Sanctuary animal updates:
Since our last update on April 11 th, we have found homes for Shelley, Toby, Ruby, Little Man, Sunny, Christopher, Chloe, Unique, Cooper, Michael, Chuck, Rose, Nutmeg, CB, Elana, Sibley, Arby (again), Jane, Russell, Amber, Rain, Bow, Juana, Dalton, Jolly, Winston, and six puppies. That is 32 dogs! We also found a home for Jayjay, one of our cats. Good luck in your new homes everyone!
Animal deaths and illnesses:
This month we also lost two cats. We had to put Moses down, a semi-feral FIV cat that had renal failure and we lost Violet one of the cats in the back feral cat house.
Additionally of interest this month was that we brought in Monique – one of the Georgia dogs – to be spayed and it turns out she was about two-three weeks away from giving birth! She did not look pregnant to us or the vet and he had her on the table and everything. We were all shocked to discover this and so we had her closed up and she will be allowed to give birth to her pups. (Pets Alive does NOT believe in late term spays). So we’ll be having puppies again soon.

We also had three dogs turn up heartworm positive. Nowadays this is treatable but it is a HUGE expense to us. The dogs from Georgia are young, so adorable and so adoptable but often have medical issues like this for lack of a simple preventative. The treatment costs us over $600 per dog. Please consider making a donation to help us cover this. You can be sure that adoption fees do NOT cover these expenses.
Bow (dog) also managed to break her toe and tear up her foot pad pretty badly. We aren’t quite sure how she managed this, but she did. Being a lab mix, she hardly noticed of course and she still managed to find a home! In fact she just left today.
Aretha (dog) seems to have some sort of problem with her tongue. We were warned when we took her that she had an issue and we needed to give food to her that was soft, but it turns out she actually has something wrong with her so we’re looking into that.
Roscoe (dog) will be going for his surgery next week. Please check our website for the story about Roscoe and the double leg surgery that he needs. We are looking for a home, or even a foster home for him to help with his recovery period.
Missy (cat) went to a third doctor this week to try to diagnose what is wrong with her. It is pretty much the same recommended treatment as the other two vets suggested. For a complete read on Missy please look at our blog – she is the case study of the month and the entire story can be found there.
Morgan (cat) continues to lose weight, even though he eats like a horse. We took blood again from him (even though it has been done twice in the past year) and again it showed nothing abnormal. He is going to go to the vet next week for a follow-up exam to see if they can detect anything that could be a problem. He’s very thin and we’re still trying to figure out why.
Not an illness – but we shaved down Pudgy this week. Pudgy is a cat that has long hair and tends to mat. Pudgy does NOT like to be handled though and so the last time we had to shave him we had to bring him to the vet, have him sedated and then shaved down. We can’t afford that though, and so this time, our cat wrangler and our vet tech decided to tackle the job. Pudgy was not too happy, but everyone came out of it with all their limbs intact and although Pudgy doesn’t look that great, he is definitely more comfortable …even if slightly embarrassed with his hair cut.
Horse Update:
We are coming close to the end of the line for Maureen. Three times in the past year we have thought it time to perhaps let Maureen go, but each time she rallied. Two weeks ago she was spending almost all her time laying down, had a bloody mucus discharge from her nose and generally seemed uninterested in life. We called the vet and they came out right away as she is one of their favorite patients. They diagnosed her last year with probable cancer and did not expect her to make it to the winter, never mind through the winter, but she did. So they did what they could for her, and Maureen rallied again. We have her out on grass again (as often as we can with spring grass), we brush her regularly and are unashamedly spoiling her. We don’t want anyone to be surprised though to hear that in the next few weeks that Maureen will have passed on. This is so depressing for us, as this girl was a carriage horse that was retired and brought to Pets Alive in 1999. She never really had access to grass or pasture or running about, and she loved her retirement here. She is also one of the sweetest horses we have at Pets Alive and she is always kind, gentle and compassionate to her caretakers and to volunteers, even when we are forced to do something she doesn’t care for. She is still going strong and I’m hoping that my next update will have her still with us, but that is probably not to be a reality. If any of you have been meaning to get here and have been putting it off, now would be the time if you wish to ay goodbye to this sweet girl.
Blackie continues to do very well with only one eye. We have now grouped all our very elderly horses together, so Kingfish, Maureen, Blackie and Moonray are all together in one pasture. I expect that we won’t have any of them for very long. They are all very old, and very feeble, and Kingfish, Blackie and Maureen had a very hard life as carriage horses for many years so they worked long days for a good part of their lives. Thankfully their owners loved them enough to retire them here when they could no longer do their jobs. Many carriage horses get sent to slaughter when they are no longer able to work. We are relieved that these caretakers loved their horses enough to want something better for them. Horses are a great expense here though, especially medically and we are always struggling to raise funds to help us with them. Please consider a donation to help us with the equine care. We simply can’t do this without you.
Since we put all our old horses together, we then took our four younger horses and put them together as well. This resulted in some racing around to establish a pecking order, but all in all it went well. Noble, Francis, Devil and Mary are together now in a pasture. Francis and Mary are also retired carriage horses and Devil is off the racetrack. They are younger though, and larger, and they can withstand some rough-housing. That leaves just Molly and Murphy who are cushings horses, and they are together in a third field. Our fields are coming up nicely thanks to the pasture mix that we laid down this year, and we are gradually allowing the horses a little time each day to graze. Once we move them full time to those pastures we can lay down some more seed in the dirt paddocks they are currently in and hopefully have some rotation fields!

Thank you volunteers
As usual this month was not devoid of volunteers. Once again the Pets Alive volunteers ROCKED us with the amount of energy and work they put in here. Our regulars, Carmine, John, Liz, Allyson, Camille, Linda, Becky, Charlie, Lace, Jean, Toni and Cathy continue to come every week and some of them every day to help us. Carmine and John have been busy installing the additional dog doors, and John picks up our cat litter for us twice a month. This week I saw him heading off to the feed store with Cam in the passenger side. What a hoot! Go Cam. Cam LOVES to go for a ride in the car and is very well behaved.
Linda has been taking April home for overnight visits and says she is doing just great! She snuggles up in bed and is polite and clean in the house. April is a great dog and has been here most of her eight or so years of life. It’s so sad because this dog is so deserving of a home and so loving but she is constantly over looked for some reason. We feature her and highlight her but still she is not picked. Thanks Linda for making her feel special.
I have to give HUGE thanks to Katie this month. Katie came up and stayed overnight in our little guest room (it isn’t much, believe me!) and she groomed, bathed and cleaned the sheaths of every single horse on the property. You have no idea how icky a horses winter coat gets and they are in great need of having that brushed out and washed. The horses were itchy and uncomfortable and Katie really did an amazing job. She also saved us $55 for every male horse by cleaning the sheaths for us. If we had to have the vet do it, it would have run us an additional $600 after their spring shots, vaccinations and worming which already had our bill in the thousands. Ouch. Thanks so much Katie! Any other horse volunteers are invited to please come and help continue to brush out the winter coats. The horses will be so grateful to you. Lace and Jean have been coming to help with this, and I did a few myself this week. After you’re done, it looks like a small animal was mauled at your feet! Warning – don’t wear fleece and be prepared to be covered with hair…but also the nuzzlings of some happy horses.
We still need all the horse fence painted. PLEASE HELP! Last week we had two girl scouts come up (GS Troop 332 – Samantha and Stephanie) with Lise and her husband and they groomed horses and painted the side fence for us. It looks so nice and clean. Please help us get the rest done. We have the paint here but would love it if you could pick up rollers or brushes. We just do not have the staff to send out to pick up the painting supplies. We would be so happy if you would come with the supplies – we would be happy to reimburse you for them! Please save us a trip to the store so we can focus on the more pressing needs here at the sanctuary. Thanks so much for your consideration and assistance.
Thank you once again to Elaine who donated great outdoor furniture to us! Now the staff and volunteers can sit outside and have lunch or relax. Wow. What a sweet thing to do. Elaine is always so considerate of the staff. So many people help us with the animals and it is so wonderful, but Elaine always remembers the staff too (like Rose!) and brings them lunch, treats, and special comforts. It is so kind, thoughtful and generous. She is also a big dog lover and adopted four of our most elderly dogs who are still living happily in her home getting ice cream and lounging on the couch.
Thank you Charlie for all your extra hard work this week tearing down fence to build a bigger paddock for the horses. Thank you Leila and Claire for bringing us all those donations! I am so sorry that it was late and we could not stay. We so appreciate all you do for us.
Thank you also to the wonderful Girl Scout Cadette Troop 454 of Liberty who hosted a big adoption event at Betta Pets & Supplies in Monticello. They raised money for us, food donations and Betta Pets also donated a large quantity of items for us including a case of flexi leads. We had a whole bunch of volunteers show up that day too – thank you to all of you for your continued support. I would like to apologize to the volunteers that showed up and we did not have enough for you to do. We so appreciate you coming and this was our first “solo” event. We had no idea what to expect and we allowed too many of you to come. I am sorry and now that we have the experience under our belt we will better plan this in the future. Thanks for coming that day and helping. You are all so wonderful!
A HUGE thank you to the Tetz company. Our calls to them pleading for some fill for our pot-hole ridden driveway was returned by one of the owners, Denise. She promptly sent Bobby over to see what we needed. He was the biggest sweetheart of a man and he told us exactly what we would need, how to properly fill the holes and then he got on his phone right then and had ten tons of product delivered to us by 8am the next morning – all at no charge!! Thank you Tetz. We can now drive down the driveway again without losing a wheel. That was so very kind of you to take the time out of your busy days to help us out.
Thank you to the 26+ people who volunteered to hand address and stuff envelopes for us. You guys are the BEST!!!!!!! THE BEST!! This week we sent out 2000 letters appealing for donations. We have 3000 left to go. Hand addressing letters almost guarantees they will be opened and not just discarded to the “junk mail” pile. We even had school teachers have their kids address envelopes. A HOME RUN! Who would not open an envelope addressed by a child? Thank you all! We still have another 3000 to send out so if you want more, please come pick them up or email us for more information. Thank you all so very much.
Current Needs:
Our current needs are still all the items on our wishlist. We also are looking to get central air in the brick house. Each of the cat room currently has window units in it for the summer. As you can imagine this uses a great deal of electricty and we can’t exactly temperature control the rooms well. We think we can afford it better if we had central air. If you own a company that does this or know someone that does, would you consider giving us a quote or donating part of it to us?
We need a tent! Have a tent you no longer use? We need to have a tent for our outdoor area and for when we go to events. We are also in need of a banner for Pets Alive. When we go to events and functions we need to hang a big Pets Alive banner behind us or from the table. Does anyone have a company that does this that could donate or reduce the cost of one (or two) for us?

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of finding homes for animals in need!