Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life.
I am coming to you the morning of transport, well about two hours before transport because
up until like 30 hours ago transport was on the verge of being cancelled because we didn't
have enough fosters.
I almost had a meltdown but then reminded myself how wonderful you Virginians are.
I was hoping to get about 10 more fosters in order to do a mini transport of 25 animals.
Instead we have 46 animals on board today.
Y'all almost doubled what I was hoping for.
Actually, you did double it but I woke up this morning to three cats backing out and
then I realized I never took a sixth puppy off of the litter of five that's coming that
had passed away.
So we were all set to send 50 until this morning.
Anyways, I need to leave soon to go to transport so I have to get this done quickly.
Today's theme is Las Vegas hotels for no reason other than one of our fosters went there recently
and compiled a list of all of the hotels for me.
Shout out to Claire for thinking of us even when she's on vacation.
It was like 9 o'clock last night and I realized I had no theme or even a thought of a theme
so she single-handedly named every animal on the van for me and saved me so much time.
Bellagio was found sitting in the middle of a two-lane road.
She was covered in fleas and supermal nourished basically on the verge of death.
She was so pitiful that it took almost a full day to realize she was completely blind and
deaf.
She is probably an Aussie mix so murl colored breeds are at a very high risk of being born
blind, deaf or both.
When you breed two murl coated dogs together you run the risk of some of the puppies being
what's called a double murl or a bunch of science behind it that I do not understand
but basically double murls are like 75% more likely to be blind deaf or both.
If you're an actual licensed breeder you know this and you go to great lengths to make sure
it doesn't happen.
If you're a backyard breeder you see two murl dogs and you see dollar signs and you assume
two murls will make lots of murls for you to sell.
Also for like the first week that we had her any time I typed out blind and deaf my phone
auto corrected it to blonde and dead which was also fairly accurate for her at the time
because she was white and half dead.
Wink is Medley's older pup from her last litter.
Remember Medley was our pregnant bloodhound that had a broken jaw.
We sent her on our transport last month and she gave birth just a few days ago.
She had 12 puppies.
A couple of them were stillborn, a couple of them were very malnourished and died just
within a few hours.
And then she bit the heads off of a few of them.
There's some science behind that too believe it or not.
Something about having too many puppies and knowing she's not able to take care of them
all.
Whether it be because she's too malnourished herself and she knows that or because food
has been so scarce for her for so long she doesn't realize she'll have as much food as
she wants for the rest of her life now.
I don't know.
I think there's also a level of postpartum depression or anxiety in dogs that we don't
fully understand yet.
But she's doing great.
Besides those murderous tendencies the foster is giving her supervised visitation to make
sure the surviving three make it and I don't know too much about Link other than he was
a major mama's boy.
The family whose house he wandered up to said he's been looking for the mama ever since
she left so I hope they'll get a little family reunion soon but maybe wait until she's done
with this murder spree she's on.
The family just adores Link.
He is great with their dogs and their two cats and they have really young nephews that
come over all the time and he's fantastic with them too.
The R litter of two were strays that wandered up to a house a few weeks ago.
They took them in like they have all the other strays that have been dropped off on their
road but they quickly realized they were young enough and cute enough that someone would
take them and give them a better home.
The C litter of five was actually a litter of eight before we got involved.
Two had been run over before we were even asked to take them and then we agreed to take
the six so Jessica went to get pictures of them and she went back two days later to vaccinate
them and leave them some food and that's when she found the sixth puppy the little runt
dead likely from malnutrition because they were so skinny and they were eaten up with
parasites.
The owner told Jessica that the mama has a litter at least once or twice a year and
they usually just give away whatever puppies don't get run over.
They live right on the highway so lots of the puppies get run over.
We gave her a spay voucher and we are going to stay on top of her about getting it done
because this mama has clearly done her part to populate the south.
The H litter of six are owner surrenders from Jessica's son's fiance's parents dog and
I am so thankful that that is the last time I'm going to have to say that.
This is what Jessica said when I asked for their background story.
The mom wandered up to their house as a stray they took her in they meant to have her spayed
blah blah blah.
So there you go.
I wonder if the spay voucher can count as my wedding gift or if I can convince Jessica
to withhold her son from marrying their daughter until they get the mom spayed.
The P litter of eight are owner surrenders.
This one actually makes me really mad.
But you know I try really hard not to burn the bridges and this is exactly why.
Last year someone was on the way to transport with the puppy they had found a few days ago.
Probably like an hour away from leaving on its freedom ride.
And the lady told me she just couldn't do it she loved the dog too much and she had
to keep it she swore up and down that she would give this puppy the best life ever
and get it spayed and it would live happily ever after.
Well surprise surprise none of that is true.
The dog lives outside and gave birth to nine puppies over two months ago.
They ran over one of the puppies in their driveway and luckily I didn't tell her how
I really felt about her keeping the dog last year because she reached out to me to take
the surviving eight puppies instead of just giving them away.
Unfortunately though she waited until they were already eight weeks old to even tell
me about them so I'm sending them way bigger than I would have liked to but at least they're
getting to go and she's getting a spay voucher for the mama.
The G litter of four were supposed to be on the van last week they were even on the episode
that I uploaded about that transport.
They were picked up by animal control and brought to the pound.
The officer says there was a mama and two other puppies that he was unable to catch
and no one has seen them since.
Then the morning of transport one of the puppies tested positive for parvo and we held the
entire litter back.
After spending a week at the vet recovering from parvo and coxidia and hookworms he has
bounced back and fully recovered and thankfully none of the other three siblings broke with
it because we started them on preventative care immediately.
The T litter of four are I guess technically an owner surrender although I don't think
the owner meant to surrender them.
Lady came into Dr. Jamie's clinic who we love so so much with these four tiny puppies and
she said she wanted them euthanized.
They were four weeks old and she said she couldn't take care of them anymore so the
receptionist told her just leave them and they would take care of it.
After the lady left they took care of it by reaching out to our rescue.
We don't really know anything about them other than the owner said that the mama is a min
pin mix and the dad is a squirrel dog mix.
One of them did have a broken tail I would imagine that they stepped on it but I don't
know that for sure and Dr. Jamie amputated it.
As for the cats, Win was supposed to be a litter of two.
She and her sister were found in the road and the couple that took them home kept them
until we had a spot on transport but then they told me yesterday that the sister was
killed by a dog yesterday.
Literally the day before it was going to get to go.
Killed by a dog.
Little palace is from Dr. Jamie too.
He was thrown out of a car onto hot pavement and was covered in wounds, blisters, scabs,
everything on his feet and on his nose all over.
Someone found him and rushed him to Dr. Jamie.
He needed to be bottle fed because he was so young so we sent him to our bottle feeder
foster for the last few weeks and then he went to Jessica after that.
Her sevens and her two S kittens have been in the works for a long time.
Back on the April 13th mystic transport there was supposed to be a pregnant cat but during
the unloading from one crate to another at one of our rescue partners homes the pregnant
mama shot out of the crate and ran into the woods.
They looked for her and they left food out for her for months but no sight of her until
a few weeks ago.
The next door neighbor asked if we could help and she said she had found a mama cat in kittens
under a bush in their fenced in backyard.
She found them because her 100 pound yellow lab was too scared to go outside to go potty
now because the mama had hissed at him.
So our rescue partner went over with food to assess the situation and compared the picture
that she had of the runaway cat to this mama cat and they were identical.
What are the chances by her second trip over there the mama was letting her pet her and
pick her up and so she loaded her in a crate and she grabbed her two spicy kittens with
her garden gloves and she sent them to a foster who has worked with them for about a month
to get them sweet and friendly.
And just to put this into perspective for you April 13th my baby was 10 days old.
My baby is now 157 days old.
Notice how long we've known about this mama and have been actively trying to save this
mama.
That's insane.
The M letter of five were posted on Facebook by a lady that was moving and needed someone
to come pick them up because she couldn't take them with her literally that day.
She was literally moving out that day the day she posted it and she just planned to leave
them behind when they were only six weeks old if she didn't find anyone to come get them.
So we had a foster that went out and picked them up and she has fostered them until they
were able to get on transport.
The F letter of four were owner surrenders.
Someone's nine year old cat had kittens because they accidentally let her outside.
They asked us to take them when they were like five weeks old but we were so over full
with kittens at the time that we couldn't take them.
Luckily they have held on to them for us and they have taken such great care of them until
we finally got a spot open for them.
We told them we would take them in July and then we told them, oh sorry it's actually
going to be mid August and then we were like, oh wait I mean late August and now it's September
and we're just now getting to them.
And as I've been recording this literally in the last five minutes we've decided that
we may or may not be adding a letter of four puppies or possibly just two of the four.
Who knows?
So they don't even have names yet.
I don't even know if they're actually going or not but just so that I don't have to hop
back on here tonight with another update to the episode I'm going to tell you their story
now and we'll just see what ends up happening.
They were actually a letter of six that was found at the front door of a dollar general
crammed inside a hardtop crate with a note, a handwritten note on top that said, free
puppies so sorry could not keep.
They were posted on Facebook by one of the dollar general employees and one of our rescue
partners ran over there to get them before they were given away.
She found a foster about a week and about a week later one of the puppies ended up breaking
with Parvo so after rushing him to the vet just a few hours after noticing his symptoms
he died at the vet the next day.
Thankfully, the other five all survived however whoever was fostering them decided she was
going to keep one of them this morning.
It's not my foster and it's not my decision or you already know I would have shut that
down but I'm sure we will get her in a few months when she's pregnant and wild and misbehaving.
If these puppies do end up going they will more than likely be the end litter.
While that is all for this week I'm officially running late now I have no idea now how many
animals will be on the van or even which animals will be on the van.
I was way more organized and prepared at the start of this episode than I am now but by
the time you're listening to this I will be much calmer, much happier and quite a few
animals less than I am right now.
It's a rough life but someone's got to do it.