SAINTS

just wanted to let everyone know how far your donated Canadian Tire dollars can go.
Tonight I took all the donated Canadian Tire dollars that we have been collecting for the last little while and I picked up two folding tables and 6 folding chairs for the new multipurpose room. The girl at the checkout said that was the most canadian tire money she’s received in one transaction.
The tables and chairs will serve two purposes, one for use in the multipurpose room for when we have events like the upcoming volunteer potluck and second, we can use them when we have a booth at a fair or market (no more splintering tables!)
So for everyone who has Canadian Tire money lying around in crumpled piles that they won’t end up using, SAINTS would love to have them as they go a long way and allow us to purchase things we wouldn’t normally have the luxury of buying.
Please mail them to:
SAINTS
33860 Dlugosh Avenue, Mission, BC V2V 6B2

i came in thru the big dog rooms and everyone came over to say hi. i finally got thru the crowd and made it as far as the door…and then all hell broke loose. mugsy and cleo converged on the food bowl at the exact same minute…mugsy said “F” off and cleo said “screw you” and the dog fight was on. first of all, we don’t fight over food..there are three 5 gallon bowls of food in there with plenty of room inbetween, it is easy enough to walk across the room and get your snack from another bowl. secondly when i say “knock it off”, one better stop dead in one’s tracks. and thirdly if i have to step in a physically break it up, the second i touch you better be the last. but no…they just had to keep going til i finally dumped out the water buckets and shoved them over both of their heads. that stopped the fight cuz it is hard to keep fighting with your mouth and head inside a stainless steel bucket. oooh i was mad. when i took the buckets off i sent them to bed and cleaned up several gallons of wet soggy food. mugsy has cuts on his head and cleo has a sliced ear.

cole is hiding out in the icky doorless room, he wants nothing to do with any of us right now. copper cleaned cleo’s war wound but thought twice about offering to help mr. grump.

when i finally got into the rest of the house, raymond had had a diarrhea explosion. it is from his antibiotics for his kidney infection so now we can go bankrupt by switching to a month long course of baytril.

sadie was out in the cat run waiting for me to get in here and she lost her mind when i finally did…she came flying in the open door and caught her tumour on the side of the shelf. (it is a very big tumour) the tumour is fine but the shelf went flying and ruby got hit in the head with a tiny cat food can. thank god the hammer that fell missed everyone’s head so no one was badly hurt.

there is a ton of laundry again tonight and i still have to go see to the bunnies and the americats. but the barn guys are in bed and the dogs are now settled so maybe my night may slightly improve.

i am thinking of asking santa for a taser. i might like that.

Just a reminder about the “SAINTS SPECIAL HELPERS POTLUCK CHRISTMAS PARTY” next Saturday, December 8th at 2pm in the multipurpose room.

To give us an idea of numbers could everyone please post a comment here or email me (Nicole) at info@saintsrescue.ca if you are able to make it.

We would love to see all the wonderful helpers and volunteers there.

today in the mail, i received 2 different envelopes both from the people at Best Friends. Each contained a lovely card with many signatures and special notes. One card was to thank us for taking in the americats..it was so nice to see how much these cats were loved. but the other was a similarly signed sympathy card expressing their sorrow for our loss of rainbow.

i can’t tell you folks how much those cards mean to me, sometimes it is a giantly large world of rescue…but your kindness in sharing a moment of loss with us, touched me very deeply.

and as a thank you for those special cards…here is your treat for tonight….

heidi brought dinner to share tonight so the americats had their first indoor saints picnic…and let me tell you sunrise’s shyness dissipates as soon as warm chicken appears. he grabbed that chunk of chicken in his mouth and he growled while he wolfed that down. and all the rest enjoyed it too, especially sanjaya and ronnie. red got so excited he started to dart around and was doing summersaults on the scratching tree, and rock just called out when his piece disappeared for another delivery please. tiki was beside himself cuz he loves any kind of food but he loves fresh chicken the best.

when they were done (ok they weren’t quite done, but we were), they all hit the door and misfit and charlie voiced their collective need and that chicken starved crew stared right at us hoping against hope that we might bring in a bit more.

apparently it is a tough kind of life being FeLV and homeless in an animal shelter.

bedtime around here is a very big deal. not just for the barn guys but for everyone else too. it is the time that i give yummy treats (stuffed with not so yummy pills) to the sickies. everyone else gets a cookie. i usually wander into everyone’s space and give them a second of “good night sweetheart” bliss (i skipped the americats and bunnies last night cuz i had said good night to them earlier)

and then there is my bedtime…once everything is done, which sometimes takes longer than others. and when i am finally ready to climb in my bed, there is a whole army waiting anxiously to join me.

i grab faith and put her up on my pillows, i go and grab a clean blanket for my bed. i try to spread it out with cuddle’s and george trying to bury themselves and ogidie trying to say hello instead. sweet pea is moaning and alternating screaming to be picked up faster please. tiger lily is waiting and clyde is rock hard stone-like with only his tail moving frantically. lexie and maude and harley are all trying to find the best bed on the floor and molly is running around hoping, but will be disappointed once more. lily hates to be picked up but she is happy once it is done and she is up, sweet pea gets lofted next and clyde always comes last (cuz he explodes with happiness once he gets there.) i finally climb in myself and turn off all the lights and tell molly to shut up because she is not coming up on the bed.

she then usually curls up with lexie. george buries himself as far under the blankets as he can and he growls and snarls as the others get comfortable and i worry that he might bite me in the leg by mistake. ogidie and faith take the pillows and sweet pea starts licking my shoulder and clyde puts his 5 pound feet on my throat and starts trying to suck out my eyeballs.

FINALLY everyone settles and clyde is asleep in my arms and julie slips in and climbs on my hip and i make sure oigide and sweet pea are covered up warmly.

sigh…silence is golden and sleeping animals are a gift and just as i start to drift off to sleep the washing machine start it’s erroring beep….do i get up and re-start it and go thru the whole settling routine once again? or do i just fall asleep to beep, beep, beep?…which in the end is what i did.

this is why i might be having trouble actually waking up to my alarm anymore…beep, beep, beep is a noise that my brain has decided to ignore. i need an alarm that sound like an animal in distress cuz then i would wake up really fast.

everyone is sleeping still, and i better get off to work. they love their bedtime the very best, altho i personally find it alot of hard work.

gawd i was dragging my butt today…i don’t remember ever feeling so blah. until i got home and spritely pissed me off…then i perked up pretty darn quick. that freaking horse knows darn well which is her house and every once in awhile she just has to go into someone elses and sample their dinner. i yelled at her and told her to get the heck out, and this freaked out swinger who decided, “ooooh this is so scarey” and  then almost fell in the aisle again. i did get them sorted out and i told spritely she is a STUPID horse and swinger is not any brighter. i also told them they should pay attention and try to learn from gideon and sparkles who happen to be smart horses and go into their own stalls every single night and never cause any bedtime trouble.

and speaking of stupid…have you ever noticed that when we don’t like someone, everything they have to say is just crap?….this is kind of stupid on our parts because even people we don’t like might have something interesting to say. i don’t particularly like oprah, but she says some pretty intelligent things. i am just glad i don’t have to live with her, because she would probably make me madder than spritely.

i think the true test of any creatures intelligence is their ability to stretch and grow. now i know this is in conflict with my attitude to spritely who just wants to expand and dine in 2 stalls instead of just one…but expanding ones horizon is only fine if it doesn’t constrict someone elses or inhibit their own ability to grow.

and my final thought on stupid….is my own stupidity tonight…one does not yell with frustrated anger in close proximitry to 6000 pounds of multiple hungry animal flesh all trying to get to into the same small barn to have their long awaited and somewhat delayed dinner. that was the stupidest thing i have done in a very long time. thank you god or whatever, that no one got hurt.

we had a nice visitor last evening and i enjoyed her visit. unfortunately the pink pig princess was already in bed so the full extent of her wonderfulness was not able to be shared. and pete, edith, jeanette and percy were unable to be greeted also simply because we do not have any light out in the new barn. greg said i should put one out there and i said no we didn’t need one…wrong again.

carly had dinner with us out in the multi-purpose area which greg is calling the visitors center…which BTW might be a better name for that room. it should be mostly finished by the end of next week.

kathy came out yesterday afternoon and we made a huge dent in all the piles of stuff out there so that is good. a couple of big dump runs and some organizing of shelves and supplies and we should be ready to go for the christmas potluck.

faith was pretty darn happy to get home last night and carly ate a cheeseburger and some fries on the way home from the vet, so between that and sharing our sandwiches she had a pretty good couple of snacks. the vet scraped her toes that she has been licking at since she came in…i thought food allergies, but she has a staph infection instead…sigh and oops…wrong yet again.

gotta get moving here…hope it is a good day.

 

i have to leave in a few minutes to take carly to the vet in maple ridge and pick up sweet little faith. i have missed her.

i took harley and sadie to our mission vet today and had to leave harley for surgery. that dog has not made a sound since she came but she started moaning as soon as we got to the vet (this was where she was left for euth. before she came to us) i felt so bad leaving her and promised we would pick her up as early as we can tomorrow. sadie had a needle biopsy while we there to see if we should remove those VERY large tumours. they are fully vascular and not fatty lypomas and are probably something nasty and malignant that are best left undisturbed. sadie is now palliative and we will focus on pain control and comfort and not worry too much about the future right now. she is such a truly nice dog.

i got the barn, americats and bunnies done and lynn and trina got thru the house. sigh…i didn’t get to paying the bills,  or another needed dump run, and i didn’t get my personal laundry put away or my bedroom cleaned out….maybe i will have time when we get home from maple ridge. i am back to work tomorrow…i still think a 4 day work week would work better for me.

i think today i am feeling the burden of responsibility more than i usually do.

i had a nice hot nizoral bath tonight, and washington literally joined me (he fell in)….so far i am still ringworm clear and i hug cleo alot!. i checked over the big dog room today, and they still all look clear too. altho nicole found a very small patch on rocky the other night (which doesn’t surprize me as he had a resistent case of ringworm when he arrived, so he is prone to it) i have been washing down cleo at night with a cloth soaked in nizorol and hibitane and applying her cream and i can’t tell if she is getting worse or if the full damage is just becoming apparent. so tonight i went thru her with a fine tooth comb. i trimmed away any spots that looked suspicious and i didn’t realize how extensive she truly was and there are definitely alot of areas that haven’t been getting the cream. i am thinking of shaving her right to the skin so i can really see everything there might be to see.

she is so very good while i pick away at her, she loves me so very much. mugsy however laid on his bed and growled at me the whole entire time. (he has sore ears again and he is basically telling me not even to think about goofing around with him or his ears). i started him on painkillers and oral antibiotics and in day or two when they have started to make him feel better, i will have a go at his actual ears (with a muzzle.)

sooo, it will be a few weeks yet to see how this progresses, but i must say both of these dogs have been a bit of a headache. their dad sure knew who to leave them to when he passed away because they have required alot from me so far.

oh well, i love the difficult ones, (and i love both their freaking weird ears…they have THE best ears in the world)… these two sure have not been easy. but then who ever said rescue was easy anyway?

i forgot brenda was coming today so i started the day a bit worried about getting it all done but by the time i got back from the very early vet run…brenda was here and going strong. we managed all of the areas together and were finished by just after 1 pm. i just got back from the afternoon errands and unloading supplies in plenty of time for the barn guys to hit the hay!

i stopped at the vets to talk about maple (bunny) i am having difficulty getting her diarrhea under control. i am to with hold all fruits and vegies for a full 7 days and if that doesn’t help we will put her on meds to get her gut flora back into balance. i have been spending alot of time with the bunnies and i am pleased that clover is spinning a heck of alot less. and the piggies now start squealing as soon as i enter the room cuz they want their big pile of hay.

an update on merlin who i think has been pulling my leg and not as sick as he seems. i caught him out of his bed yesterday and as soon as he saw me he ran right back to it and peered up at me pathetically. i caught him again out and cruising around and today he didn’t even bother to pretend he wasn’t up. he got right into the schmoozing of sanjaya and me and was in a purring love fest mood.

i had to pop into work today (twice cuz i forgot to drop off the pager the first time there) and on my desk was this bunch of plain rolled up newsprint without a note or a card. i unwrapped the most beautiful hand made glass pig and she is now sitting on my desk. i have no idea who gave it to me but i absolutely love it and what a nice thing for someone to do.

when i got home all the laundry had disappeared so that is the third great kindness for me today. the world is just full of amazingly kind people and i wanted to say thank you to everyone who made my day so great.