What we do!! First off, due to the overwhelming amount of phone calls, texts, IMs and Facebook messaging, and FB tags we are extremely limited to what we can take as far as owner surrenders and strays. First and foremost on our list to save is the shelter dogs. In the past two weeks Turlock called us to take a new small mama in as she had been there awhile with no rescue interest so without batting an eye, seeing a pic, or asking for more details (personality, etc) I said sure Ill pick up tomorrow....as I had space for them. Turns our mama is some kind of Dach/Terrier, maybe even Chi mix, with 3 newborn male pups. The next one we had rescued was a male Chi whom we thought was older and had emailed twice about just because he was small, and alone in the shelter. The shelter coordinator herself called me up the next day almost at closing time and made it sound as if this is an old guy with some traumatic injury and they were just going to put him down. Upon talking to them more, it was not clear what this guy had so I asked for a stay of execution so to speak..just give us tomorrow to come and see him. Well thats all it took and how we got Pepper. Even though he appeared much older (8-10 due to his cruddy teeth), had had an eye injury, skinny and had diarrhea and was just laying there in his kennel...it appeared he had given up (last time he greeted me and was excited). So of course we took him out, got him neutered right away and a full dental (3 teeth pulled and a deep cleaning) and to our surprise he was only about 3 years young. Another pup we saved was from Madera shelter and was being brought in as a bottle baby who had been given to her 6 year old daughter....we all know bottle pups dont stand a chance at the shelter so of course we took him too. Today we took in an owner surrender purebred Cocker Spaniel due to having one foster to be able to take her in and because honestly...we dont get many purebreds esp those whom are already fixed, etc. We have to do medical on 99.9% of our animals so this was a nice one to help make up some of our expresses on some of our low adoption fees and surgeries/medical weve had lately. Next in line would be owner surrenders only AFTER shelter dogs as those are the ones most in need and at the highest risk of being pts. We can do this on occasion as space permits. And lastly strays. We take very few strays (some rescues dont take strays at ALL) due to the stray laws in which we must abide by. We have to notify the shelter and keep said animal for two weeks to allow time for an owner to reclaim if they are missing their pet. This is why this option is last on our list as we simply do not have the space or funding to personally take on every stray out there and then owners come forth and we just have to hand over their pets...this is simply not fair to ask a rescue to do and this is why there is animal control which we have to go through just like everyone else. We did take in one mama and her babies that were found at a homeless park and getting by on scraps and covered in dirt and fleas and pups extremely anemic. Had we not rescued this group I very seriously doubt these pups would have survived. AND we had a foster offer to take them so we had one open space for them to go. ****I wanted to post this today because I think some people just do not understand what we do and that we should take in an animal off the street that needs help, no matter what, simply because were a rescue. This is in no way fair to ask of us as we 1) are limited on space, 2) limited on funds and cannot pour hundreds/thousands of dollars into an animal that could possibly just be recalimed anyways and 3) we have to concentrate our efforts first on the ones most in need....that being the shelter animals.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 01:07:38 +0000