogs are not allowed to be… They are off leash all day long and the move in and about at will and they laze in the sun in the fields or the doorsteps and they protect their street like crazy against dogs that they feel do not belong on “their property”. The first night I didn’t sleep because one of the dogs decided to spend the whole night patrolling his street (which happened to the street I was staying on) for two three hours. Up, down and round bark, bark, bark and then a howl. One night there were about four that did this and I slept so badly I couldn’t get up at the requisite 6:30 AM wakeup call. My brother told me wow… look how the dogs know how to go out in the fields to defecate because the streets were clean of poop and we were corrected… they do poop but the villagers pick up and dispose of it. In the mornings the dogs would be out in the fields and they would see each other and greet each other with glee. The ones that belonged to someone would follow behind their owners with a cool trot. They were excited because they knew they were going out to the fields.
I did, because I just had to, start going out and giving small treats to the dogs to make friends. I made sure I limited what I took out and I didn’t always give to the same dog because I was very aware that I was only going to be around for two weeks and I couldn’t have the dogs think I was a consistent supplier of meals for them. I did get one little cutie patootie on her second day … roll over on her back and she let me touch her that day and also on the second day. I made sure I kept my touching to a minimum because I knew I was leaving and it would be wrong for me to start a relationship with her. It was hard because she had a front leg she was nursing. She couldn’t weight bear on it and when running through the village would use only 3 legs.
I thought a lot about what was different about these “outside” and homeless dogs compared to our dogs here in BC and I realized these dogs did not crave or miss the human – dog bound that we have with our animals. I realized they are dogs in a way we don’t allow our dogs to be. They are allowed to be territorial (no one came out and yelled at the dogs in the middle of the night to get out… I was told that the dogs are doing their job of protecting their area when they bark at night), they are allowed to poop wherever, and they have no restriction of their ability to move about and they get choose their mates. I came home and when I was talking about this with a friend she said we keep our dogs in perpetual puppyhood. I think we isolate our dogs so that they can’t have their own rules living the way dogs would naturally with each other without human interference.
On the minus side there were so many, many female dogs that had babies (the picture of the last dog is a mommy dog and she is a stray… her puppies where in a straw hut and were only about a week old), the little puppy with the hurt front leg will not go to a vet, there was one farm dog that had such a bad case of mange that I couldn’t understand how he was so healthy in his movements and alert and I saw very few older dogs. I wondered how many puppies survive… because they don’t receive any inoculations for worming, parvo etc. But here is the thing … a huge part of the population have no medical treatment, children are not given inoculations etc. It is very confusing when you realize a large portion of the human population live in such a way that I burst into tears twice… the third time I could feel the tears welling up I wouldn’t let myself because what was that but me indulging myself.

And here is the other thing I saw… in some parts of the larger cities … India is cleaning up and becoming more global in their attitudes. This means I would see some dogs being walked on leash in the cities. It looked kind of odd. There was one fellow in the village that had a big goofy yellow lab and he always had the dog with him on leash and he was in the house at night. I wasn’t sure if I felt sorry for him or not – glad he had the love of a human but sad that he didn’t have the freedom and companionship the other dogs in the village had. I thought this was the best picture I saw – there was a young pup that had a physical problem with his back legs (his gait was odd) and he was totally a pet dog. The boy who had him said he has something wrong with his back so I keep him with me all the time. He was allowed to run loose and happy and he wasn’t told to sit before eating, and no jumping, and he could take off because he would always come back, and he was even allowed to bark at me and not be reprimanded. He didn’t like me either.
Here is the sad thing…these dogs survive in India because they are scavengers and there is a lot of garbage in the poorer or less developed areas… I mean organic garbage. Once this disappears – which it will – the dogs will 1. No longer have a food source and 2. No longer have a role. In 10 years here is what I think is going to happen… pounds will start to appear and then dogs will be taken off the streets and then the same situation that is happening in states such as California will start to happen. I mean lots of dogs and not enough homes for them = euthinization.

Please check out this website to see the dogs that live in the cities www.eloiseleyden.co.uk/slum-dogs
I couldn’t take pictures of them in the city and this woman took a very accurate picture of dogs that live in more urban areas.

Carol this is really looonggg so I am going to do the farm animals in another post

this could be jewel’s last really good day..hopefully not, but the possibility exists, so i want to celebrate the fun that she had.

kodi herds the bed buddies and holds them in place

mission accomplished

esther’s beauty

too big for daphne

a happy princess pig

why tyra’s leg hurts

it was a beautiful day.

the ability to recognise, acknowledge and participate in pain and suffering. the animals do well here for one very simple reason..i am not afraid of who they are inside…my caring is not dependent upon their worthiness in my judgement or the vision of how they “should” be in my eyes…my caring is only dependent on their actual being alive. and i will find a way to connect with them so they feel they are truly valued and loved despite themselves.

so many of our animals come in because they were not liked, not valued because of the challenges they presented. they lived in a circle of endless frustration, resentment and active dislike. dogs like phoebe, difficult in the extreme suffered the ultima.te abandonment by bring dropped off in the dead of the night outside the spca. dogs like rose, beaten and battered because for some reason they frustrated the family they lived with. dogs like daffy duck, who’s assumed frustrating behaviors were not “doggy dementia” but oxygen deprivation from cardiac disease. people who put their old and restless dog or cat down in the basement, out in the yard, without any compassion or recognition that those midnight wanderings or yowlings, disturbing human sleep, might be a symptom of confusion from not only pain, or poor vision but from their helplessness against increasing negative resentful feelings surrounding them each day.

if you are not valued, if you are not loved, if your own family dismisses or resents your behaviors as too much, too problematic….how do you feel good inside? we all feel frustrated at times..but that is our personal issue, not the fault of the one suffering beside us.

i give them back their goodness, i tell them they are just fine..i might get mad when they act like moronic dipsticks and bite my feet but five minutes later, i truly love them again and all is fine.

we live in an imperfect world…we are imperfect humans..my expectation is that the animals who come into our care will naturally be imperfect too.

the animals do well in this atmosphere because then they are free of being suffocated by negative energy.

there is an old poster out there that is very long, about raising well adjusted children…it basically says, children become who we tell them they are.

well the same is true for our animals….if we tell them they are safe, they are fine, they are lovable..that is who they believe they are…tell them they are difficult, too much work, a continual headache to deal with and that is who else they can become too.

they believe what we tell them…we need to understand this so we don’t make them into someone unhappy who they wouldn’t really be if they didn’t believe.

i read somewhere once that true compassion was the ability to fully participate in suffering without an easy fix, without a perfect answer or solution, without a time line for suffering to end… just the ability to feel the suffering of someone else and freely accept it.
once you truly feel the suffering of another, that is where solutions are found because now you understand that suffering and where it really comes from.

currently working on a full understanding of the suffering of griffin…it is not the biting that is the problem, it is his pain and fear inside him.

griffin, the new little min pin, discovered phoebe’s crate. we had to get him out before phoebe came back in or there would be hell to pay. i found him one closer to his size but still roomy enough for a real house and set it up in front of the door which is where he likes to be best.

as soon as he was in his new doorless house, off came the good neighbor gloves. any one who walked by was told in no uncertain terms to piss right off!

monica’s casual observation of griffin’s behavior?….”that’s what happens when you finally own real estate.”

another universal truth is articulated at saints!