Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life.
This was our second to last transport of the year and it did not disappoint.
65 total animals were on board today.
Four adult dogs, 34 puppies, 5 adult cats, and 22 kittens.
We love those numbers.
Because half of the animals today are coming from the shelter here in Alabama, this is
going to be a pretty short episode since they really don't have any stories.
Today's theme is toys.
It started off being the top 90s toys, but with 65 animals I needed more letters than
I had.
So I went to the top toys from the 80s and the 90s and I was still short.
So then I had to use some from the 2000s and then we added a kitten this morning and I
needed a Q name and like there are no toys from the 80s, 90s or 2000s that are the top
toys that start with a Q. So I literally just had to pick something random.
So we can no longer say that they are the top toys, we're just going with toys.
Up first we have Hit Clips.
She was pulled from the shelter.
She was brought in with her brother as a stray, but unfortunately her brother was adopted
just a few days ago.
Koosh Ball is a tiny little puppy at barely 4 pounds.
She was found in a chicken coop scared to death of all those chickens.
She was posted on Facebook and neighbors were asked, but no owner was ever found.
One of our rescue partners, Foster's, took her in until transport.
iPod Shuffle was absolutely trembling at transport today.
She broke everyone's hearts.
She was dumped at a doggy daycare place in a nearby town.
They posted on Facebook trying to find her family, but nobody claimed her.
And then one of our rescue partners agreed to take her and find a foster for her.
Her foster's down here loved her so much they held her like a baby and rocked her to sleep
at night.
Jack in the Box wandered into someone's yard.
He kept trying to play with, but was seriously hurting, their chickens, so they asked us
to come get him.
Operation wandered into someone's yard as a stray.
They noticed she was covered in mange and had lots of hair missing.
They contacted someone they know who fosters puppies a lot, and she contacted us to see
if we would take her if she agreed to foster her for us.
After a few rounds of NexCards, she's looking and feeling so much better.
Skip, now known as Zippy, is one of our all time favorite fosters and one of our longest
fosters.
He was pulled from the shelter here in Alabama actually on Dr. Burton's birthday back in
June.
So all of the workers at the shelter have their dog, their favorite that they just hope
and pray gets to go to rescue soon so they can see them living a better life outside
of those kennels.
And every time I'd go to the shelter, one of the workers would just beg me, please take
my dog Skip, please take Skip with you.
Don't you know anyone that would take Skip?
He is the best dog.
We just have to get him out of here.
Well finally, we had a foster to adopt line up for him.
And I was so excited to bust him out of the shelter.
As we were walking out, the worker who loved him so much was just boo hoo and saying her
goodbyes to him.
And then she goes, yeah, you can't even tell he has a broken leg.
I'm like, um, what?
So obviously, I'm not going to turn around and be like, oh, he has a broken leg.
I'm not taking him put him back in his kennel.
So I take him and we stop at my vet before dropping him off at doggy daycare to be sure
that she knew what she was talking about.
And sure enough, just about everything that could be broken on one of his back legs was
he was hit by a car and shot.
We thought he was going to have to go to the veterinary college for a $7,000 surgery.
But just for the heck of it, we decided to let my vets do their surgery on him instead.
If it worked, great.
If not, we take him to the vet school after that and they would do the surgery.
So happy birthday, Dr. Burton.
I spent $2,000.
His surgery ended up going fantastically.
Everyone was just amazed by his progress.
But he was going to go to a foster to adopt.
And when they found out that he was going to have to have leg surgery for a broken leg,
they backed out.
So he went to a foster down here for eight weeks for rehab and recovery.
And then we sent him over to the jail, the real jail Justin, not a mean nickname for
the animal shelter.
And that's when one of my all time favorite stories ever happens.
Skip was there for about six weeks and all of the inmates just loved him and Skip loved
them.
He loved being part of a pack.
He loved having a family that was with him 24 seven.
He was so happy.
Skip would have done anything for those boys.
And he started noticing that these boys would get really anxious and upset anytime the guards
would come in for a shakedown.
And Skip didn't like it when his boys were upset.
So Skip protected their house like a good boy.
And he stopped letting the guards come in.
Of course, the inmates went crazy over him doing this.
They were cheering him on, telling him he was such a good boy.
They thought it was hilarious.
The guards not so much.
So the guards call us a few days later and they tell us the inmates taught Skip a new
trick and we need to come get him.
And what a sad day that was when we had to go get him.
Skip would not even walk to the car with Jessica.
One of the inmates had to walk him because he just absolutely refused to leave.
The inmates were so sad to see him go.
But luckily, Skip had a great time at his next foster, Doggie Daycare, and he stayed
there for the next seven weeks before coming home with me.
He made friends with all the dogs at Doggie Daycare and all of the workers just adored
him.
Now, as much as I love the thought of Skip standing up to the guards, I will say the
first thing I noticed about Skip when I brought him home last week was he smiles when he's
happy and it curls up the front of his lip.
So it looks like he's growling, but really he's just smiling and he's happy to see you.
So, I'm wondering now if that's what he was doing to the guards and the guards were just
assuming that he was growling and they didn't get close enough to realize that he was just
excited.
Either way, Skip is just about the perfect dog.
We loved him so much my husband begged to keep him.
He was such a good foster while he was here.
We will miss him, but we can't wait to see the perfect forever home that he gets after
156 days in our foster care plus 6 months at the shelter at least.
This boy deserves a real home.
The C litter of two are our Dobie girls.
We got them just 3 days after Skip, so the three of them have been with us for a long
time.
And in all honesty, I probably could have gotten these girls on transport sooner if
I had prioritized them.
But they were the best dogs and so easy to take care of at the dog house that it was
more important to us to get out of these wild maniacs that were in our foster homes instead.
I'm sure by now you all know their story, but, and this may come as a big surprise to
all of us, but there are people that listen to my podcast that don't even live in Virginia
and have nothing to do with Wolf Trap.
They just happened upon my podcast and like the stories for some crazy reason.
So for their sakes, I'll do a quick summary.
Their owners passed away last Christmas and the owners children left them at a vacant
house living outside until June when they asked us to take them.
Again, they are such good girls and they were literally no trouble at all.
So they ended up getting put on the back burner for far too long.
We are all so happy for them to finally be in real homes with real families this holiday
season.
It has been a very lonely year for them.
The T litter of three is from a pregnant mama who was dumped as a stray.
She wandered up into someone's yard who took her in and let her have her puppies there.
The lady just fell in love with the mama and actually has already gotten her spayed.
The S litter of nine were posted for free on Facebook.
One of our fosters contacted us and told us it was his daughter's boyfriend's dog that
had the puppies and asked if we would take them and spay the mom for them.
We of course said yes, but when Jessica reached out to the girl, she told Jess she had already
promised to give a few of them away.
Jessica asked me if she should quote, try to fight the girl to get the whole litter
or since the girl didn't know she was going to surrender them to a rescue when she was
giving them away, should we just let it go?
I said, heck no.
You know, she's giving the cutest ones away.
Fight her or I will.
Just then the girl wrote her back and said, or do I need to surrender all nine in order
to get the mama spayed?
I can just tell these people it was a misunderstanding.
Jessica was very glad that she gave her an out and she told her yes, we need all nine
please.
The E litter of two were pulled from the shelter here in Alabama.
Apparently the shelter found a foster for them as soon as they came in, so they never
even stayed at the shelter.
The A litter of two were pulled from the shelter here in Alabama.
The shelter is so overcrowded right now that they didn't even have an open kennel for these
guys.
So they were stacked in a wire crate on top of the R litter of three.
So every time the litter below them got excited, it sent them bouncing all over.
The R litter of three were pulled from the shelter here in Alabama.
They were also in an overflow wire crate underneath the litter of A. Now, if you're looking at
all three of these R pups, you're probably thinking one of these things doesn't belong
here.
And you're right.
Only two of them are litter mates.
But they were picked up ashtrays and brought in with an older puppy that was running around
with them.
And because the shelter is just so overrun, they had them all kenneled together.
The M litter of four were pulled from the shelter here in Alabama.
They were found as strays.
Polly Pocket and her six P pups were pulled from the shelter here in Alabama.
They were brought in by animal control as strays.
When I was walking through the shelter after last week's transport, this litter broke my
heart.
It was just mass chaos all around them, all the dogs barking.
And they were just curled up on their mama or on a little cot in the back corner looking
up at me.
The mama wasn't barking or jumping like crazy like all the other dogs.
They were just sad.
They were just so sad.
I am so glad we got to bust them out of there.
And I am so glad that that mama isn't stuck in a kennel with her babies anymore.
That is all for the pups.
Now on to the kittens.
View Master is the mama of the V kittens from last week.
Remember when her owners were dropping off the kittens and learned about what their lives
were going to be like in Virginia, the man got all choked up and asked if we could take
the mama too.
Turns out he actually bottle fed her as a kitten.
So she has been very loved her whole life.
Quack and flap was our last minute add on this morning.
One of our rescue partners, Foster's, was asked to take this kitten by one of her friends.
When she got there this morning to get it, she was telling her what a wonderful life
all of our animals have and the owner told her, well, I actually have two more from the
same litter that I was going to keep, but it sounds like they'd be happier up there.
Now let's see if she really does end up surrendering them and if I can come up with two more Q names
for next transport.
The D mama and her kitten were from the same foster as above.
This mama was given to her when she was pregnant and she had two kittens.
Unfortunately, the other kitten got stuck under some of the bedding and suffocated at
just a few hours old.
The F litter of three were found in the garbage at a local groomers.
She believes it was the neighbor's cat's kittens and she confronted him and told him she would
have been more than happy to just take the kittens if he asked and she would even pay
to spay the mama cat so he doesn't have to do this anymore.
And the man told her he doesn't believe in spaying animals and he just takes the kittens
off every time.
Betty's spaghetti and the B litter kittens were owner surrenders to one of our vet partners.
Betty came up to an elderly woman's house when she was pregnant so she took her in and
let her have her kittens.
But when the kittens got older they started tripping her so the lady asked the vets to
take them and find good homes.
The L litter of four are from an older man in a nearby town.
He contacted one of our rescue partners and asked if she could come get the kittens that
were trapped under his shed.
The mama was feral and had abandoned them so a foster went out there and crawled under
his house to get them and she has fostered them for the past month.
Silaphone was pulled from our shelter here in Alabama and her story broke my heart.
She was all set to go on transport with her absolutely adorable kitten but the day before
transport they walked in and they found the kitten dead in the cage with her.
Because so many of our fosters only want kittens or mamas with kittens we didn't have a foster
to take her and she was at risk of losing her spot on transport which just seemed so
unfair to me that your only kitten dies and because of that you don't get a freedom ride.
Thankfully Wolf Trap has the most amazing people fostering for us and when I made the
post telling her story we had several people offer to take her just so she wouldn't have
to stay at the shelter all alone.
Yu-Gi-Oh is from our Alabama shelter.
He was supposed to come up with his mama but she was adopted a few days ago.
Groovy Girl and her three kittens were brought in as strays by animal control to the Alabama
shelter.
Her kittens have been dying to get out of that kennel and they climbed to the bars all
day long.
They had to be bored out of their minds.
The N litter of two were originally a litter of three but one got adopted from the Alabama
shelter right before transport.
The W litter of three is from the Alabama shelter.
They were a little spicy when they came in.
One of the workers held one up saying, oh my goodness you're just so cute and it bit
her lip.
But they're a lot better now and her lip has healed.
They've been working with the kittens so they should be a lot sweeter.
Well that is everyone that is on the van this week but that is not everyone that was saved
this transport.
Because so many were leaving from the shelter today and because it's right on the way to
where we meet in Knoxville it just made more sense to load up at the shelter this week
instead of my house in Mississippi.
Usually I pick up one or two dogs or cats in my car on my way to transport and then
we load them up at the dog house.
But that actually adds an extra three hours to those animals trips.
So I was going to have to load up 30 plus animals by myself at the shelter in the van
because there's no way they would fit in my car.
Drive them 90 minutes to the dog house, load everyone else up and then they were going
to have to drive 90 minutes right past the shelter again and on to Virginia.
Thankfully my Mississippi team was more than willing to come to Alabama to save these guys
three hours of driving.
Anyways after the van left I did my usual walkthrough at the shelter crying about everyone
that was still there and the workers were busy moving dogs out of the overflow kennels
into some of the empty kennels that they had now that we've moved so many out for them.
And in one of the overflow kennels was the sweetest dog laying there with her big old
pregnant belly just wagging her tail at me so gently.
Now I don't know if it's all my pregnant hormones sinking with her pregnant hormones or the
loud and scariness of the shelter but I literally almost started bawling right there in the
shelter.
Unfortunately because I drove the van, the van that was now on its way to Knoxville,
to the shelter I was riding back with someone else and we didn't have room for her.
But I told the shelter workers when I come back for the van tomorrow morning before church
somebody better be there to meet me and give me this girl.
Our dog house is empty and my foster skip left too so we are busting this girl out of
the shelter tomorrow so she doesn't have to worry about giving birth in that teeny tiny
cold crate.
Oh and this is my last story.
Since transports are on Saturdays now my husband Justin comes and helps sometimes and since
this was just down the road from our house this week he came with.
While we were standing in the parking lot unloading everything and waiting for everyone
to get there he goes, yeah I've never even been in a shelter before.
Well we fixed that right then.
We walked through row after row and when we came out I said, what'd you think?
And he said, that is so awful.
It's so awful.
All of them are just so sad.
I don't know how you do that every week.
Everyone is so pitiful in there.
I'm like, yep I know and that's why that pregnant dog is coming home with us tomorrow.
Well I told y'all this would be a shorter episode but I guess y'all could see how long
this episode was before you even clicked on it and knew that I was lying.
I thought it would be quick but I didn't realize how many stories I had to tell you.
We have one more transport this year and I'm really hoping for another 65 on it.
I don't know if that's possible but I'm gonna try really really hard.
So make sure you sign up to foster and if you already have a foster, sign some friends
up to foster, sign your coworkers up to foster, find some random strangers on the street and
sign them up to foster.
It's a rough life but someone's gotta do it.