Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life.
We've got quite a lot of stories today for the 46 animals that are on the van, so let's
just jump right in.
If I sound like I have a cold, I do not.
It is pregnancy congestion that never ever goes away.
Okay, so today's theme is flowers.
Now if you're in the fosters group, you probably saw where it was suggested that I do weather
for today's theme and I was all set to do that so Stormy could keep her name.
But those names were so depressing, I could not do it.
I just could not downpour and thunderstorm and hail damage.
No.
I did flowers so that Rosie and Stormy could both keep their names.
Holly Cock was found as a stray.
She wandered up to a house and the homeowners asked all of their neighbors if anyone recognized
her.
When no one came forward, they reached out to one of our rescue partners to see if we
could take her.
Ilex, whose name down here is Rolo and I'm told he actually knows his name, is from our
Alabama shelter friends.
This was actually the shelter manager's personal foster and she almost didn't give him to me.
And technically, I'm doing this podcast in the morning and I'm about to leave to go get
the puppies so it's very possible that she does not give me the puppy.
We'll find out.
He was found under someone's house when he was about six to seven weeks old.
They brought him to the shelter and she took him straight home and she has fostered him
ever since.
But Storm, or Stormy, is one of my favorite stories that we've had in a while.
If you're a long time listener, you'll remember that back in October we were all set to pull
Stormy and her nursing puppies at the time from the shelter.
But there was another mom and puppies at the shelter that needed to be sent on transport
more urgently.
So at the last minute, we swapped them out.
I vividly remember walking past Stormy's kennel with an arm full of puppies from another
mama and telling her, I promise I will come back for you.
You will be on the next transport out of here.
I was absolutely gutted two days later when we found out that they had a distemper outbreak
at the shelter and we couldn't pull anything from them.
Fast forward four months later, we were finally slowly starting to pull animals from them
again and I saw on their Facebook page a picture of a dog.
Obviously, it was Stormy, but I couldn't remember how I knew this dog or why I was so happy
to see her face, but I was just flooded with emotions reading her post.
They said she was dumped as a stray dog way out in the county when she was pregnant in
July.
Another rescue came by in November and pulled all of her puppies and left her behind.
Now pause, hear me when I say this.
Sometimes you have to leave moms behind and that's okay.
We cannot and we will not save them all.
That is something I have come to terms with as sucky as it is.
Sometimes moms are feral or they're dog aggressive or they're kid aggressive or they're not safe
to be in homes with people's families and family dogs or the owners just won't surrender
them.
Whatever the case, there are instances where the best thing you can do is take the puppies
and spay the mom.
But this was not one of those cases.
Period.
Stormy is the best girl.
She is sweet as pie with everyone.
This girl would be fantastic in any home with any family.
There was zero reason for her to be left behind by this rescue.
Okay, so back to the story.
I see her post, I still don't know why I feel so much love towards this dog, but I text
the shelter manager to ask about her.
She couldn't totally remember if I knew this dog or not and in her defense she's been
dealing with a distemper crisis for months so her brain is all over the place.
But she gives me a timeline of when I would have seen this dog.
So I scroll back in my pictures and videos and there she is.
The sweetest mama with the sweetest little babies and suddenly I remembered everything.
Getting a foster lined up for her, posting her on the foster's page, having to bump
her thinking it would just be a few more days till she left.
My promise to her, everything.
I went and got her the next day.
And she has been fabulous.
Seriously, she is so fun.
She's so sweet.
She's so well behaved.
We just love her.
I am so sad for her that she was left behind by the Southern Rescue.
I wish they would have taken her so she could have spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with
a real family in a real home instead of in the shelter.
But I am so glad that I got my girl in the end.
John Quill is an owner surrender or owner dumped kind of.
He was dumped at the Alabama shelter overnight one night and of course wandered around all
night trying to figure out where he was and where his family went.
He eventually wandered down the train tracks to the next town over.
That sounds really far and dramatic, but it's not.
The shelter is right on the edge of town, so it wasn't far.
A family saw him and they scooped him up and brought him back to the shelter.
Somehow and I'm not totally sure how I think they got the license plate number off the
car in the security footage.
But somehow the shelter found out that the owners had been trying to send him to another
rescue, but the rescue was taking too long to get him and they were having to jump through
too many hoops like getting him neutered, which is just ridiculous.
Who would think to ask you to neuter your own dog?
So they just got tired of it and they dumped him in the middle of the night one night instead.
Wildflower was found in a culvert.
The animal control officer messaged one of our rescue partners and told her the puppy
was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
He knew bringing it to the shelter was more or less a death sentence, so we agreed to
take him and she agreed to foster him for the last few weeks.
Lantana was found wandering alone in the woods.
There were no houses around, so it was obvious that she was dumped out there.
The girl who found her tried to bring her home, but her husband said the dog couldn't
come in the house.
So when one of our rescue partners fosters heard the story, she ran out there and got
her.
Moonflower was found in a culvert during a storm.
The finder fostered her until transport and was so impressed with our system and how easy
this has been that she's actually willing to foster for us in the future again.
Orchid was originally given away on Facebook to a free home.
Someone took her thinking it would be a good companion for him while he was going through
a divorce, but quickly realized that puppies are a lot of work.
He reached out to one of our rescue partners a few weeks later and asked if we would take
her.
Blocks were not even going to pretend that I said that name correctly.
He was found as a stray.
He was seen wandering around for a few days when someone finally picked him up and posted
him on Facebook.
We actually agreed to pull him thinking he was just a teeny tiny puppy, but when he
got to the foster home, we realized he's actually a grown man.
He was posted all over Facebook and we held him for several weeks expecting an owner to
come forward, but no one ever did.
The E letter of two were found the day before the ice storm hit.
The ice storm had been predicted for well over a week, so someone dumped these sweet
boys knowing that in less than 24 hours, they would likely freeze to death.
They were actually dumped on a busy road and someone saw them on her way to work and when
they were still there on her way home from work, she stopped to get them.
The G mama, who is going down as another one of my all time favorites, and her five G
pups are also from the Alabama shelter.
Gardenia was seized from a cruelty case last year after an ugly court battle.
The shelter won custody of her and her puppies from the litter at that time.
They were all put up for adoption and she was adopted out to a home with her last puppy.
Now something that you need to know about our sweet precious friends at the Alabama
shelter is that they do not spay a neuter before their animals are adopted out.
And their adoption fee is only $25.
This is a very poor, very rural shelter and that's why it's so important to me to help
them out so much and move as many animals out of there as we can.
So Gardenia was adopted out and then in November, they got a call about a dog that was left
behind after the owners moved off.
They said the dog had been fending for herself for several weeks and it was clear that no
one was coming back for her.
When the shelter got out there, they were shocked to see that it was Gardenia and she
was pregnant again.
They took her back to the shelter and she ended up giving birth several weeks later.
I picked her up the same day that I picked Stormy up and I'll be honest, I was really
just excited to be busting Stormy out of the shelter.
I had never met or seen Gardenia before so I didn't have that emotional connection to
her like I did Stormy.
We drove them 90 minutes to the dog house in Mississippi and by the end of the drive,
Gardenia and I were thick as thieves.
She absolutely stole my heart.
She rode the entire way with her head on my shoulders.
Every so often I would hear her tail randomly thumping in the back seat like it would just
hit her all of a sudden that she was out of the shelter and she was safe and she was so
happy.
She's another one that's going to be a fantastic dog solely because she knows how bad her life
could have been and has been and how great it is now and you can just tell she is so
thankful.
The sea litter of seven are from the same home as the tea litter from the March 1st,
2022 Ozark transport.
The sea litter from the July 19th, 2023 pasta transport.
The pee litter from the October 15th, 2023 hot dog transport and the D litter from the
November 11th, 2023 drinks transport.
Now you're probably screaming, Katie, why aren't you spaying that mama dog?
Well I am all of them and they're an altered male that I thought was one impregnating all
of the females.
The homeowners get dogs jumped on them all the time and they want to keep the mamas.
They just don't want to keep them and keep having babies all the time.
So after the November 11th transport all of their dogs were spayed and neutered and we
thought that was the last that we had heard from them but as it turns out long before
they had ever contacted us the first time their mama dog, the mama of the November
11th litter had her first litter of puppies and they gave them all away just to random
people.
One of those puppies ended up getting pregnant, how shocking.
And the owners didn't want to deal with finding homes for them so they asked these people
if they would take her back.
They loved this dog so much when it was a puppy so they were very excited to take her
and they were happy that they knew we would take all these puppies and have her spayed
so she would never have to go through this again.
So the puppies on today's transport are the nieces and nephews of the puppies from the
November 11th transport.
I think honestly it's making my brain hurt to try to figure this one out.
I don't totally know if that's right but the mom of today's litter is the older puppy
from the mom of the November 11th litter.
Everyone has spayed the end.
Y'all better buckle up for this one.
The B litter of 9 are actually at least a litter of 2, possibly even a litter of 3.
But when you hear everything that they've been through together you'll understand why
I've just kept them as one litter.
We got a call from the pound in the next town over and I used the term pound very lightly.
It is literally just two kennels outside of a building, that's all.
They said they had 6 puppies dumped in a metal garbage can outside of the building overnight.
We told them sorry we don't have any room right then.
But our transport was leaving I think the next day or the day after so we told them
someone somewhere will have room for them then.
Well somehow it turned into 7 puppies.
So when our rescue partner got out there to vaccinate them she was surprised when puppy
8, 9, and 10 were pulled out to be vaccinated as well.
The city worker told her 6 puppies were found in the barrel but then we saw 3 puppies running
around 2 days later and we assumed they were from the same litter so we just tossed them
in.
Now in his defense they do look just like them and they were found in the same tiny area
so it's very likely that they are from the same litter.
But that was only 9 puppies so when she asked about the 10th puppy he told her well she
had already been here for a while and they just hated to use a whole kennel just for
her plus they thought she would have more fun if she was in the kennel with other puppies
so they threw her in.
If you know absolutely anything at all about cross contamination I know your head is spinning
like ours was.
Anyways the damage was done by then and any germs anybody had were now everyone's germs.
The kennel that they were in was absolutely the most disgusting environment that they
could have been kept in.
There was zero drainage system so every day they would come by in the evening and they
would pressure wash all of the poop and pee to the back of the kennel.
Day after day litter after litter that's all they ever did.
They'd come by one time in the morning to throw food out for everyone and then one time
in the evening to hose everything to the back of the kennel.
That's all.
Of course after everyone found out about this we could not let them stay like that so our
rescue partner moved some fosters around and she and another one of her fosters went out
there the next day to get all nine puppies and help move the kennels to a different area
on the property where they could be hosed out easier.
Inside this teeny tiny kennel was just mounds of soaking wet poop, a palette, a wooden palette,
and an igloo doghouse stacked on top of it.
As they were pulling everything out to hose off and move it to the new spot they lifted
up the palette and in between the wood was a dead puppy.
It was still fairly intact so we're pretty sure it was part of this group and that this
should have been eleven puppies total instead.
Without a doubt though that puppy crawled under that palette and was drowned when they
came by that night to power wash the kennel floor.
The city worker, the foster, and our rescue partner were all crying.
It was horrible.
The foster took her puppies home and had to give them all three baths each just to get
the urine stains and smell off of them.
All of the pads on the bottom of their feet were burnt from urine scalding and standing
in sewage all day long.
That should be the end of the story where I tell you they all lived happily ever after
but unfortunately for these puppies that was not the case.
The day after they got to their foster home she noticed a few of them were very sick.
She ran them up to her vet and they confirmed it was parvo.
She started round the clock care for them but sadly one of them died that night in her
arms.
Thankfully the other nine made a full recovery and they are doing great.
It was weird though because the little white puppy that was already at the pound to begin
with never broke with parvo.
When the city worker was told this he was like, oh that makes a lot of sense.
Like what?
He's like, yeah she came in with a whole litter and they all died one by one every day.
We didn't know what was going on but she was the only one left from her litter and that's
why we threw her in with this litter so she wouldn't be so lonely.
So clearly this puppy's litter mates all had parvo.
Her immune system was miraculously able to fight it off and she survived it but it's
likely she was still shedding the virus and passed it on to her new litter mates when
they came in.
So this is an absolutely horrible story with absolutely terrible outcomes for some of them
but truly truly the happiest ending for nine of them at least.
Mama Rosie and her 10R pups.
Okay, if you're on the Fosters page you might be thinking 10 pups?
Huh?
I thought it was 11.
Well you're right and you're wrong.
It's actually 12 but let me tell you Rosie's story first.
Rosie pulled a very pregnant Rosie back during this horrible ice storm.
She was actually just a few houses down from my mom's house so as soon as the roads were
the tiniest bit safe to drive on my mom went and got her.
From what I understand Rosie was dumped or somehow wandered up to a store sort of like
a Lowe's or a Home Depot where they have like an outdoor section and the employees there
just kind of let her stay and they fed her their lunches and scraps.
But when the freezing weather was coming they knew she needed to go somewhere safe so one
of the employees took her and dropped her off at his girlfriend's house.
She's the one who posted her on Facebook looking for a rescue.
Another rescue saw it and knew I had just taken the Trin Walker Mama from Lash Transport
for this rescue and asked me if I would also take this mama.
And y'all know I cannot say no to hound dog ears.
This girlfriend had her for about 10 days and she could not stop bragging about what
a good dog she is.
The girlfriend actually only has one leg so anytime she had to take Rosie outside on
a leash to go potty she had to stop and put her prosthetic leg on and she said Rosie was
always so gentle and so slow to make sure she didn't pull her down in the snow or trip
her on the ice.
She would wait so patiently for her to put her leash on her.
She was a really good dog.
Anyway we got her to our bottle feeder foster and about a week or so later she gave birth.
We thought we were going to have to take her in for an emergency c-section because she
had one puppy and then she didn't have another puppy for quite a long time.
But of course right as we were about to load her up all the rest of her puppies shot out
of her.
The reason that we are only sending 10 of the 11 kind of 12 puppies is because the runt
is so unbelievably tiny still.
The foster will hold Rosie down once or twice a day to make sure that the runt is nursing
a little bit but the rest of her feedings are done by bottle.
I'm actually truly shocked that this puppy is still alive and it is a testament to how
much time and attention our foster has given it.
She's three weeks old today and in a perfect world she would still be with her mom to nurse
on even if it was just once or twice a day.
But there's no way she would survive the stress of transport let alone us find a foster up
there that would take 10 puppies and the mom and bottle feed her the rest of her feedings.
So she's just going to hang back with puppy number 12 who we refer to down here as the
Walmart puppy.
And y'all will just have to wait until the next episode to hear that insane story but
I promise you are going to love these two puppies, their stories, and their shocking
photos.
As for the cats, there are only two on this transport but that's because fingers crossed
we are actually hoping to sneak in one more cat transport before we totally close down
until April.
The plan as of right now pending everything is actually to send puppy 11 and puppy 12
on that cat transport too.
Sweet Pea would have been on that cat transport but he is so lonely and so pitiful at the dog
house that we just couldn't bear to leave him there another day.
He is an owner surrender because the owners other cats were being mean to him so she made
him stay outside but he always tried to get back in the house to be with her and she knew
that that just wasn't a good life for him.
He is so gorgeous and so sweet he is going to be the best cat for somebody and I hope
they give him all the love and attention he's been starved for his whole life.
Kay for Lily was actually supposed to be on the Alabama football transport from January
27th.
She showed up with her litter mates, the Kay litter but her eyes were so gunky and she
was so snotty we knew she needed to be held back and given some heavy duty medicine.
She was actually supposed to go again on the February 7th transport but she was still too
sick so we held her back one more time and finally she was cleared to go on today's transport.
One of her eyes still looks pretty bad but we're told that's like scarring kind of from
how sick she's been.
And that is all of the stories for today, hopefully, hopefully you will be hearing from
me in the next couple weeks when we do a cat transport.
Otherwise, the next time we do a transport and you hear from me it will be April and
I should hopefully be dragging a newborn baby out there with me.
Fingers crossed anyways.
It's a rough life but someone's got to do it.