I am incredibly blessed to know some wonderful people, but it is naieve to forget as often as I do that there are people that think casual cruelty is acceptable.
This is yesterday’s example of casual cruelty.
A fine handsome boy who is incredibly self-assured, confident, and just nice – these are all rare traits for any breed of dog (or human!), but to have them all in a Chow Chow that someone, either out of stupidity or with deliberate malice, put a rubber band around his neck until it ate into the skin causing a horrible infection? Frankly, it’s almost unbelievable.
I brought him to the animal shelter yesterday afternoon and he will be sedated and his injury cleaned and stitched today.

Morning all,

I’m trying to get back into writing here first, instead of just posting randomly on Facebook. It’s very easy for me to put writing off to do other things, but writing gives me clarity.

Yesterday was quite the clusterf*uck of random crap, but for the sake of brevity (and the point of this post) I had to drop and zoom my butt over to the animal welfare clinic to get a dog I’m watching for a family a health certificate so she can fly out on today’s rescue flight to Miami to get her closer to her forever home in South Carolina (holy crap that was a long sentence!). One of my favorite people at the clinic is a vet tech that I have been acquainted with for years and the best way I can describe her is that her soul makes me smile. Don’t get me wrong, she has a shit job. But she cares and she tries, and that’s all anyone could ever want. Yesterday she looked wilted and when she saw me she reached for a hug. Not a, “hey, hi, nice to see you” hug, but a “help, I hurt” hug. A little while later she told me the story and while my initial feeling was more HULK SMASH MEAN LADY WHO MADE GOOD PERSON SAD, my brain overrode the impulse.

There has to be a better way to communicate to the general public that the clinic is open 6 days a week and every day that they are open 11+ animals are dropped off. There are not 60+ homes per week looking to adopt pets. The math sucks. Let me tell you all, these people FIGHT to not have to euthanize any animals. Today a flight full of adoptable animals is heading to Miami and then the animals will be heading on to various partner (no kill) shelters throughout the states. Unfortunately, just a few days after that, the shelter will again be over capacity.

I reached out to the master of risk communication, Peter Sandman (via email), in the hopes that maybe he will have suggestions of an effective way to communicate to the people who bring in litters of puppies again and again that everyone does their best to help them find homes, but PLEASE let us spay/neuter your pets. Here’s what I wrote:

Good day,

For lack of a better introduction, I’m a long time listener, first time caller. 😉 I have been studying your excellent risk communication trainings in my career as an industrial hygienist and I find the field of risk communication fascinating.

In addition to IH work, I volunteer with the local St. Croix Virgin Islands local animal shelter and I have noticed there doesn’t seem to be a good way for workers to explain to people that are surrendering animals (over 11 animals are relinquished daily) that the shelter will provide veterinary care and will do their very best to re-home healthy animals, however as a last resort, some animals will end up euthanized.

No one that works there ever wants to euthanize healthy animals but because of shelter size constraints and the never ending influx of animals, there is occasionally no choice.

The spaying and neutering of pets would be a good step towards a reduction of surrendered animals, unfortunately there seems to be a cultural trend against spaying and neutering here in the Virgin Islands.

Would you be able to suggest any communication guidelines I could share with the shelter staff to help increase public awareness and understanding of the importance of spaying and neutering?

Or a better way to inform people that are bringing in yet another litter of puppies or kittens that they are adorable, but that finding homes is an ongoing and exhausting struggle and that there just aren’t 60+ homes looking for pets every week.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration!

All the best,

So, to the mean lady who called one of my favorite people a puppy killer which made her hurt, please remember that people do not work at an animal shelter to become rich and famous (because glamorous it is not); they work there to try to help make a positive difference in the lives of animals and while slogging through both literal and metaphorical crap every. single. day., they also need to be treated kindly.

All my love,

FoodLady

(I’ll update this post if I hear back from Peter Sandman!)

So, I had a call on Monday from someone asking if I could adopt their 16 puppies.
*record scratch* “Uh….say what?!”
Now, I remained professional, educational, and helpful – but holy shitballs, the sarcastic commentary actively running through my head during that phone call *really* tried to fight its way out of my mouth:
“Sure!? Who doesn’t have room for 16 extra dogs in their life!?”
“Uh, no.”
“We can try to market them as a crazy dog person kit? But we would need to include a pooper scooper and a dump truck of kibble.”
“Well, behaviorally speaking, I never recommend anyone adopt two siblings at the same time…..but I’ve never read anything negative about adopting two litters at the same time!”
The list of snark and head-shaking goes on.

Anywhoodle, I took vacation time from work yesterday so I could escort the fluffernauts to their big day at the shelter (spayed, etc.) and then hover around anxiously to make sure they were okay. I also took vacation time from work for today because I convinced the person with the 16 puppies to agree to getting their three female dogs spayed today in exchange for my assistance in getting the 16 puppies to the shelter as well as playing taxi for the human to go to the shelter too. I’ve convinced the AWC to meet me there with the transport truck, because I don’t see everyone fitting into the wrangler very well. LOL
Wish us luck!

Also, I think I’m doing vacation wrong.

In other news, how cute are the fluffernauts on the way to the clinic yesterday?! The a/c was blowing ON them but they still clung to the cold beverages like it wasn’t 65 degrees in the jeep!

Updated:

Yep, that was the plan, but as is the case with my life – humans plan and the gods LAUGH.
Waiting at the meeting place to meet AWC person, and the person with the puppies told me on this mornings call that she has given away 5 or 6 puppies yesterday (she told me 6, but told me she still has 11 – so the math is not computing) *sigh*
And she wants to get them all fixed, but now wants to keep them and find them homes……
One step at a time.

And now, depressingly updated:

Depressing update (seriously, if you don’t want to know – stop reading now. It is okay not to know): all of the puppies and one of the adult females tested positive for parvo virus. As you may or may not be aware, parvo is a very contagious and deadly viral disease, especially to puppies. Adults can usually survive but require intensive veterinary care (including meds, IV fluids, and occasionally a transfusion). The owner decided to have all of the animals brought in put to sleep.
I had horrifying flashbacks all night of the young daughter who loved these dogs helping me put them into the vehicle. I know in my mind that this is just a worst case scenario and that I didn’t do anything wrong. That this could have all been avoided if the adults had been vaccinated and spayed. But my squishy middle bits? Yeah, I destroyed a little girl. A sweet, helpful, dog-loving young lady who, through no damn fault of her own, just had all of her friends taken away and killed by some stranger – and this is killing me.
And don’t forget the industrial hygienist public health part of me – that part is FREAKING out because this lady gave away like five of those puppies to people, who probably have other dogs, who might be unvaccinated….
There is a HUGE parvo outbreak on island right now – this will not make it less.

Shit, they’re exhausting. No, for real – all mothers in the world of all species get credit – that is NOT easy.

So, I wrote a post on Facebook and then, stupidly, didn’t save it before going to edit a photo to attach. I know better than that, btw, but alas…my funny 4AM writings about adorable little monsters was lost.

But here’s some cute photos!

So, I (apparently) give the impression that I have done everything out there in regards to animal care, but that is not true in the slightest. I am usually willing to try pretty much anything – but the majority of my experience is with the super sick or extra disgusting cases.

Not orphans.

Orphaned baby animals are THE WORST. Here I am, an ape, trying to put formula into teeny tiny mouths of another species, but don’t let them aspirate any or you end up with pneumonia (which can kill them). So, there was a woman who brought in two orphaned puppies. They were cold (which, btw, will ALSO kill them), so in the traditional Family of FoodLady way, I stuffed em in my shirt:

And then I spent 4 hours trying to get them accepted by a mama dog who still had some milk. Sadly, she was *not* a fan. But she endured it as long as I was providing a lap for them all.

Regardless, it was not a success and I pawned those poor puppies off on to a poor volunteer couple just for the night.

The next day I went to pick them up and desperately asked, are there any other lactating mommy dogs?! There was, but the owner who had surrendered her (and her sadly unhealthy puppies who didn’t make it) had called and asked to have her back; but hadn’t shown to pick her back up in 3 days. I figured, even if the owner does show up, that’s still some mama-dog time and her boobs looked painfully ready to explode anyway. The puppies got filled up with milk in minutes, but mama-dog cleaned them and looked visibly relieved and happy. They were all in a snuggle for sleeping and I felt relieved and happy for them. I kept checking back in on them and they all really seemed to be bonding.

Pictures? Oh, of course I didn’t remember to take any photos during the hours I spent in a kennel, but here are the wee little nuggets yesterday. They are visibly fatter (YAY!).

So, fingers crossed that they continue doing well.

Sadly, every damn cage and kennel is full at the animal shelter. There is NO room. Please spay and neuter your pets!

UPDATE: DAMMIT! The jerk who surrendered his beautiful mama dog and then called and said he wanted her, but then didn’t pick her up – picked her up. *cries*

So now I have the two puplets. Help!

So, on Friday, May 17th I stopped by the animal shelter to drop off a case of cat food, and long story short, this is a foster dog Sandy (who I inexplicably call “Fancy” and yes, I do sing the Reba song to her daily!).

She was *very* starved and spent the first couple weeks resting and gaining weight at the animal shelter. Then, once she had energy she started to get bored (and stressed, which was leading towards additional health problems) and they asked if I could foster for a short time.
She had never been in a house before, but we are doing well with potty training (amazingly well actually!), she has “sit” down, walks on a leash well, and gets super duper excited about wet food (and we are talking vibratingly levitatingly levels of excited; she has to sit before she gets her spoonful – but I can’t swear she isn’t hovering (in a pretty little sit) about 3 inches off the floor). She also has an unfortunate affinity (and by affinity, I mean a true and deep yearning sort of love) for dirty laundry and shoes which she doesn’t damage but does immediately take outdoors. I have spent many an awkward time laughingly searching for missing wardrobe pieces in the front yard. She also attempts and spectacularly fails to take bowls of kibble outside quite often with hilarious kibble-splosions, and just looks so dang happy and proud to have all of her riches spread around her!

Little Miss Fancy is all heart, love, and trepidatious excited joy. She came from hellish abuse and neglect and while there is a not-small part of me that would love to find the person who starved her to the point of almost death and hurt them for the pain and suffering they caused her, a slightly larger part of me understands that hurting someone else won’t increase that person’s empathy towards other living creatures and *if* that person has the ability to empathize, the only thing that could possibly help is education about animal care. For now, this little girl is getting healthy and learning all of the things that will make her a wonderful and loving companion.

Please keep this little Fancy dancer in mind if you are ready to adopt a loving and special dog into your life.

Here is her before picture taken around April 19, 2018.