Rolling Dog Farm

More Basket Follies

Alayne noticed blind Widget climbing into the laundry basket bed one recent morning and thought, "uh oh, isn't Dexter in the basket too?"  She had seen him get into the basket earlier in the morning but didn't see him in it at the moment, so he had either climbed out ... or buried himself in the blankets at the bottom of the basket.  Yet there was no sound and no movement as Widget started to settle herself in on top of the pile of blankets, and Alayne figured Dexter was on another bed somewhere in the house.

But as Widget went around in circles, trying to get the bedding just-so, the blankets started to move.  And move.  This annoyed Widget, who kept trying to get them fixed up just the way she wanted them for her morning nap.  There was still no sound, however, only the silent movement of the bedding underneath her.  The more she tried to settle down, the more the bedding moved.  Widget couldn't figure out why the blankets seemed to have a mind of their own, but by this time Alayne realized what was going on and picked up the camera off the desk. 

Just when Widget decided to overlook her growing sense of motion sickness and try to nap anyway -- that's the photo above -- up popped Dexter in the corner of the basket:

Not a happy face, eh?

Here's a side-shot of Old Snaggle-Tooth himself:

You can see that at this point Widget didn't care about the disruption any longer, though Dexter certainly did ... and he subsequently climbed out in search of less crowded accommodations.

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New Shelter Challenge Begins Monday

Yes, a new Shelter Challenge starts tomorrow, Monday, January 10th, and ends at midnight on March 20th.  Grand prize in this round is $5,000.  There are no second- and third-place prizes this time, but new categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

Their site says Best Friends is not eligible to win the Grand Prize in any of the 2011 Shelter Challenge contests because they were the "Challenge Champion" in 2010, having won the most total votes during the year, so that gives us a shot again at winning first place!

And remember, you can vote every day, so consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.

Please note:  Use Rolling Dog Ranch for our name and NH for the state and our listing will come up.

Because of your votes, we came in 2nd nationwide and won $5,000 in the Shelter Challenge that ended in December 2010.  Please help us win this round of the contest by voting every day, and by encouraging your family, friends and colleagues to vote every day, too.  Thank you!

Megan

You'd better get some Kleenex for this one.

The email subject line said: "Deaf/blind poodle pup in Sacramento has until 6pm tonight."  It was 5:16 p.m. Tuesday evening here in New Hampshire when it arrived in my inbox.  It was 2:16 p.m. on the West Coast.  The email came from a rescue coordinator for a Sacramento area shelter, and she wrote:  "...we have an approx. 4 month old poodle mix pup that came to us as a stray.  She is very thin and blind and deaf, per our veterinarians.  She is not a candidate for adoption here and rescues in California have not responded to our plea for her.... Please let me know if this is something you could do, no later than 6 pm (Pacific time) this evening."  Another sanctuary in California had recommended they contact us.

Alayne and I had just come in from afternoon chores and I'd gone up to the office to check on emails.  I read this one and asked Alayne to come upstairs to take a look.  The photo you see above is what came with the email.  We decided to say "yes," and given the time constraints, I emailed the shelter right back to say we'd take her.  They had wanted to find a foster for her, so I told them we could contact Ashley D., a wonderful lady who lives in the area, volunteers for another shelter there, and has sent us a number of disabled animals over the years.  (In December 2008, for example, Ashley had rescued Dexter from euthanasia and fostered him for a month while he recuperated from the emergency oral surgery he needed before we could fly him out to Montana.)

It turned out that the shelter staff knew Ashley, and the shelter vet had her number, so after a quick flurry of calls and emails, Ashley had graciously agreed to have them drop the puppy off at her house after work.

The shelter staff, including the shelter's vet, was delighted at how this little blind and deaf dog's fortunes had just changed in the space of an hour.  We received a number of emails from different people there that evening, thanking us and Ashley for stepping in so quickly.  In the course of all this, Alayne had decided to name the little girl Megan ... Megan McDuff, to be precise, so I let Ashley and the shelter know that she now had a name.

At 11:33 p.m. our time, Ashley emailed an update on Megan and said "she is cuddled in bed to stay warm with me."

A few hours later, Megan was dead. 

Ashley was holding Megan in her arms when the end suddenly came.

Early on Wednesday morning, an email from Ashley popped into my inbox.  The subject line was simply "Megan."  I knew before I opened it that something had happened.  In her note telling me the sad news, Ashley wrote, "I'm so upset. She is just a baby and deserved so much more than this. I'm sorry that I was not able to save her."

I read Ashley's note in a state of shock.  Then I told Alayne, who was down in the kitchen.  She came running up the stairs to read it for herself.  We just sat there, staring at the email on the computer.  From a happy ending to a tragic one, just like that.  And we felt so awful for Ashley, too -- to take in a dog and have her die in your bed the very night she arrived.

In my note back to Ashley yesterday morning, I said, "Thank you for giving her what was no doubt the most love she’s had in her short life.  We are so grateful to you for agreeing to take her in on such short notice and being with her on her last night.  She didn’t die alone and in a cage.  And she died having a name.  Thank you for being with her at the end."

We don't know why Megan died.  Ashley has asked the shelter's vet to do a necropsy to find out, and she dropped off Megan's body at the shelter on Wednesday morning. Whatever it was, this little girl had been through a lot in her brief four months of life.

Ashley had told us on Wednesday, "She was a sweetie, and as soon as she felt the warmth of a body, she crawled right into your lap." 

If she had to die so young, at least she was warm and cuddled and loved when her time came.  Sometimes that's all we can ask for.

Life Is Good

I received these photos in the past 24 hours of three of our adoptees on the West Coast.  Jennifer M., who along with her husband Paul adopted Ella from us a couple of months ago, sent me that photo of their beautiful girl lounging on the couch.  This is a once-shy dog who clearly has no inhibitions now whatsoever!

Next is Charlie, who had come to us as a blind Beagle from Georgia and whose vision we were able to restore through surgery.  Julie S. and her husband Richard from Olympia, Washington, adopted Charlie from us just over a year ago:

The only thing wrong with that photo is you can't hear how loud he was snoring!

Finally, here's three-legged Molly, who was adopted this past August by Tia and Karl M. in Spokane, Washington:

There seems to be a distinct pattern to these images.  It's making me sleepy looking at them.