Update on Burt and adoption notice for Holly

I wanted to mention that I received a comment from Luan at Southern Ontario Border Collie Rescue about Burt, one of the five feral Border Collie pups who came into TAS South almost two years ago. Luan had taken two of them into the rescue but sadly Burt's brother, Ernie, had to be put down for developing aggression issues with other dogs and people.

Luan has been working really hard with Burt and just recently he was adopted. Here's her comment reposted here:

BURT HAS BEEN ADOPTED! 20 months after his arrival here, his perfect people found their perfect dog. An older couple, both retired, but who still like to go for long daily walks and wanted a canine friend to accompany them. People with experience living with shy dogs. They came, they saw Burt and Burt decided that he liked them, too. So a few days later I drove him to their rural home, not all that far from my place. Three weeks and three progress reports later, all is tickety boo. Burt is enjoying his long walks, and he is making friends with the local canine population. I have been promised that he will be brought back for the occasional visit and a chance to play with his old pals. And I have been told that as far as Rescue goes, I am never getting him back! Bye bye Burt, may you enjoy your new people and new life. Miss you? Naw, (sniff) what makes you think that?
Hope we get some pictures of him with his new family sometime.

Meanwhile, Luan has a special needs Border Collie who's looking for a home.

From Luan:

I have a little special needs Border Collie here that really needs her own foster/adoptive home. I am hoping that someone reading your blog might be able to give her the love, commitment, and special care that she so deserves.


Holly is blind - to rapid onset cataracts, the result of untreated diabetes. She still has some peripheral vision and manages to avoid most objects. There is a possibility of cataract surgery to restore her vision, but it is very costly. She has been bred - regularly from the looks of it, and then dumped, probably when her drinking and pissing everywhere and bumping into things got too annoying. She wound up sitting in an Northern Ontario shelter for a month with no medical care, and was slated for euthanasia at Christmas if a Rescue was not prepared to save her. She is now doing well, although getting her blood sugar levels and insulin doses stabilized is proving a challenge. She still needs to be spayed - I was hoping to get her diabetes stabilized first. When she arrived here on Boxing Day she was 23 lb waif. Her body was literally feeding on itself because of the untreated diabetes. She is now on grain-free kibble and a much healthier 34 lbs.

Someone at some point in her estimated five years of life must have loved her - she very petite and pretty and one smart cookie. She is affectionate, easy to handle (and needle), knows her obedience commands and she is quick to respond. She is very adept at telling you what she wants and needs, and sings when the mood strikes her. She loves cuddles and being with people. However she hates hates hates being around other dogs. She hasn't hurt any, but her anxiety goes into overdrive and she snarls and carries on and snaps at them if they get too close. She has learned to tolerate my older "housedogs" and they have learned to avoid her, and for the most part things are peaceful. But she is not happy in a multi-dog household.

Holly needs a home that understands and is knowledgeable of diabetes. She is still at the stage where she needs regular blood glucose curves to determine the number of units of insulin she requires (she is currently getting 4 units twice daily). One without other animals. She is happy to have a well-fenced backyard, lots of pee-breaks, and lots of loving - she is not a terribly high-energy Border Collie and does not need long walks. What Holly needs and deserves is a world full of love and kindness, something that she has been seriously short-changed of up until now.

In the meantime, Southern Ontario Border Collie Rescue is appreciative of any monetary donations to assist with Veterinary care for Holly and the other foster dogs. Donations made through Helping Homeless Pets can be issued a tax receipt and go directly into the Veterinary medical account when directed specifically to Southern Ontario Border Collie Rescue.

Thanks
Luan Egan
Rescue Co-Ordinator,
Southern Ontario Border Collie Rescue
905 473-9050
http://www.bcrescue.info/

Adoption notice - Sunny

(from Laura)


Sunny's been in the shelter way too long. He's an older boy, 7 years old, and was surrendered by his owners in August. He was in the shelter for four months and finally got adopted in December - unfortunately that lasted less than two months. They returned him in mid-February, apparently because he didn't get along with their other cat. Now it's almost two months and he's still there and pretty depressed. He's a sweet cat who loves to be stroked and will sit in your lap, but right now he just sits in the corner, so people don't really notice him. He definitely needs to get out of the shelter. He'd do better without other cats. He's not aggressive, he's super-passive, but he gets upset with most other cats. I don't know how he is with other animals. But he really is darling, and gorgeous, and he deserves to spend the rest of his life with a family who appreciates him.



For adoption information on Sunny and other cats (and dogs and other animals), please visit Toronto Animal Services.

Update on Winnie

Winnie's a dog that got snatched up before I even had a chance to take a photo of her.

From Winnie's new owner:


I’m sending you this picture, taken by my mother-in-law, which shows Winnie buried amidst couch cushions, sleeping off her first day at the cottage.

We’ve had her now for just over a week, and we’re smitten. She is gentle and attentive, she only barks at raccoons - How can you argue with that? - and she seems to like northern Ontario as much as we do.

We don’t know much about her past except that she was a stray who was picked up by a shelter outside Montreal. She’s a little less than a year old, probably a Rottweiler-German Shepherd cross, though that’s been the subject of much debate at the local dog park. She would have been euthanized, but TAS picked her up and brought her to Toronto.

I’m so glad they did.

The worth of a dog

The original price for this "Golden" pup was $2000 at one of Toronto's few remaining don't give a shit pet stores that still sells puppies.

At a few weeks old, it got reduced to $1500.

It's final sale price was $126.

The sales tactic at this particular store is to tell anyone who will listen that if the pup doesn't sell at this point, it will likely be euthanized. Who knows if this is true or not.

So, this pup was sold on a Saturday.

Two days later, on Monday the pup was dropped off, along with its original bill of sales, at Toronto Animal Services South, owners saying something about getting in over their heads.


One day soon, this pup will hopefully find itself in a home which values it more than mere merchandise or an impulse buy and in that home it will be priceless.

For adoption information on this "Golden Retriever" (more likely Yellow Lab - thanks Jo Anne) pup and other dogs (and cats and other animals), please visit Toronto Animal Services.

Red Lake Rosie's Rescue by Sarah Beth

(All photos used with permission)


Photographer Sarah Beth recently went to document the fabulous work being done at Red Lake Rosie's Rescue in northwestern Minnesota.

The animals are picked up from garbage dumpsters, along highways, and are surrendered by their owners. Most of the animals suffer from disease, starvation, or injury, and many are very young. Some of the animals have mange, which is common in dogs that have malnutrition and disease. The rescued animals are temporarily sheltered at Red Lake Rosie's and then transported to foster homes in the Twin Cities.



See the rest of Sarah Beth's amazing photos and accompanying words here.

Toronto Humane Society - Get the animals adopted poster

(From THS Protest Group)

The Toronto Humane Society will be closed from April 12th 2010 until June 1st 2010. The shelter must be emptied of all animals before April 12th. Please download this poster and print a few copies. Email it to your friends, family, and coworkers. If we all work together we can find homes for every animal at the Toronto Humane Society before the temporary closure.


You download the full sized original posterhere.

The owl, the dog, the odds

(submitted by Cathrine in Dhaka)

"Something there is," wrote Frost, "that does not love a wall." If he had asked me, I could have saved him the poetry.

It's a dog. Specifically, Rani.

Yes, Rani is still with us. She has had suitors, but none we could consent to: life should be more than acting as a monsoon drenched burglar alarm. Even in the High Commission, which is inno way planned to cope with dogs, she has a 24 square meter kennel which includes garden, grass and an entry passage to a 4 square meter room with windows, a/c and a linoleum floor. She gets out when business hours are over at for at least an hour of running around the compound - with someone and her hard-to-get plastic bags there to scoop the evidence before the DMO sees it.

The kennel was hand made by a Bangladeshi craftsman, and cost the aforementioned poop-scooper 12,000 taka. (To put that in context, the average security guard is paid 5,000 taka a month.) It was quite beautiful when it was first installed. But no one told me that Bangladeshi street dogs can eat bamboo.

I have become adept at repairing bamboo fencing. But you can only do so much before what was a beautiful latticework looks like the aftermath of a typhoon. This is particularly true if you have to do a lot of repairs during 'load-shedding', which is the local euphemism for the rotating power blackouts that indicate the huge gap between the city's desire for electricity, and the electric company's ability to supply it.


So, it is not all that surprising that Ali and I were engaged in fence mending in the dark. Rani, having completed a good run, was lying in her kennel watching us, when suddenly she jumped up, raced down her garden wing to the corner and began to have hysterics.

And I mean hysterics. Ali leapt the fence because he thought there was a snake in the kennel. Moments later he was repeating "Oh, my G-d, oh my G-d!" This was not the sound of a man facing a cobra, this was the sound of a man seeing a miracle. When we got him out of the kennel, he was carrying a bird. Not just any bird - a lokhi pecha. For Ali, this was a miracle.

Lokhi pecha is the local name for barn owl. Common enough in North America, the barn owl in Bangladesh is a critically endangered species. Loss of habitat, pollution of air and water, the use of cheap rat poisons, have combined to reduce their numbers to almost none.

Ali was in ecstasy, despite the fact that the young owl had dug its talons into his fingers so deep that blood was dripping on his clothes. When he was a child, he said, he used to see lokhi pecha all the time in the dusk, leaving for the hunt, but he had not even heard of one being seen in at least 20 years.

So, what are the odds that an endangered owl will, in a city of 16 million, decide to run into the side of just this building, falling into just this long, narrow wing of the kennel, at just the time when there are people available to get to it before someone is maimed or killed?

Those are long, long odds. They got longer when you consider that the people have both the desire, and the resources, to do something for an injured owl.

What odds,exactly, have to be defied for something to be a miracle?

The young owl spent the night in a large dog crate, and, after coming to its senses, drank a lot of water, ate a lot of cat food and steamed chicken, snapped its beak and flapped its wings at anyone who dared even look at it. In the morning, an entire High Commission swung into action on its behalf.

By noon, Iftikhar, the main political officer, had tracked down the man at the head of the Nature Conservancy of Bangladesh. As a professor at a prestigious university, this man has access to staff, veterinary facilities, and budget. He immediately dispatched a team of four to bring the young owl in for assessment and whatever treatment might be necessary.

I was secretly pleased after the head technician claimed he could handle the bird, no problem, to see him sitting there with even more talons dug into his hand than Ali had experienced, waiting patiently for the bird to let go so he could seal the special transport box. Okay, Ali is 'only' a driver, but it took a lot less iodine and gauze to repair his hand than it did to patch up the snooty 'expert'.


So, our beautiful young owl is at the Conservancy. They tell me s/he has a mild shoulder injury and a lot of attitude. If all goes well, in a week, s/he will be transported to Lawachara National Park, up among the tea plantations of Sylhet, where s/he will help the economy by hunting rodents, and perhaps even help prevent the complete extinction of this branch of the family.

If that happens, I'll be calling on my neighbour, the Papal Nuncio: that will be a miracle.