SAINTS

geriatric and palliative care for senior animals is at the difficult place now…we are figuring out that they need more than just food, water. a nice family to live with and an occasional asprin but with the technology available how far do we actually go in caring responsibly for them?

when i was talking to corry from the spca she was telling me what she wanted to say in her article..that seniors make great companions, and can still live active lives for many years, they are already settled and housetrained…what you see is what you get.

and this is all true IF you are talking about 8 or 9 yr old seniors…but at saints we have very few of those kind of seniors…we have the 12, 14, 16 and 18 yr old kind of seniors and they do come with arthritis, incontinence, dental and cardiac disease.

if you look at max, you see a great and happy and sweet, very active dog..it took the xrays to see that his spine is toast and his heart is enlarged. some metacam, maybe eventually some tramadol…maybe a series of cartrophen injections? (i will talk to the vet about that on saturday), a couple of different cardiac meds and max continues acting like a happy and active old dog. the spca saved us a nice chunk of money doing those diagnostics on him. they gave us a very old dog with alot of diagnosed health issues that we knew we could easily help him with.

dogs become incontinent for a few different reasons..infection, joint or spinal disease. pain, infection and inflamation are the first things to look at when a dog loses control of their bladder or bowels. you can medically reduce pain, infection and inflamation with a good and responsible medication regime. you still have to pay for the diagnostics but a thorough exam and history taking, bloodwork, urinalysis and xrays do not cost as much as a vacation…a few hundred dollars put out and a well thought out plan to carry forward with.

it is not rocket science and it does not take MRI’s, CT scans, ultrasounds, and echocardiograms….it just takes a bit of cash, some common sense about aging, and a responsible and decent vet.

the issues with our animals is…they never had responsible vet care to begin with. these guys mostly (not all) came from homes where their health and wellness was never given alot of thought. their families either did not know or care that their animal’s health was something that was supposed to become a priority.

the world is changing…and not just for the good either. part of the issue is even “good” families are not prepared to spend thousands of dollars or alot of effort on an old and falling apart dog… their lives are busy and stressful, their cash flow is tied up in interest on credit cards and loans, thier vet is recommending a bunch of necessary AND high end diagnostics that they simply do not have the money for.

they have not been long term responsible and regular and loyal customers at their clinics so credit and payments are not an option either. if they then decide to unload the dog, they take it to the nearest shelter which is now faced with this nice but old and medically messed up dog or cat that no one in their right mind wants to adopt.

dead dog, dead cat…unless they call rescue and rescue has the resouces and room.

most of these families won’t change because they really are not great homes to begin with…but some are just functioning thru ignorance and not knowing and with education they might change. education is the key in animal welfare to improving the care of all domestic animals…companion and farm.

we have to raise the standard of what society as a whole expects to be considered responsible and humane care.

but how do we get there when every moment of every day is spent in caring for the victims of our ignorance? when every dollar raised goes right back into fixing up what was invisible because we never thought we were supposed to know?

i envisioned a sanctuary whose primary focus is to value animals…up close and personal…see them, feel them, touch them, KNOW them and what they deserve. learn what it takes to care for them, learn what we owe them in return for what we take from them. to see with our veruy own eyes that old does not mean dead, it can mean feeling well and acting like a moronic puppy.

now i know we need to go further…we do the caring part, we do provide the access to meet them…but not everyone comes here, we need to push out into the community to bring that knowledge out there.

so much to do…keep saints running well, start a new farm sanctuary, figure out an educational program and plan an effective delivery system….

god should have made 10 of me and at least one of me disgustingly rich!

what i could do with paris hilton’s money! (she can keep her body and lifestyle, it wouldn’t work too well for me)

i am thinking of a new reality tv show…SAINTS RICH BFF…dontcha think that would be fun and interesting? 

this heat is deadly. the staff are cooling tunie down every couple of hours..i don’t relax about her til early evening when i can finally leave the barn wide open to the cooling air.

cole was rushed to the vet today, his incontinence issues have attracted the flies again and he had maggots around the base of his tail. the vet said it is recent, just in the past day or so but jeezus they were burrowing already! his butt is shaved and he is booted out of the mp room…too many flies in there. he is in the main part of the house where it is air conditioned as the flies don’t like it too cool for them. bastards…i hate them.

emily needs her hernia surgery sooner than later before that hernia strangulates. the vets are concerned about an incision in this heat and fly season but don’t want us to wait. sooo…next week emily will move into the rabbit room which is also cool and airconditioned and totally fly free…it is a good thing we built those rabbit pens big enough to hold a baby calf for a week.

spritely’s leg is bad…she wouldn’t even come out of her stall this morning. the vets came and shot her up with pain meds, left us some more antibiotics and we will see if she gets better again. ohhh spritely, the end is just getting too close for you.

watson had his pre-op vet vet check…he will stay over night and have his surgery tomorrow..his ears are totally wrecked from a long standing infection, his eyes are wrecked from untreated glaucoma, his hips i don’t know about cuz his xrays are tomorrow but i bet they are totally wrecked too…AND….watson is apparently only 3 or 4 years old.

way to go….breed a great looking purebred dog, sell him, and destroy him in less than 5 fucking years. it pisses me off.

i have started booking the new vet appointments/surgeries so we can again be freaking out over the vet bills…max goes in on saturday, daphne and jesse go next week, banjo and lucas the week after..ode to the joyful financial strain of fixing up other people’s ignorant neglect.

i got a call from a communications officer with the spca today…she writes an article for the province every weekend. in a couple of weeks they are doing one on seniors so she phoned to interview me and to get saints perspective. i thought that was nice that the spca is including other rescues points of view in a weekly column they write for the province paper. kudos to them for including us. she will send me a draft when it is done.

when i got home from work (after taking watson to the vet and picking up cole from the other vet)…angelina told me a lady drove here from abbotsford with an eleven yr old cat that was hoping to get in. they took the cat home again and then angelina called them back and said i said no.

i feel really sorry for that poor cat..but jeezus flippin christ, we just cannot take them all.

hey nicole…where’s the new photo album? i need something to get me out of my bad mood.

 

I thought I would sneek pictures of our two fosters while you are looking at the SAINTS animals because – well they need a home!

First is Curtis

And then there is Screech

Curtis is just over 2 years old and Screech is just under 1 year old. Hopefully Screech’s picture will eventually shrink because it is huge right now.  Curtis is a medium size dog that is 47 lbs.  He is incredibly energitic and has had an operation on one leg because of a luxtating patella and his second leg is a grade 1 to 2 level and may or may not need surgery in the future.  I am sure this is the reason he hasn’t found a home because he is the right the size, right colour, right temperament with people and dogs but he has a potential surgery looming in the future.  Screech..is our second dog, in over 40 foster dogs who has come back and he came back TWICE.  He is a loonburger on the leash and has high prey drive even though there is a cat that lives upstairs.  So he must go to an experienced dog owner with absolutely no cats in the house.  And Screech’s head is bigger than that in real life and even though he is a bit shorter than Curtis he is the same weight (okay he is 3 lbs heavier).

i have the photo album photos together, but it will take me about 2 hours to fix the web pages up so you will have to wait until late tonight as i’m off to go help my brother and sister-in-law move in this disgusting heat.

Max

Attention German Shepherd lovers – the very beautiful Watson would love a home of his own.
He’s not too old, has really lovely looking teeth, really really not good with cats.
He needs a home asap as he can’t be trusted near any cats (and there are plenty of cats at SAINTS).
I’d guess him around 6yrs +, he does have some arthritis, but what shepherd doesn’t!

the awww factor: Banjo

Daphne 2 – being difficult and not looking at the camera.

until nicole gets worried looking at a nothing happening here blog.

(she has pics of all of the new guys and at some point she is going to post them so you guys have something to look at )

hah nicole…gotcha…eventually!

 

he tosses a stuffy in the air and it lands on a sleeping jewel..he looks at it for a second and then darts away so she won’t think he just tossed a toy at her…it was some other new guy.

he scratches his ear and then he decides to kill his foot, he chases his tail and falls over after one full circle…i go to pick up poop, he gets his nose right down there with me to see what i am doing now.

i open the door to the darkend yard and say…hey max do ya wanna go pee?…he stands there looking out for a second, says “no freaking way” and charges back into the kitchen to whirl around and look at me.

and oh my goodness…a three legged cat? where is his other leg? is it here?..is it there? how does it walk? how interesting is that????

he looks like a cheerful hyena (sp??) and is a totally funny guy…OMG! i just love funny dogs!!

we missed the 152nd turn off and ended up going over the port mann bridge…that highly sucked cuz we were dying in the heat but we eventually made it safely back to get max.

NICE DOG…we have been home for less than 30 minutes..he is already free in the kitchen and little dog/ cat room…he is kind of scared of little daphne 2 the mini but noisy daxi and he is definately scared of the fat little chi-sized suzie land shark (he got too close to her when she was stuffing her gut at the food bowl)

he is a 14 yr old red cattledog with a really great face who loves to play ball…i get to type a couple of words and he puts a wet and slimey ball in my lap for me to toss again for him…..getting this written is taking some time!

it is too freaking hot up here..i sent steve out to get a bigger air conditioner for the dog/cat room and then he moved the smaller but still new one out to the bunny room to replace the sluggard out there. he also got us two more industrial fans for the mp room and set up a fan for tunie in the barn to keep the air moving around and not so stagnant in there.

we get home with max and the portable air conditioner in the big dog room has turned off cuz the water thing was full…the new one was off cuz i don’t know why but it turned on again when i pushed the button so hopefully it will cool off in here soon.

i figure if i don’t do well with the heat than neither will my furbearing old buddies…did you know that elderly people and animals stroke more often in the summer months because they just cannot tolerate the heat as well as they used to?

keep em healthy and cool…it is a very good rule for elders of all species.

(oh and i just want to say that the staff at surrey were all really helpful and friendly and grateful that max found a good place to land…nice folks)

6;18 update..could someone please get up here to play ball with max???? he is happily relentless…and i am getting tired!

we are hiring casual staff (yes we had sick call today and there goes my plan for the day out the window again) may become permanent part time.

we are looking for intelligent, compassionate, respectful animal caregivers able to work as part of our team. the abilty to organize, follow thru, deal with all kinds of interesting situations, manage very physically demanding work and have reliable transportation are necessary components for working at saints.

wages to start are $10 per hour…you won’t get rich here but the right person will love their job.

call carol to arrange an interview

604-339-5144.