she is an old shep cross with crappy teeth and really gawd awful skin…but she is so adorably lovely….except she is currently laying on her bed and staring at me and growling..which seems a bit weird to me…..i think she is a growly groaner communicator like tyra (at least i hope she is…always so hard to figure them out the first couple of days til we both get used to each other.)
thx brenda and laura for the much needed TLC and bath…she smells and looks so much better.
i have a couple of stories to tell but i am sore and tired and want a hot bath. if i can still remember today tomorrow…i will write about today’s stuff then.
editted at add…esther apparently growls when she has to really pee badly! funny girl….empty bladder, no more growling.
on her last walk last night, doris was absolutely roaring around for her. she was trotting here, over there, back again at fast for doris speed…she was FUNNY. now you would have to know doris to know that doris is never intentionally funny…she is a very royal and serious little thing….”you there!…feed me…walk me…take me out to pee…” she does not ever hurry , it is not in her vocabulary. she made me laugh.
kodi-bear is not happy in my bedroom. he is sulking again and he still has diarrhea. he is again plastered up against the door, only this time it is my door. and he is so stubborn and refusing to move that he had his bout of runny poop all over the doorway and still decided he was laying there. so there i am at midnight trying to mop over and under a runny poop, stubbornly immobile and sulking, cattle dog…it was an exercise in patience in the extreme.
max and mandy are somewhat more relaxed in the other part of the house…the cats certainly like them better than that busy kodi-bear.
the vet came yesterday to see gilbert and his ongoing saga with periodic foot rot. she said we are never going to get completely rid of it, it is too long term and chronic for him. we will just have to medically manage it for the rest of his life…ok that sucks…i was hoping for a long term cure.
while she was here, she happened to see emily our sweetest and most beautiful calf…sucking away on joy. she checked joy and no joy is not lactating…she just lets that spoiled little girl suck away cuz she wants to.
apparently this is not a good thing…the continual sucking without any milk production may irritate joy’s teats and give her mastitis. (you learn something new about cows every day)…anyway her 2 possible solutions were to keep emily away from joy for 2 or 3 weeks…i was not fond of that one. that would upset emily, joy and percy and i do like our cows upset.
her second solution was to insert a plastic nose ring in emily (that’s gotta hurt!)…it has little spikey things on it so when emily tries to nurse, it hurts joy so she kicks emily to make her stop…ok..i like that solution even less. poor em, she gets a honking big plastic spikey ring pierced thru her nose AND she gets kicked by her not real mom because she loves to suck on her… poor joy, forced to kick the little calf that you love because the plastic spikey thing in her nose hurts when it touches you….that solution royally sucks!
i have always believed with thumb sucking human children, that they will eventually stop..whoever saw a college kid sucking his thumb? it just doesn’t happen. so i thought baby cows would do the same, stop when they were ready…have you seen a giant cow nursing on another? well the vet says they can.
hmmm..thinking again. i want to talk to my old farmer friends…maybe there is some nasty tasting but safe “stop baby cows from sucking on other cows teats” cream to put on joy.
the things you have to figure out kindly in rescue is MIND BOGGLING!
ok…done my tea and i have to go pick up some bales of straw this morning to make the barn guys beds better.
cuz when 16 yr old new dogs start calling out questioningly at whatever the time the clock says…you get the heck up….(good mornin’ mandy)… max is still sound asleep. trying to put my thinking cap on to write something of at least some interest to me, cuz if i can’t then i might as well start working around here…and sorry but my body says it is way too early to move out of this chair.
since that whole good, not good, real rescue or not, rescue thing is still in the forefront of discussion out there..maybe i will think on what makes a rescue….healthy. we all know there are some unethical, not real rescues out there…but there are also some ethical ones who do a good job but aren’t really healthy.
there is the physical health things…like financial resources, facilities…i don’t know if any rescue organization is really completely financially healthy….it seems to me that it is pretty darn easy to spend every cent that comes in on helping animals every way that you can…like (by the way)…cali, the old lab at mission animal control, goes in for her mammary tumour removal surgery next week so she can be more physically healthy and hopefully more adoptable as well….the 2 skinny horses? we are off the financial vet care hook for…they are being transferred to hayburner farm for rescue sometime today.
but what about emotionally healthy? how many rescue organizations are brought to their knees from dysfunctional relationships from within. rescue groups and individuals go to war with others and with themselves. i have in the past talked ad nauseum on rescue bashers bashing others..now lets talk about how we inadvertantly hurt ourselves.
few rescuers or people involved in rescue have master degrees in communication or social or welfare work (and even if they do, it won’t really help all that much in actual hands on rescue)…it is one of the very few places in the “service to others” industry that you can make a very real difference to the immediate world around you without a major educational degree.
really, all you need is a great deal of passion, a vision, and some networking skills. if you are smart (and lucky,) you will surround yourself with all kinds of people who have some of the strengths and skills that you are maybe missing.
but as soon as groups of people get together to further one belief….you find that one belief is really 2, 10, 20, 54…. eventually you find that your original adgenda is not the only agenda around…and then suddenly, conflict enters the door.
internal conflict within the group is not necessarily a bad thing…it by necessity, makes you grow and think and then re-think, and re-think until you need a break from thinking before you can’t think at all anymore.
but it is how both the entire group and each individual handles that conflict that counts. sometimes when you are just polars apart, with no happy meeting ground in sight…you have to just cut your losses and someone has to go. but hopefully in most situations thru compromise, respectful negotiation, or the real ability to actually let go of an issue and move forward…things will work themselves out.
people argue in rescue..it is like a national past time…we do it on forums, we do it in board rooms, we do it individually amongst ourselves. mo, sheila and i have had some whopping fights…we all care very deeply about animals, rescue and saints. nicole and i don’t argue much but we can still occasionally quietly piss each other off….the staff and i sometimes get frustrated with each other and don’t even tell me that i don’t sometimes drive the volunteers completely insane when they need something from me and i keep forgetting to get it for them.
it is one of those things where the best and the worst of us is right out in the open for all close to us to see. and that is hard to keep healthy….so many individuals, so many personalities, so many differing beliefs, so many different kinds of living, of feeling, of speaking, of hearing, of just being.
we do ok on our good days…but bad days are always a challenge. there can be a lot of accumulative group and individual bad days in rescue and in our daily lives.
so what do we do? how do we handle the days when things are not so great?
with a great deal of caring for each other, with a great deal of actual respect….with a very clear common goal running around and under all of our feet creating puddles of urine and puddles of worry and puddles of furry laughter, love and caring.
people come and go…everyone in rescue is looking for something slightly different and it is not always right where you happen to seek.
it is an imperfect world, saints in an imperfect rescue filled with imperfect people and imperfect animals…and those of us that stay for the long haul, love it here.
it is the one thing at saints that we all have in common and we somehow make it work. i think saints is pretty healthy and for that, i am truly grateful.
have i told you guys lately how much i love you all?…well…i really do.
ok, enough thinking deep sappy thoughts for this morning…i still have not had a cup of tea yet and i want one before i think any more.
