May 2014
Stormy is still with Melissa, as she has been for well over a month. She has a stubborn urinary tract infection that hasn’t cleared up in well over a month, so a culture was taken and should provide us with the information to put her on the right antibiotic. Stormy has thoroughly made herself at home in the meantime.
Last month we knew we had a dog coming from the Walla Walla (Blue Mountain) humane society. Many thanks go to Liz Summa, who picked her up and drove her to Yakima, where Kathy met them and brought our newest foster here. After a day or two we chose the name Lily for her and it fits her very well. Lily is a small dog, only 40 pounds, and had puppies recently. She has almost no coat, but now that she is spayed it should come back thick and heavy before we know it. The shelter originally told us they picked off 200 ticks, but later let us know they gave her Capstar and almost that many more ticks fell off in her kennel run. There are little scabs on her that are gradually falling off.
Lily was estimated to be three years old. Now that she is here we are adjusting that to somewhere between one and two. She loves people as much as she loves to run hard and play with other dogs, but is quite timid and afraid of sudden sounds. That’s probably because of the time she spent outdoors on the run, and having to protect the puppies she had while on her own. She loves attention and will even relax while being held in a lap. Because of the ticks we chose to give her a course of Doxycycline in case of Lyme disease; now that she has completed those we can think about letting her move on to a permanent home.
Late in the month we were contacted by a Seattle vet who is a friend of a woman with a Samoyed, who needs a new home. We’ve been working with her for about two weeks, and are ready to send people to her home to meet her dog. His name is Sam (the eighth dog named Sam we’ve helped), and is a little less than five years old. During this process we found a new volunteer. Lindsey helped Georgia Samoyed Rescue for years before moving to the Edmonds area, and we knew her from the rescue e-mail list. She told us last month that she lost her old boy Thor, so it was with crossed fingers we asked her to visit Sam. We are delighted to relate that Lindsey has decided to adopt Sam. We’ll try hard to get them to the rescue picnic July 19 to meet y’all.
For the last couple weeks a Samoyed has been listed on the Salem Craigslist as “free to a good home.” We wrote to the contact immediately, thanks to the quick notification from Holley. After three days with no answer we tried again, but still haven’t heard back though the ad is still posted. It makes us suspicious when we see something like this, but there is not much we can do about it.
We frequently receive messages from people who are moving to an apartment that doesn’t take dogs. We are weary of that excuse because anyone who looks can find a place that takes dogs. In the case of Jack, the mother of the owner contacted us about him because her son was moving. Jack is ten years old and going blind. We wrote back to the woman and offered to list him, and to take him if her son would pay boarding and medical expenses; we explained it was nearly impossible to place a senior blind dog. It’s not fair to the dog, who has given his whole life to that owner, to be dumped at that age, and we told her that. To our surprise, she agreed and said she was keeping him herself. In return we offered our experiences living with a blind dog and some ideas to make it easier.The 2014 Rescue Picnic is July 19! We hope to see you there.