SAINTS

the calves were started on IV’s this morning. steve had to quickly construct a mini calf ICU in their stall that confined them to a  very small space so they couldn’t pull the IV’s out of their veins. the vet sutured the lines in place but emily still managed to pull hers after the first 5000ml bag went thru. todd is on his second 5000ml bag..i will have to check it hourly thru the night..that sucks. not sure if the vet will reinsert em’s IV tomorrow, i guess it depends on how she is.

i just checked them a couple of minutes ago and found al out in the riding ring alone in the dark…on the way back to the house, i explained to him that if he kept climbing the fence, he was occasionally going to find no one on the other side and then he would be alone…how was that fun?

webster just had an altercation with the cat litter bin..he jumped up on top of the swing lid and the freaking thing grabbed and bit him…he started yowling like his leg was caught in a trap…fer chrissakes webster…the lid is plastic and smooth.

morgan (the feral who came in a couple of days ago) went to the vets and had her spay, tattoo, testing and vaccines. she is not a happy camper. i REALLY did not want to get into ferals again…too much responsibility to try to care for a cat you can’t get near. anyway…she was moved into a cage in the house…once she settles a bit, i will let her out and i bet that is the very last time i ever get close to her.

we had some nice visitors tonight who helped me with removing emily’s neck sutures from the IV tube and  spent some time trying to get the calves to drink their bottles…em drank half…todd, hardly anything. laura came and helped me with getting their pills into them (that went good) and doing up spritely’s leg. these babes are killing me…so purely innocent, so vulnerable, so sweet.  hope may float til it sinks…but hope is a scary thing when it starts floating away.

i had a nice late lunch with tammy and my daughter jenn and the vet says gilbert does see somethings, maybe not everything…but better than nothing….so that was the good from today.

but unhappy morgan and those struggling calves are just the saddest things for me.

another typical rescue day.

it is such a pointless exercise in ego building…just sit back and whisper comments or judgements or questions, call up everyone you can think of or send out a group email for a one sided discussion that never gets a single thing done.

politicking just pisses me off…it does diddly squat for the animals and wastes a lot of time and energy. and that is the difference between opinion makers and people out doing something..an opinion never saved anything.

don’t think for a second that just because some people applaud our going to the auction and getting into a moral mess while we were there that an equal number who don’t post on the blog might not be thinking the same as you or me. they will say we have enough animals, they will say we are wasting money donated to help seniors and special needs. they will say day old calves destined for slaughter are not our mandate…or 3 young very social and human trusting goats dumped off by animal control should be allowed to go for meat. they will say, we are buying animals…so what? you think the auction would let us have them for free?…not when the meat guys are bidding.
ok…so we don’t happen to agree. whatever…who cares? some will say the donors will…well if they do, and they read it here, they probably will chose to donate elsewhere. the 300 folks who visited us this weekend and were so generous in their support did not have a problem with who they saw being cared for here or how they were being care for either.

senior and special needs means 2 things…old or needs something special, above and beyond the expected things. the calves are sick and weak, besides hoping for a decent life…they need medical care. those goats were raised to like and trust humans..i think sending them to a slaughter house was pretty freaking mean. and i didn’t see any day old sick calf or socialized goat rescuers there.

i just saw nicole, meghann, angelina, renee, kristen and me.

these kind of judgements that decree who we should help and who we should not…who do they help?

not any animals that i can see cuz the folks making these judgements are not out helping anybody.

is it really fair for those who don’t to tell those who do..how they should do what they do?

to me that just seems utterly stupid….i don’t get it….but then i don’t get a lot of things.

but what i do get is this…life is precious, life is unique..life does not fit nicely inside neatly stacked and labelled boxes. and while i might be surrounded by death here on many, many days….life is always precious and welcome.

the day started not so great…both the calves are quite weak. i phoned the vets and they said to to start emily on electrolytes and to keep todd on for a few days more. so i hiked down to the vet clinic in matsqui to pick up more electrolytes and quatrisol. (for spritely)…except i forgot the quatrisol because by the time i got to the clinic, i was all upset and had nothing but calves on my mind.
today is auction day in abbotsford..driving in front of me is a pick up truck with three small calves in a wide mesh metal crate…they are in wide eyed panic and sticking their heads out of the holes but there is not enough room in there for three to move so their heads and necks and feet are all over the place and each other and someone for sure was going to have a broken leg or neck.

anyway…i dropped 3 cars back so i couldn’t see their faces which was better but then the truck took the exit off in to matsqui where i was going..and i thought oh hey, maybe they are just getting moved to another farm so being behind them was not so bad.

the truck stopped in front of our vet clinic, a woman hopped out..ran in quickly and came back out just as i was walking along the back of the truck. i told the babes not to be scared, it was ok…which i think was a lie cuz i think they just made a fast stop at the vet for something needed back on the farm while on their way to the auction.

when i got inside both susan and lisa said don’t look at those calves and don’t try to follow them either…i KNEW those babes were going to auction…i am never leaving my house on mondays again before noon during calving season!

i did get the electrolytes and lisa gave me some GIANT pills to shove down our babes throats along with a garden hose sized pill popper to try to get their diarrhea under control. she will be up to check them tomorrow and said we have enough on our plate to get our calves well without worrying about every other slaughter bound calf in the world. i asked her if they are going to pull thru..she said she didn’t know but if we could get them to about a month old (3 more weeks) they should be out of danger by then….three weeks is a very long time..i was hoping she would say a couple of more days.

after a few tries, we got the pills into emily…but todd we just could not get those pills to go down his freaking throat…so he will have to wait for his first dose til she gets here tomorrow to show me whatever tricks there are to pill’ing little stubborn calves.

the day got better as we discovered that either gilbert is the most amazing blind goat in the world…or he has regained at least some partial sight…he was all over the riding ring and upper field today..i will ask the vet to check his eyes tomorrow again when she is here.

and finally, niko went home on a two week trial today. lynne will check up on him over the next couple of weeks…he will be living with a friend of her family.

and i guess i better go feed those babies their bottles and put the barn guys to bed.

is saints always this clean?

no.

every area gets cleaned every day…every barn and stall. every bed gets changed every day and every floor gets bleached…365 day a year, year after year after year.

but…the deep cleaning? the windows? the walls? the weeding? the de-junking?…that only happens when i am on vacation 4 times a year or if we happen to have an open house or a film crew coming thru….then all of the extra spiffy stuff gets done …the rest of the time, it is just good ole basics around here.

AND every single morning, whether i am on vacation or not…this place is a freaking mess cuz a hundred and some odd animals can make a huge freaking mess every single night….365 nights a year…year after year after year.

the humans around here are not angels…we are not the saints…we are just freaking soft hearted drudges with a bunch of cleaning supplies that we have learned how to use pretty well.

it was a never ending series of moments. all of us had different ones, some of us shared some too..here are my favorites..the sad, the happy, the compassionate and the funny…(altho the funny was funny for everyone but not so funny for me)

can you see a pretty young girl of about 11…sweet, gentle, kind and caring spending hour after hour just sitting with todd and emily and hoping that he would get well.

or the stroke affected old dairy farmer who struggled out with two crutches to the barn to look at our sick calf…he said few words to me…mineral lick, no water, a handful of calf starter and then he struggled back to his truck.

can you see me laying exhausted and frozen in my bed in the middle of last night with 9 dogs all suctioned cupped against me and i am gazing longingly at the other half of a king sized bed that is totally empty because with the equally exhausted suction cups attached to me, i just cannot reach that open space.

can you visualize suzie waddling around the whole property going anywhere that she pleased?…mostly towards the food tables in the front…not the least put off by any closed gate cuz she just went underneath…i saw more people smiling and bending low to touch her, than any other dog…she is such a happy little land shark…lots of folks fell in love.

can you feel some of the eyes that welled up with tears in the shady peace of the memorial garden with the chimes of our lost ones singing quietly in the breeze?

or eyes filled with worry as sweet daphne had several small seizures while trying to say a happy hello to everybody visiting her home.

have you ever been to a place that is so filled with kindness and good will, the volunteers banding together to share this place we love so well…we had about 300 so very kind visitors who left us with just over $3000 in donations to help us carry on with the work that we do.

and finally can you imagine, at the end of two very long days…a reporter asking to take a photo of the volunteers and the sweet little calves?

it would have been the perfect end to some perfect days IF…..

todd hadn’t chosen that exact moment to cover my thighs with a flood of watery calf diarrhea….i must say…the crowd enjoyed the hilarity of that moment AND the reporter got it on film.

but for me personally, the very best part?

it was tonight….saints quiet and settled with my daughter helping me put the barn guys to bed, that was a moment for just her and me. those moments don’t happen very often cuz my life is just so freaking busy.

all of us are exhausted tho…nicole thinks tomorrow because it is sunday will be even busier (oh gawd!!)

we all met tons of great people and everyone seemed to really like what we do…we needed twice as many tour guides tho..oh laura and lana how could vegas compare to giving tours at saints..please come home before tomorrow????

the vet came out to see todd again today..he really is not doing well. the vet said it is because the farmers sometimes don’t bother to let the little bull calves have that one feeding of colostrom that they need so much…bull calves go straight to slaughter so they aren’t expected to need their mothers immunity in order to survive.

she gave him both an anti inflamatory injection to bring his temperature down and another long acting antibiotic and will come and check him again tomorrow. she wants us to take out one formula feed each day and give him an electrolyte feed instead. we will just have to keep our fingers crossed that todd will fight hard to live and make it thru this difficult time for him.

little emily is doing much better, she is bright and perky and venturing out of the barn and hanging out with joy and percy (with a fence in between)…she wants to be with them and they look like they would like her to be too.
oh my goodness, percy just loves his joy. tonight he was grooming her neck just like he used to do to spot and jeanette..he is such a very lovely guy.

the dogs are totally beat….they had a TON of exercise, keeping up with all of the many tours. and little reggie has gone home on a two week trial with mj so hopefully that goes really well. and caspar has taken over cuddles role in keeping up with me…he matched me step for step today and then still had enough get up and go to chase the cats tonight.

wish us luck tomorrow that we can get thru one more day. and if you didn’t have a chance to get up here yet…try tomorrow we still have a TON of food to share!!!

it occurs to me that this coughing thing may not be allergy induced asthma…it might be pissed off lungs from too much bleach yesterday. i am having trouble doing ANYTHING without uncontrollable coughing..i just took some codeine in the hopes of surpressing the cough til my lungs forget i assaulted them unfairly.

luckily, since i was awake on and off all night and unable to breathe…i did manage to make brief but effective use of mops and paper towels in my gasping wanderings…this morning, it is still pretty freaking clean in here!

a bit of laundry, fill a water bowl or two, sweep a floor…change their bedding and blankets and poof we are pretty much good…if i wasn’t coughing so much, i could be done in an hour or so…but since i am..thank god, lynne is coming early.

i do want to get the barn guys fed and out and stick them all where i want them to be before mo gets here to clean the barns…and angelina and i are going to try to clean  gilbert’s old pen so we can use it for jesse if we need..today might just be too much for him with his occasional biting thing.

we also want to clean out the chickens so their houses are nice and tidy too. we have to stash frodo in that extra pen in  the mp room so he doesn’t go off in someone’s car…niko needs to go into the pen in the shop so he doesn’t barge out the front gate or jump some other gate barging moron…dusty is going into the office because as a blind dog, she has decided that strangers are scary and that means lucky will go into the mp room and she absolutely LOVES it in there (all kinds of stuff to get into.)

AND for the past two days i have forgotten to introduce our newest saint…

welcome…no name (sorry) i just haven’t had a chance to get to know him or her…this is a little feral cat trapped by a family who were feeding her/him but were moving that very day. they were desperate not to leave him/her behind uncared for but no one else had room to help.

we didn’t either but the woman was pregnant and i could hear the tears coming cuz she had no idea what to do with crazy cat in the trap but she knew she could not just leave him or her there. sigh, i felt sorry for her so i said yes to the cat.

anyway, she/he is currently stuck in a cage and looks about as pissed off as my lungs. i will try to get one of the vets to spay/neuter next week so she/he stays put in that cage til we get that done.

any suggestions for a unisex name for a pretty short haired tabby?

if i start turning purple while hacking up a lung..just make me sit down for a few minutes and breathe… preferably BEFORE i kick off and die. i think my sinus allergies are turning into asthma cuz i have been in coughing hell most of today. it is quite disgusting and the timing pretty much sucks.

and alternately..if i seem kind of out to lunch…just attribute it to lack of sleep and a hefty dose of allergy medication.

all is well on the saints front. edith is A-OK..the cow babes are good…the place is as clean as we could get it with all of the crap going on around here.

looking forward to seeing everyone this weekend and giving tours to gilberts new blind goat pen (good job steve! and remind me i want to make a very small alteration is the current design.)

remember everyone come hungry…we have a TON of food.

and all volunteers…the T-shirts are here so if you want one grab it in the morning.

we were looking at a pic of moses yesterday and so i thought i’d post some others of him doing one of his favourite things:

JOY!!!!

The new goats wouldn’t stay still so there aren’t any good pictures of them.

And my funny picture from my crew:

i am too bagged for more.

lahonie kicked edith yesterday…he got ellie the other day and she has a huge bruise too.  anyway…edith is a lot smaller than ellie…i was up all night checking on her..i was so afraid he might have ruptured something internally. she is sore but she is still with us.

note to all staff and volunteers….new rule…sheep and goats are to be in separate areas from the horses…and do not let the dogs anywhere near lahonie at all. that horse is sometimes a really big jerk.

all the new ones are fine.

nina and caspar and jerry got groomed yesterday…they look great!!! thx kathy and samantha!!!!
i am in the process of digging myself a grave….please remind me next year to take my vacation in hawaii and miss the whole getting ready for the open house thing.