Rescue Journal

updates

Carol  ·  Sep. 12, 2013

the newbies...
cali has gone home with Helga as her newest foster cat. while she has not suddenly turned into miss super affectionate cat, she is refraining from being an attack cat. I am sure she is far happier at Helga's than she was here and thank you so much Helga for giving her a chance at happiness there.

max-cat goes back in today for repeat bloodwork. we are waiting for his bloodwork to improve before attempting his dental.

tony has moved from the medical room pen into the intro cage in the mp cat room..the goal is to get him blended in with the cats in there. he currently is not really happy with this plan.

orion and Passat go in next Tuesday for their bloodwork and testing...the plan for them is to eventually move them to the house where they will have greater contact with me....they need to be in close contact with people frequently.

Martha has been moved over to tony's vacated medical room pen. she is a young cat and needed more room. she is going in for her spay on Monday and will then need a week or so to recover while I decide where to eventually blend her.

andy will be sedated on Friday and will be going in for his annual shave down and hands on vet check. that ought to be fun...not.

crazy horse (roxie) has fully embraced her craziness again so I am happy about that.

bru remains utterly unhappy and depressed, jenn and jiv won't be back until the end of the month so it would be nice if he just got over it until then.

Gideon is doing well with his sutures, no sign of infection which was the biggest worry...they will come out in a week or so. I have been thinking about ways to reinforce brad's pen to keep everyone safe and to cut down on possible human error so this never happens again.

we have started both Gideon and summer (our almost feral goat) on cartrophen injections to hopefully help both of them with their chronic arthritis..it is a bit of an expensive experiment...$400 per week for the full 4 week series on both. it works really well on the dogs...it also worked great on baby the sheep so here is hoping it works equally well on our much loved old horse and freaky goat!

Elizabeth is slowly recovering too. she wasn't just suffering from the pain of the injuries, she was suffering from the loss of her feeling of safety too. lexie is still doing both pain and antibiotic injections daily and she is making Elizabeth go out into the field for a brief time in the afternoon (after the dogs are all shut into the house so she doesn't get stressed by their barking and gate hanging out.)

amber the bunny is on antibiotics again, she has a chronic problem with ongoing congestion.

I have our shed guys working on an estimate to build another pig shed. since charlotte and Wilbur can't live together anymore, it is time to build a new pen. the current one is not big enough to section off comfortably for both of them.

we have taken on that second dog that I met when helping shawn find his new foster Shelby. her name is renny, she is a senior, bred to death white boxer from a cruelty investigation. she is still in her spca foster home (which is wonderful by the way.) my hopes are that this foster home may be willing to keep her as a permanent foster for saints. we are all currently trying to figure out what is best for everyone involved, we should know what we are doing with renny and where she will be living by Monday. I have already done the paperwork so she is already officially a saint...super nice and sweet dog! we will get her into the vets for our routine admission check asap.

we all know how lance is doing, no secrets there! hopefully the fencing estimate will come in sometime today and we can get moving on an actual plan once I know better the possible costs/ripples of all possible plans.

I finally tossed out the old, stinky cat posts from the back cat rooms and bought them two new ones. between the new bed and the new cat posts, they are all LOVING it back there!

renee has gone back to school so we have lost some of our staffing back up. she is still working here 3 days a week. I have hired Christine and we will be training her to work all areas on Mondays over the next few months. chris will eventually become our one staff person go to on site on Monday stat holidays. Monday stats are a headache for me because it is not always our regular teams of volunteers here, everything gets a bit mixed up with the senior volunteers not always here on the stats. so far erin has gotten stuck working every Monday stat for some continuity here which means she never gets a long weekend with her family which is not really fair.

anyway...saints welcomes Christine to our staff roster roll. she has tons of animal experience in her regular job, has already been volunteering here helping michelle and me on the saints sunday bedtime routine for the past year. so she is very familiar with the barn stuff and most of the dog stuff already. I am really happy that she will be joining us here.

ok...I think that is most of the recent news.

Comments

Fiona

The electric fence for dogs is a good idea but there are some dogs that will still go thru it. They will brace for the shock and run. My old farrier used to watch his dog and if there was something worth getting shocked on the other side he would go for it. It works great for most dogs.

Susan H

Hi Carol, the electric fence wire is buried. The only dog it works on is the dog wearing the special collar, that pocks up the signal. We don't use the shock, just the vibrate.

Carol

we can't do electric fencing here susan...too many old, blind and demented creatures (plus a few simply beyond stupid) to accidently shock. even if we only did the top rail..Gideon would get it because he can't see very well and if raven got zapped, it could trigger another seizure.
and if already anxious and phobic lance did go over and get shocked..it might just freak him out enough not to come back.

plus it is a liability issue with constant on site visitors..a child could grab it and if there was a power surge we could be sued.

not worth the risks around here.

Susan H

Carol, I was thinking about Lance and the fence problem. What about an electric fence? We have a husky cross that I swear can climb over any fence, any time! We installed an electric fence that goes around the perimeter of the property. Problem solved!! We have it on the lowest setting, which just sort if gives off a warm vibration, I know cause I tried it. She doesn't like that feeling, and now stays four feet from the fence line. We did it over an acre of property, and cost us around 500 bucks or so. Just an option.