Hello friends, welcome to Ruff Life.
This episode is actually going to be a little different than usual.
More than half of the animals on the van tonight came from the shelter here in Alabama, and
because of that I don't really know much about their backgrounds.
So the first half of this episode I will tell you what backstories I do know, and then the
second half I will tell you the story time I have been meaning to tell you for two weeks
now.
Our theme this week is Jimmy Buffett's songs, so let's go.
Margaritaville was brought in as a stray to the Alabama shelter.
It's five o'clock somewhere, came into the shelter as a stray, but he had two collars
on and they posted to him on Facebook looking for his owners, and no one ever came forward
for him.
No room for doubt was supposed to be the brother to New England Hurricane from the
August 30th transport, however I'm saying absolutely no way.
They may have been seen roaming together at some point, but I'm telling y'all there
is no relation between them whatsoever.
Step Around the Sun was found as a stray in a neighboring town by one of our rescue partner's
friends.
They held on to him for us until transport.
Knee Deep was found as a stray in Boomville and brought to the kill shelter.
We were going to send him to a foster down here today, but we are much happier to be
sending him on the van.
Where's the party was found at our local college in town.
People had just started back a few days prior and several students had seen this puppy walking
around and hiding wherever he could, so they called animal control and animal control asked
us to go get him.
Jimmy Buffett, also known as Farrell Darrell, he is my baby.
He was found at an elementary school back in July.
Jessica and I have been working with him to get him to be more friendly, and he has made
tremendous progress.
He still has a long way to go, but he is doing so so so so good, and I'm so proud of him
and so excited he got to go.
The H-letter of two were actually pulled by one of my fosters down here.
She was fostering them for another shelter several hours away.
After a few weeks, she realized they really didn't have any plans to come and get these
puppies and send them on any transport, so she asked them if she could ask me to take
them.
The O-letter of two are actually one of my favorite stories.
You all know I really stand behind my philosophy of don't burn the bridge.
These owners suck.
We all know that.
But when you burn the bridge, the only ones that suffer the consequences are the future
puppies.
Case in point, this family.
We have taken at least four litters from this momma dog, and every single time we beg them
to surrender the mom, we give them a spay voucher, we try to make this momma dog's life
better, but they never do anything.
And then finally, they called us last week and they asked us if we would take the two
surviving puppies from her latest litter and her.
It has been a long time coming, but we finally got that baby girl.
Now she's not on transport today.
She is still working on passing her dog-friendly, kid-friendly, just friendly in general tests,
but she has done fantastic so far and I have no doubt that she'll be on transport very
soon.
But at the very, very least, she's with us, she is fed, she is loved, and she will never
have another litter again.
And that, my friends, is why we don't burn the bridge.
The L-Litter of Two were found as strays.
We are told that they're supposed to be full-blooded German shepherds.
I don't know how we know that, but I don't doubt it.
They really do look like they are.
The P-Litter of Three were found roaming with their momma dog.
She ended up getting hit by a car and then the puppies were brought into the shelter.
The S-Litter of Three were dumped at the shelter.
The F-Litter of Four were born under an abandoned house when the owner dumped the pregnant mom.
Their mom is still at the shelter.
It literally kills me to leave her there, but she has not passed her dog-friendly, kid-friendly,
or just friendly in general tests yet.
We are not giving up on her though, the shelter is going to continue to work with her, and
once she's just friendly enough to come to my house, I will run up there and grab her
up and bring her home with me.
At the very least though, she will be spayed and she is safe.
The D-Litter of Eight were owner surrenders to the shelter.
The owner came last week asking to surrender his puppies and get help spaying his mom.
The shelter called me to see if we could take them anytime soon, if we couldn't, they weren't
going to be able to take them for him.
They were both so happy when I told them we could get them on transport this week and
give him a voucher to get his mom spayed.
Bucktooth and Skinny was found as a pregnant stray.
The Finder took her to a shelter in another town because she thought that they would take
her.
They told her that they had changed their minds though and they would not be taking her after
all.
So the Finder took her back home and she had puppies in her backyard.
When it got so hot, she ended up bringing the whole family inside.
We went and got them last week and while they really did take very good care of them all,
we were shocked at how skinny the mom was.
Those puppies truly took everything she had.
She was a walking skeleton.
We sent her to a separate foster home than her puppies and she has gained so much weight
in just one week.
As for the cats, the A litter of three are actually a litter of five but two of them
were just too puny to go on transport today.
They were born to a feral mama cat who ended up not feeding them.
She was trapped and her kittens were taken to our bottle feeder.
The mama cat still took care of her kittens though.
She just wasn't feeding them.
And then when they were finally six weeks old and weaned, we took the mama to be spayed
and she's going to spend the rest of her days as a barn cat down at our barn.
The C litter mama and her kittens were brought into the Alabama shelter as strays.
And while I was at the shelter, loading everyone up, we ended up doing transport at the shelter
this week just because there were so many of them it made more sense.
While I was at the shelter, I was told I could pull two more kittens to send on transport.
So what did I do?
I FaceTimed Dr. Burton and I asked her if she wanted to pick the two kittens.
She was so confused why I was asking her that and why I didn't want to just go in there
and grab two myself.
But I told her I always get to pull more when she's on FaceTime with me.
So I walk into the cat room and immediately Dr. Burton told me to pull the G litter of
two kittens.
Like I hadn't even got the door closed behind me.
They were so cute sitting in a giant metal crate all alone.
I was scanning over showing her all the other kittens and I stopped to show her a pregnant
cat.
We talked for a while about whether it was friendly or not and such and then I looked
down and the E litter of two kittens were all but killing themselves to try and squeeze
through the metal bars to get to me.
They had their little arms out just like trying to grab me.
Dr. Burton told me I better not leave them behind.
I snatched them up.
I had the hardest time putting them in their crates because they were so snugly and so
sweet.
Y'all know I am not a kitten person but these two, ugh, they stole my heart and that is
why I FaceTime Dr. Burton because they would not have gotten to go if I only got to pick
two kittens.
Okay, that is all for the background stories and if you are new to fostering with Wolf
Trap and this is your first time listening to this podcast, I usually know way more about
these animals and their lives before they get to us.
This is a very unique load this week though with 31 of our animals being from a shelter.
But I digress.
Anyways, let me tell you about Bubby and Barb.
We got a message on Facebook about a pregnant beagle but when the finder sent us the pictures,
the beagle did not look pregnant and she looked about 100 years old.
We told her we were totally full but that if she would take her to the vet we would
pay for an ultrasound and that we would take her if she was pregnant but if she wasn't she
would just have to hang on to her for a few more weeks until we got some of our adults
moved out and we had a foster home open up.
Finder waited several days and then Monday morning told us that she thought the mom was
in distress.
She was bleeding out of her hoo-ha and she was just straining constantly.
We told her run her up to the vet right now and then the vet called us a few minutes later
and asked if it was okay to rush her back to an emergency C-section.
Of course we okayed it and we told her go ahead and spay her while she sedated and in
surgery anyways.
Then Jessica and I started making plans for where this mom and her newborn puppies would
go and we found a foster.
We were just waiting to hear back when we could pick them up and take them to their
new foster and then.
Vet called us a few hours later and said there were only two puppies born.
They were extremely premature.
He didn't even know how early they were but they had no hair whatsoever.
One was likely going to die within the next few hours and one would probably die in the
next few days.
Oh and the mom had no milk and couldn't feed them.
So this totally threw a wrench in our plans.
We obviously could not put this on a foster.
It's not fair to be like here's two super needy puppies that will probably die but
try your hardest not to let that happen.
Okay?
Okay.
Bye!
Like we can't do that to them.
They would never foster for us again actually.
So I took them because after all I do get paid to be heartbroken.
So Jessica raced to the vet to pick them up before they closed and then Justin, my husband,
actually had to go to Jess's and get them because for the first time ever in my life
I went somewhere with friends and I didn't drive my own car.
I was stranded at the Barbie movie and I had no way to go get them.
Luckily it was Justin's sister and sister-in-law that I was with and he wanted me to spend
time with them more than he didn't want to go get these babies.
So we ended up getting back to our house at the same time.
One of the puppies ended up dying just a few minutes later but the other puppy seemed alert
and hungry.
Remember all puppies are born totally blind and deaf but these puppies were so young they
didn't even have hair and as I would soon discover they weren't even old enough to have
their swallow reflexes yet.
So I kept the puppy warm and tried to feed him every hour with a syringe but I didn't
realize the first night that he physically was not able to swallow anything.
Luckily I was also doing sub-q fluids on him every few hours as well and I fully believe
that's the only reason he survived.
It was brutal.
It was like as soon as I would get done trying to feed him, stimulate him, give him fluids,
put him back to bed and clean everything up, my alarm was going off to do it again.
Then in the midst of all of this I started smelling the worst smell.
I couldn't figure out where it was coming from and at first I thought maybe it was the
mom-a-dog and she had rolled in something but it wasn't her.
So I start walking around our house sniffing.
I opened up our back door and boom it hit me.
So I start calling all the dogs in.
One by one they all come in smelling totally fine and then my precious baby, my Olly Dolly
came in with his eyes bloodshot and squinting and I knew he was sprayed in the face by a
skunk.
So between alarms going off every hour I had to research how to deskunk my dog and bathe
him.
Fun fact, tomato juice is a myth.
You really need to use hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and Dawn dish soap but don't
even bother because it's going to take weeks for the smell to go away regardless so there's
really no point in doing anything.
It's terrible.
Okay, back to the story, every hour trying to feed him.
It was brutal.
I would wake up when my alarm would go off in the middle of the night and I would think
to myself please be alive, please be alive, please be alive.
And I'd reach into his box.
I was sleeping on the couch so that I didn't wake Justin up every hour.
I would reach into his box on our coffee table and I would feel him move and I would think
ugh he is alive.
It was such a bitter sweet feeling because I knew that meant I had to get up and feed
him but I was happy that he was still alive.
So we made it through night one and he was doing fairly good all things considered.
I really felt like we had finally gotten the groove of things and I stopped trying to feed
him by mouth once I had done some research that night and we were just reaching the 24
hour mark and I was feeling as confident as I had since I had gotten him.
So I set my phone up to record me feeding him because he was just starting to attempt
to swallow.
When all of a sudden he went completely limp.
I felt him for a heartbeat and there was nothing.
And then the absolute worst tail tail sign of them all he started agnobreathing.
Like that's what you do when you are on death's door.
You are taking your, it's literally your dying breath.
I was devastated.
Actually, honestly, I think I was more mad than I was devastated because I had poured
my heart and soul into this puppy and for him to just keel over like that, ugh it made
me so mad.
There is nothing you can do when animals go agnol, at least when you are not in a vet
hospital there is nothing you can do.
So I just held him and I pouted.
I told my mom and Jessica and Dr. Burton that he had died and they all tried to make me
feel better but I just held him.
I held him and I took a nap and when I woke up he was alive.
Like alive alive.
Nothing normally and mad that I hadn't fed him yet.
Literally he was in the best condition I had ever seen him in.
I thought I was dreaming, seriously.
I ran into the kitchen, I warmed up a syringe and he ate it.
Like he swallowed his formula and he drank almost an entire cc of formula.
I was in shock.
I called everyone back and I told them he was still alive and then I sent a video to
approve it because I knew they would think I was crazy.
I was so happy.
And then again, in the midst of everything our air conditioner broke.
It was over 107 degrees outside that day and suddenly I stopped worrying about whether
this puppy would get too cold in my house and I started worrying how I was going to
keep him from overheating.
Luckily, our HVAC men were there a few hours later to save the day literally right before
big boy had heat stroke.
I swear he was not going to make it a few more minutes, but everything was fine.
So I decided that afternoon after he had died and come back to life that he deserved a name
and he deserved for his story to be told.
Up until then I hadn't posted it on our foster page yet because I didn't want everyone to
get attached to him like I was and be devastated when he died.
But he needed prayers more than we needed to protect people's feelings.
So I named him Bubby and I told our group of over 2,500 people and hour by hour, day
by day, my Bubby baby got stronger and stronger.
Our feedings went from every hour to every two hours, every four hours.
Then we were going eight to nine stretches overnight.
After just last week, I washed and put away his baby bottles for the last time.
Bubby now eats dry dog food, he runs, and he plays with his foster friends and he snuggles
so hard with his mama.
He is like a real puppy now, it's amazing.
But our story is not over yet, oh no, that is just Bub's side.
Let me start back in the beginning now and tell you about his mama, Barb.
I was originally going to name her Barb because of the whole Barbie movie thing, but let me
just tell you, she is no Barbie girl, she is Barb all day long.
She was loving life, not a care in the world, sprawling out on these doggy beds on her back
with her legs spread open, sleeping through the night while I'm taking care of her screaming
puppy.
Occasionally, she would come in and stimulate him to go to the bathroom for me, but you
could tell she was annoyed with me when I would bring him down to her level to do that.
Like, ugh, what a bother.
She was ridiculous.
But then, when Barb was three weeks post-op, I woke up in a rush to get things done on
time that day, and when I walked past our couch in our living room, I stopped dead in
my tracks.
Our entire tan couch was a deep, deep red color, so I turned on the light and I was shocked
to see literally every inch of the couch soaked in blood.
Barb was bleeding out and I had no idea why.
This should come as a surprise to no one, but our garage door had broken that morning
when Justin left for work, so we had called for a maintenance man to come and fix it.
So I called Justin then to tell him about the couch and ask him if he could have his
dad come sit at the house and wait for the man while I raced Barb back to the vet.
He told me his dad was already at our house and he was in the garage talking to the man.
Well, I'm inside trying to hold pressure on Barb's hoo-ha while getting dressed and talking
on the phone trying to get this all figured out.
So we hang up, he calls his dad, asks his dad to move his truck so I could load Barb
up and leave, and these were the days when I was feeding Bobby every two hours so I had
to load him up and all of his stuff with me as well.
By the time we got to the vet, Barb was done bleeding.
They ran some tests and did some scans, but everything was fine.
We put her on a new antibiotic and we came back home and she was totally normal.
The next week, after a long and crazy day, it was right at midnight on Friday night and
I was so excited because it was going to be the second night that I got six hours of sleep
in a row.
Now that Bob was getting older, I couldn't wait to go to bed.
I gave him his last feeding and I turned around to go to bed when all of a sudden blood just
started gushing out of Barb again.
I had Justin hold her still while I FaceTime Dr. Burton to figure out what the heck was
going on.
She told me I needed to go ahead and call our vet that had been seeing her and just let
him know it was happening again.
So I left a message on their emergency answering services and he called me back a few minutes
later and I could tell I woke him out of a dead sleep.
He was like, yeah, tell me, you know what's going on?
I was like, I'm so sorry to wake you up like this.
I showed him the literal pools of blood that were coming out of her and he was like, honestly,
I don't think she'll even make it all the way back to Mississippi.
And since there's an emergency vet that's barely more than a block away from my house
in Alabama, he told me to just take her there.
So I raced her up to the vet and when they saw the blood rushing out of her when I was
holding her in the lobby in my arms, they came running out and they grabbed her out
of my arms and they raced off into the back and two and a half hours later after they
had repeated all the same tests and scans we had just had done the week before and we
actually got even better results than we had gotten the week before.
They told me I could just go home but Barb had stopped bleeding it so they were going
to keep her there overnight for observation and I could pick her up the next day.
So more than $2,000 later we have no answers.
We have no idea what happened or why.
We have so many questions but we have no more issues anymore.
No more bleeding.
She's totally fine.
Bubbie will be officially six weeks old in two days alive for seven weeks.
He is happy, healthy, hairy and totally normal.
Barb is a 10 year old, heartworm positive, already spayed, beagle mama who wants nothing
more in life than to sit in your lap and stare into your eyes.
And Wolftrap bought me an upholstery shampooer and I was able to salvage our couch shockingly.
Oh and my air conditioner and garage door work now and Ollie only smells like a skunk if
you get super super close to him.
It's a rough life but someone's got to do it.