August 2016
The 2016 Rescue Picnic is rescheduled for Saturday, September 10. The invitations will go out soon, and we hope you can come. As always, please RSVP with Ron (ron@nwsams.com) because we need an accurate count.
Last month we had a request from a woman in China who said she is saving dogs from the meat markets there. She asked us to help by bringing them to the US and finding homes for them. We answered that we were part of a group that brought one of the first Korean Sammies over, and we were glad it was successful, but we lost money doing it. Our primary concern in going out of our area is that we always ask a volunteer to put hands on a dog before we take it into rescue. We have to know the dog is a purebred Samoyed, and that the temperament is what we expect. It’s impossible to do that in a different country. We have a lot of sympathy for those dogs, but we also know what we’re capable of doing here. The northwest is our home, and it’s where we are chartered to help dogs.
A breeder in Wyoming asked for help placing a seven and a half year old female Samoyed. She doesn’t like small dogs and will attack them, though she gets along with other Sammies. We tentatively agreed to help him look for a home for her, and we wrote to two possibilities. There was no answer from either, so we asked Denver Samoyed Rescue if they would like to be involved. It turned out they actually know him, so they will be taking lead. She is a very nice dog with one definite problem, but in the right home it would be no problem.
For the last couple years we have been asking for someone to step up and help us with our eventual transition to new blood in Northwest Samoyed Rescue. We recently had a productive conversation with a northwest couple interested in helping. We plan to continue for a long time to come, but if we believe what we say, “it’s all about the dogs,” we have to consider the future. When we have something to announce, you’ll hear it here.
Our waiting list continues to grow. We now have 35 families waiting, and five of those are previous adopters. With only three or four dogs coming into rescue each year that means a long time before we find one for them. It says a lot about our breed that most of them are willing to continue waiting.