Pets Alive will be staying open!
Hello again everyone! We got a very welcoming response to our last email asking if you wanted to continue to keep Pets Alive up and running in this area. We’re going to continue to do this and continue to ask for your support. I will also post this sort of update to the forum and to your email at least 2-3 times a month to keep you abreast of what is happening here at the sanctuary. We encourage you to come down, visit, get involved and meet our staff and animals. WE NEED YOU!
Sanctuary animal updates:
Since our last newsletter/update we have found homes for more than 29 of the animals here. Some of the dogs that went home you might know – the famous Ricky (of Sammy-Ricky) found a new home. Ricky has been here for so many years we’ve lost count. He is an older dog and lived outside 24×7 in years past. Well a lovely couple fell in love with him and they write that they can not believe he hasn’t been a part of their family their whole lives. He has completely fit in and is doing really well! We do mourn for Sammy though. Sammy is having a lot of back hip problems, collapsing more regularly now (he has an incorrectable neurological problem) and I can only imagine that he must miss Ricky. Please consider coming down and spending some time with Sammy. Other dogs adopted from the Georgia shelter were Bethany, Gavin, Melanie, Clark, Shilo, four puppies, Arthur, Howie, Louise, and also Dolce (not from the Georgia, but a very sweet rottweiler).
We have what I consider a very low placement rate for cats, something we are working to try to improve. Becky and Joyce, two of our serial volunteers have taken it upon themselves to help with this. They are hosting a cat adoption event for us at Rusty’s Place on Saturday, February 9th. We did have wonderful luck though with finding homes for cats these past few weeks. Dorie, Pumpkin, Morgan, Big Stuff, Nero and Missy either went home or are spoken for! I also suspect that Lucy is spoken for although her new mom doesn’t really realize it yet. Watch this space though. (smile!)
We did get a sad letter from Munday’s mom. Munday was a big, sweet, dobie-mix that was elderly. She went home with her new family a number of months ago and they just informed us that she passed away. We’d like to thank them for loving her and providing a home for her during her final months. I am so glad that she got to die in their arms, a part of a family. All our seniors went home. Did you know that? We do not have a single elderly dog here. Mooch, a staff favorite is in very loving arms right now, as are Hobbs, Ginger, Kita and Shaggy. I adopted Baron, and he also passed away a few months ago. Thanks to all these wonderful people that have not allowed our older dogs to die in a cement run. We love you for this.
We also lost Beau this past week. Beau was a cat that had a facial tumor which could not be corrected with surgery. Goodbye Beau. Our cat staff really miss you, as do some of our volunteers.
Other sanctuary updates:
Cam is one of the pit bulls here and I’ve written a lot of blogs about his progress here. Well, when winter hit we had to put him back into the kennel. Cam immediately started reverting to his previous behavior, starting to be aggressive again with staff and volunteers. We knew we had to immediately do something about this. We had a meeting about it and decided to build Cam an indoor/outdoor run in the barn. Now he has a huge spacious indoor stall with an insulated doghouse and an outside fenced paddock area. He is MUCH happier here and he is not having aggression issues in this environment.
We also found a home for Lucky Lincoln, a chow that has been here for years. That home did not work out though, and so we built an enclosure next to Cam, so that Lincoln also has an inside stall and outside run. This way Cam also is not isolated and alone in that set-up. It is working well for both of them.
We also had a terrible situation this month. We took in 29 dogs from a shelter in the south that closes for the holidays, euthanizes all the animals and reopens after the holidays. It was terrible and they were young, beautiful dogs. As the transporter was going to take in the dogs coming here the shelter manager called me and asked if they could throw in one additional litter of puppies that had come in that morning. Sigh. Of course we said yes. UNFORTUNATELY a week later, one of those pups turned out to have parvo. What a nightmare. We have never had it here, but thank GOODNESS Best Friends taught us proper protocols and isolation techniques. We were able to keep the parvo incident to that ONE puppy. We TREATED all the puppies but none of them every tested positive for it except that one pup. We tried our best with that puppy that we called “Brindle” but after $1200 at the vet, and doing everything we could to save that sweet dog, he died in the night. We were devastated.
Volunteers really make a difference
We have some regular volunteers that do all they can to help us, every single week. Last update I asked for help with some weekly chores. John S. stepped up to do a weekly (actually twice a month) pick up for us of the cat litter we use. Thanks so much John! We also got volunteers to help with data entry (I am sorry we have not scheduled it yet, the computer we were going to have you work with CRASHED and we’re trying to see if we can fix it or if we can get a donation of another one – we WILL be back in touch).
We also got a groomer that is willing to donate a day or two a week to us to help with our dogs. THANK YOU! We have not been able to have her start yet.
We still need someone to help us plow when it snows. Do you have a plow that you can run up and down the driveway for us? We also need someone to do a Sam’s Club pickup for us once or twice a month. We order it all online, you just have to go down and pick it up and bring it here. We’ll unload it! Mostly garbage bags, detergent and bleach. Bulk items! Is there anyone that can do that? We can work around your schedule and place our order the night before so it is all ready for you. We have a business card so you can pick up any time after 7 am! Let us know please! Oh – and someone is donating a snow blower to us. It does not work, and they ordered the parts to fix it, but never got around to doing it. I don’t know anything about that. Do any of you? Could you come and see if you can fix it for us? Also, if you are a cleaning person, do you think you can come in once a month and give our offices and bathrooms a once over? OK, well those are our needs for this month. Thanks a lot for any consideration!
Moving right along on volunteer support, almost every day Carmine, Lucy, Linda and often Nick are here to try to walk ALL our dogs. They also try to help out where needed. Recently someone (one of them who wants to rename anonymous!!) donated dog doors for us. They are now installing them in all our dogs runs. The current set up has the dogs locked in at night, because the dog doors are slide doors and we shut them at night to keep it warm in the heated interior. This isn’t great for the dogs as they are locked inside from 4:00 until 8:00 the next morning. It also isn’t great for staff because the dogs go inside the indoor runs soiling their blankets, bedding and indoor area. With these dog doors we how it will keep the heat IN but let the dogs go OUT if they want to. Thank you to all of you for this wonderful donation and for installing them. Thanks for caring so much about our dogs!
Carmine and Linda also drove all the way to Albany to pick up Lincoln for us when he did not work out in his new home. Thank you guys! Liz, Sue, Jean, Allison, Camille, Steve and Edie, Cathy, Toni, George, Becky, Joyce, Jill, Barbara, John, Charlie, Cristin, and Wendy come each week too to help us. Every week they are here. Thank you guys.
Toni also was sick as a dog this week, but I called her because we were desperate. We had THREE of the southern dogs give birth the same week. TWO of the moms were NOT doing well. One had no milk and one wasn’t a very good mom (thankfully the third was doing GREAT). We don’t believe in late term spays, so all the dogs were allowed to give birth but they all did it the same day. Yikes. I called Toni and begged her to come help do intake and other puppy care with Janet. Toni came. She worked here all day with Janet, even switching her days at work so she could come. Toni, thank you SO MUCH.
Likewise I put out a plea to all our volunteers. Please COME help! Janet and Chris were up ALL night bottle feeding pups. One litter was 8 dogs, and that was the one the mom was taking care of. The OTHER two litters were 11 and 12 pups! They were feeding 23 pups by hand and it was insane. Ten minutes after sending that email I received a reply from a truly wonderful woman named Carol. Carol write back that she was retired and could come help for a few days but was a cat person and knew nothing of dogs. We had her here the next day and she was a godsend. She stayed up all night every three hours doing feeding for us, while Charlie and his wife Marion came in to take over a couple of the day feedings so she could sleep for a few hours. Ultimately ARF (Animal Rescue Foundation in the Hamptons) took a litter of the pups for us . They are raising them there and will then spay and neuter and adopt them out. Thanks so much to Cindy and Michele from ARF for this help. Thank you also to the HUNDREDS of people that responded to our call for help. Thank you most of all to Carol who not only came here and lived here for almost three days, but drove the dogs most of the way to ARF and also turned out to be tremendously helpful in many other ways. She is an amazing organizer and will be helping us a great deal in the coming months.
Thank you also for Marisol and Rob Thomas for their most recent Sidewalk Angels donation. It was a BIG help this month when our vet bill is already $7000 (parvo, pregnant moms and a very sick dog put us way over the edge this month!)
Needs:
Our needs are always bleach, detergent, garbage bags, paper towels, toilet paper and hand soap.
We also have a need for experienced horse handlers. Can you come down and work with our horses? Can you help get some of them over their fear of being caught and handled? Can you help hold horses every couple of months when the farrier comes? We need some horse hands to help us work with and groom and train our horses. Please email or call us if you’d like to come down. We also want to post in other places some of the horses that are for adoption. We have three that are really ready to go right into a good home and another three that could be great companion horses. We list them on PetFinders but would love to have someone help us list them in other places that horse folk frequent. Can you help by doing this for us?
Please consider helping us continue our mission
of finding homes for animals in need!
(Please note that the photos used here were taken by
some of our volunteers, Don, Becky and John)