Hello friends, welcome to Ruff Life.
I am still super sorry that last week's mini transport episode was so long, so I'm gonna
get right into it this week so it isn't as insanely long.
The theme is hockey and that is because this group of animals will be used for our annual
caps calendar that we do with the hockey team.
It is a super big deal and we are super honored that we get to be a part of it every year.
They are amazing supporters of ours and we are just so thankful for them.
That being said, I am extra thankful for them because we weren't even supposed to have this
transport.
It only got added because they needed animals for the photo shoot.
So I got to do one of my very favorite things in the whole entire world and that is go puppy
shopping!
All of my other litters were too little for this transport and are scheduled for later
ones or they're getting bumped up from a later transport and getting to go earlier and go
on this one.
But I still had several empty spots that I needed to fill and they told me to find the
cutest puppies that I could so I sent out an APB to all of my rescue partners to find
me the cutest of the cutest for this van.
I love that we're typically very organized and we have a waiting list of who is lined
up to go on the next transports and when people contact us it's nice to be able to say we're
full right now but we can take them in three weeks or whatever.
But this was so fun last week being like oh you have cute puppies you need help with?
Oh okay.
How about I take them for you next week when everyone around us is either full on a super
long waiting list or just completely closed down right now.
So this was just a nice little change of pace for us after a very long and exhausting puppy
season.
Anyways on to the stories.
Alexander Ovachekin, first of all God bless Jenny.
She's the one who did the names for this transport because I know hockey and puck, those are
like the only hockey names that I know.
Thank you Jenny for giving this puppy a name that I can pronounce because we all know she
could have given me a name I 100% would have butchered.
Alexander or Road Runner as he is fondly known down here was hit by a car a few weeks ago.
He is only eight weeks old so he was just barely six weeks old when it happened.
Someone saw him get hit on her way to work and she stopped and picked him up on the middle
of the road.
She posted him on Facebook that she was on her way to work, she had no money for vet
bills but that she would drop him off at a vet's office if someone, anyone would help
cover the bill.
Now if you know me or you've listened to my introductory episodes, you know that 7am
is the butt crack of dawn for me.
Right now it is 430 in the morning, the day of transport.
I will go all night, I am not a morning person.
And unfortunately motherhood has not made that any different as my baby loves to sleep
in until noon every day.
However, I just happened to be awake about six minutes after she posted this bloody puppy
picture on Facebook.
So I texted our rescue partner Hope and I sent her the screenshot since it was posted
in the group that she manages.
I think I asked her if she knew anything about it or something like that and she said no,
do you want him?
And I was like, yeah, I'll take him.
And I promise you it was not 30 seconds later.
Really not even enough time for my message to be delivered to her phone, her read it
and have enough time to reply when she was like, okay, he's here, I just talked to the
girl.
Amazing.
So the girl dropped him off at one of our vet partners, updated the Facebook post saying
like what vet he was at and that people could call in donations there and the vets got to
work assessing him.
Meanwhile, I go back to bed.
By the time I woke up, Roadrunner was stable on heavy duty painkillers fluids, had had
an x-ray done to determine that he had a broken jaw and he had gotten over $700 in donations
called in for him.
All while I slept a few more hours.
He ended up staying the rest of the time at the vet clinic until transport because the
vet techs just loved him and they would take him home at night and take care of him.
He would be staying there even longer but luckily our own vet tech slash adoption coordinator
Jenny also fell in love with him and asked if he could be brought up early so that she
could take over his care.
It's always so wild to me how these terrible horrible things happen to these animals.
And because of that they get the best life ever in Virginia.
Like I'm sure if they could think like this, they'd be thinking like getting hit by that
car was the best thing that ever happened to me because I ended up at Jenny's house
who's gonna make sure I only go to the best of the best adopters.
That's so crazy.
The S litter of two are from our newer shelter partners.
Well actually if you listened to the Sadie story episode, this is the same shelter that
I was banned from ever stepping foot in again.
But spoiler alert if you haven't listened to that episode yet, that director got fired
and replaced and the new director quickly worked to rebuild their relationship with
us.
However, they then had a distemper outbreak and then a parvo outbreak.
So we've been a little scared of them ever since.
But it's been about two years since the distemper and almost a year since the parvo incidents.
So we are crossing our fingers and starting off slow.
This is also one of the main shelters that Dr. Burton would do rotations at, she would
have to go in and just mass euthanize hundreds of puppies every week.
And then she started the spay and neuter mobile at the vet school here and she would come
through and fix a bunch of them with the students and then go back a few weeks later and euthanize
them until she started wolf trap.
So they have known us and loved us for years.
And that's why the whole Sadie situation was just so crazy to me.
Anyways, none of that has anything to do with the tea litter of two.
But the shelter is trying so hard to clear out some room to make space for the hundreds
that are still on their intake waitlist.
So they were very thankful that we were able to take these two and get them out of the
shelter.
They were actually a litter of three, there was another one in the litter, but just this
week like three days ago, someone asked if they could adopt it.
So thankfully she is out of the shelter too.
But unfortunately, she is more than likely an outside dog who will end up being surrendered
back to the shelter by the time she's a year old.
But yeah, go listen to the Sadie story episode if you haven't yet.
It is a good one.
The age litter of two are from another one of our good old days rescue partners.
We haven't worked with them in several years.
There's no tea or anything.
They just mainly worked with another northern rescue in another state.
And they pull from an area that I don't really cover.
But there was no falling out or anything juicy, you know, I would tell you.
Anyways, um, she has two puppies that totally fit the bill when Jenny and Jacqueline said
that they need super adorable fluffy puppies.
So when we saw them posted needing needing a northern rescue, we jumped on it.
The rescue that they typically work with wasn't going to be able to take them for several
weeks and they didn't have a foster to keep them that long.
So they were very happy when I told them that transport was leaving the next week.
They were originally being given away on Facebook by the owners when this local rescue grabbed
them.
Oh, and the owners live right next to one of our vet partners.
So they're literally just going to walk down the road to get their dog spayed for free.
So that's awesome.
The G letter of two are a last minute add on Jacqueline is not working during this transport
because it's her birthday and she feels like she's entitled to use her vacation days or
something ridiculous.
So she is letting and I use the term lately because Jacqueline is having a hard time turning
loose control.
She is letting our new friend Margie help with foster coordinating.
So Jacqueline was introducing us, which more or less is warning Margie about me and threatening
me to behave around Margie because I may or may not be known for stressing out the employees
and making them overexert themselves by taking too many animals to the point that they have
to go on a vacation halfway across the country to decompress for their birthdays.
But I digress Margie was saying that she is ready to hit the ground running to get all
these fosters confirmed.
So we would know if everyone on my list was going to get to go or if I was going to have
to cut anybody.
So I half joked really, really I meant it as a joke to Margie that she didn't need to
stress about finding fosters for everyone on my list right away because as soon as they
all had fosters, I would just start asking about adding more.
So she should just take her time.
Well, I really didn't have anything to add to the list at the time.
But then an hour after I said that, Jessica sent me a picture of these two puppies.
Like, how could I not?
And we had almost enough fosters for my original list.
So I hit up Margie to see if I could add these and I think she was going to say no, she was
a little hesitant.
I think I would eventually want her over but I think she was going to say no.
But Jacqueline who was in the group message but wasn't supposed to be reading or replying
to any of our texts.
She said that she would foster them when she got back if they didn't end up finding fosters
because they were just too cute to leave behind.
They were originally a litter of four, maybe even more than four, but that's all that were
found.
Someone's dog in the city limits.
Oh, did you guys hear that?
I don't know if you could hear that.
It was super loud thunder.
We're like in the middle of a hurricane or something.
It's super loud thunder scared me to death.
Anyways, someone's dog in the city limits had puppies.
The owners never did anything with them so they were just wandering in and out of the
street until someone else eventually called animal control about them.
By the time that animal control got out there, two of them had been hit by a car and were
killed.
So these two were all that were left and still alive.
I believe that animal control told the owners that they could have the puppies back, but
that they'd be getting fined or they could surrender them and not be charged.
So that's how we got them so quickly.
Usually there would be a five day hold.
Oh, and Margie did great.
I didn't even have to bully her.
And Jacqueline eventually stopped checking her phone.
And I think she's enjoying her vacation.
The K letter of two were found on the side of the road.
Someone sent us a picture of them and asked if we could take them.
When we told her yes, she went back to get them and they were gone.
Then the next day we got a message on the B2Cast page that a different person had found
them and picked them up and needed us to take them.
She was going to keep them for a few days for us because our September 6 transport was
about to leave and we didn't have any open fosters then.
So Jess texted her a few days later right before the other hurricane, not this hurricane,
the other hurricane hit and she said she was ready to take them but the lady said that
she would bring them to her the next day.
So Jess texted her that next day to get them and she said she had actually taken them to
a friend's house because she had a better setup for them.
When Jessica got there to pick them up, the better setup was a wire pen with a huge hole
in it so they were just wandering around the property.
They had cuddled up together underneath an old bookshelf on a teeny tiny porch in the
pouring rain.
I don't even think this should count as a porch.
There was almost zero roof on it.
So they were soaking wet because it had been raining nonstop for over 12 hours.
They were so happy when they got to Jess's.
She has a video, I'll try to remember to post it.
Most of them eating food for the first time and their little tails were wagging so fast.
They were so relieved to be fed and dry.
The R litter of two are owner surrenders and honestly I really debated telling this part
of their story but you know this podcast is all about honesty and transparency.
The mama of these puppies is a purebred blue healer and the dad is purebred hanging tree
dog.
Now I'm about 99% sure that absolutely none of you have ever heard of this breed before.
If you have, I would love to know.
Put it in the comments or something if you have heard of this before because I had never
heard of this.
I thought it was a typo until he said it in a second text and then I was like that's an
oddly specific typo to have twice.
So then I looked it up.
The hanging tree cowdog is a breed created by Gary Erickson and his son Chok and it was
named after his ranch, the hanging tree ranch in Idaho in 1980.
Now I think I read literally every single Google article about this ranch and this breed
and I cannot find anywhere that it says where this ranch got its name or what it's named
after but let's be honest there is a very good probability that it has racist ties so
I don't think that that's something that they would just proudly share on their websites
in this day and age.
So I was on the fence about sharing this because that could definitely be triggering to hear
for a lot of people but since they were in Idaho and not Alabama I'm going to hope that
the hanging trees were for the bandits out west that the farmers caught stealing cattle
or something.
Anyways let me tell you about this breed because it is pretty interesting.
They were designed to be the best ranch dogs in the world.
They are 3 eighths border collie for their herding instinct and intelligence, 1 eighth
catahoula for their toughness and slick coat, 1 fourth kelpie for their endurance, herding
instinct and short hair, and 1 fourth Australian shepherd.
Actually the Australian shepherd was named hanging tree black bear and he was just a
super dog with they said courage and ability to handle any kind of cattle so they wanted
the puppies to have his genes too because he was just a great dog.
So it sounds like these are going to be great city dogs.
Anyways because these puppies are not 100% hanging tree dogs just their father was quote
unquote purebred hanging tree dog, these dogs are not technically considered hanging tree
dogs.
They specifically state that not every dog that is a mix of these breeds is a hanging
tree dog.
I'm so sick of saying hanging tree dogs.
All hanging tree dogs trace back to Gary's original dogs and if a dog isn't a full descendant
of Gary's dogs it's not considered a hanging tree cow dog.
You have to do a DNA test before they will agree to register your dog as a hanging tree
cow dog officially.
But from everything that I've read, which I mean it's not like they're going to publish
bad things about them, but it seems like the creator Gary and his son Chalk were really
good guys.
They ended up leaving Idaho and moving to Oklahoma in 1994.
They settled on an 800 acre farm.
That's wild.
Chalk, Erickson the son, he was a senior agent with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and
he was killed in the line of duty in 2005.
That's terrible.
Gary passed away in 2022 at the age of 82.
And then it says the hanging tree cow dogs they created however will continue to carry
on their legacies, which I hope are good legacies.
I hope this is not some racist ranch that we are just still breeding their dogs for
them.
Anyways, more specifically for this litter, the owner had them bred because he owns a
large farm, not 800 acres though, and he wanted a working dog.
He doesn't own the dad, the purebred hanging tree cow dog, but the mom was his dog and
she died.
He didn't tell me how or when, but he had three puppies from the litter and he told
me I could have two of the three because he needed one for his farm.
So you know, it physically kills me to leave a litter mate behind, but these are actually
one of the few litters that I think might be happy being working dogs instead of laid
up on y'all's fancy couches in your fancy homes.
But they are very smart dogs, so they should be very easy to train.
Okay, the W litter of three.
Oh man.
Okay, the W litter is actually a litter of two and a family friend.
The litter of two was actually a litter of nine.
This litter was supposed to go last week on the September 20th candy transport, but they
broke with parvo earlier this month.
Unfortunately, and I think the owners meant well, but this is just why we absolutely cannot
take a risk mixing letters.
Their mama dog had the nine puppies and when they were about six weeks old, the owners
found another stray puppy several weeks older than theirs.
It was just wandering in their carport.
So they didn't think twice bringing it in and throwing it in with their litter of nine.
They had no way of knowing that it must have just gotten over parvo because it was still
shedding the virus so it was still contagious.
And it ended up giving it to their litter of nine and one by one, seven of the nine
puppies died.
When we got them, there were only four still alive.
Two died shortly after we got them despite throwing the daggum book at them.
We gave them everything we had to treat parvo.
The surviving two and the friend are doing very well now and the mama and daddy dog never
broke with it.
So they will be getting spayed and neutered, but they still have seven other dogs besides
these two adults in their home.
So I'm sure they're going to be calling us again.
The T letter of five are from Jessica so you know this is going to be a lame story.
I'm sorry to whoever is fostering them.
She said quote, the puppies are just owner surrenders from a lady whose dog had puppies.
Nothing exciting that I can even slightly come up with except maybe that they were right
down the road from another litter that we lost half of before we were able to get them.
So I did try to get my hands on them and into a foster home as fast as possible so that
nothing got these.
The M letter of five were strays that wandered into someone's carport while she was at work
one day.
Imagine that.
Imagine coming home from work and there are five puppies living in your carport.
She is 66 years old so she immediately messaged us for help and her husband just passed away.
So she said even though she would love to keep them all she has no way of taking care
of them.
She was very happy to keep them for us until transport though and she has taken amazing
care of them.
But she has a very old dog and I believe he is very ready for these puppies to go.
I don't know if these puppies were dumped or if they belong to someone somewhere down
the road and they just wandered until she eventually took them in.
But they're definitely not all litter mates.
One of them looks like he might be from an older litter and maybe a half sibling or he
could be from a different litter altogether and just happen to see some friends walking
down the road and joined them.
But they have been together since we found out about them so we're keeping them as one
litter.
The C letter of six are owner surrenders.
The owner is the ex husband of one of our rescue partners co workers.
He lives in an old rundown trailer.
There are several strays in the area and one of the mama dogs decided to move in and live
under his trailer.
She had a litter last spring and the local shelter was able to adopt all the puppies
out but the ex husband never got the mama dog spayed so surprise surprise not at all.
She ended up getting pregnant again so he called his ex wife because she's the one who
helped him get in with the shelter last time but since they have such an insanely long
wait list they're not even taking any more to be added to the list right now.
So she asked our rescue partner for help and she was so relieved when she realized not
only do we not have a waiting list months out that it's literally going to be two weeks
and that's all.
So she went and got them that day and kept them at her house for like the last 10 or
14 days to make sure that they were all healthy and taken care of.
She even took the mama and will be getting her spayed with one of our spay vouchers
before taking her back to the ex husband.
And I'm I'm happy that we could help and that this all worked out but this is always so
annoying to me that people like this ex wife are so stressed out and worried about these
puppies and going and getting them and fostering them just to make sure they're okay and that
they actually make it on transport.
Meanwhile the owner and I know he's not technically the owner since the dog just wandered up but
he's the one taking care of them.
He hasn't lost a second of sleep worrying about any of this just dumps it on his ex
wife to handle doesn't make a single call to any shelters any rescues didn't post them
on Facebook nothing.
I'm sure if she would have said no I'm not helping you he would have just left all the
puppies in his yard to grow up or get run over eaten but the ex wife is working her
butt off to make sure they're safe and they're not even her responsibility.
So frustrating.
The B-ler of six are owner surrenders.
They were posted on Facebook as free to a good home so we snatched them up before they
fell into the wrong hands.
The owners were very excited when we told them not only would we take all of their puppies
and give them the best homes but their mama dog and daddy dog would be spayed and neutered
for free so that they never have to go through this again.
As for the cats Zamboni was found outside an elementary school.
I am betting either he was inside someone's engine and jumped out when they were in the
school drop off line or some little kid brought their kitten to school and just let it go
before walking into the building.
Either way one of the teachers saw it and called the shelter in town so that they would
take it before it got ran over during pickup hours and the shelter in that town that is
legally required to take animals in that town said we can't make it just call B2Cast and
we are several towns away but whatever it's so cute we were happy to take it.
The D litter of two are hopefully a litter of two by the time you're hearing this.
Dr. Burton is still on the fence about letting one of them go because he's just finishing
up antibiotics but the other one is going for sure he's wild and doing great.
One of our fosters called us and said her teenage daughter was just bawling and squalling
on the phone with her about two tiny kittens quote tiny kittens on the side of the road
and she just couldn't leave them.
We told her we would absolutely take them and assumed based on the tiny part that they
needed to go to our bottle feeder foster.
So we got them hooked up with each other and later that day our bottle feeder foster called
us and asked why we had her taking eight week old kittens that absolutely did not need a
bottle.
She was happy to take care of them though for a couple weeks because they were super
sick with upper respiratory infections.
We actually weren't sure if the one who may or may not be staying back would even pull
through and live but he is doing a million times better now.
The J litter of two are also from the shelter that I was recently unbanned from.
They have kittens coming out their ears right now and they have a super long waiting list
of kittens to even get into the shelter so they are very thankful that we are taking
this litter so that a kennel will open up and they'll be able to take another larger
litter.
This shelter is also a kill shelter but they try very very very hard to foster adopt out
or send animals to rescues before resorting to euthanasia so we are happy to be able to
help them keep animals moving in and out.
And with that that's all the stories.
I think this episode is even longer than last week's.
I don't know what my problem is lately.
I tried to get y'all in and out in 10 minutes but clearly I have the gift of gab.
Anyways I can't remember what exactly it was that I'm supposed to start telling you guys
to do so if you remember what it is go ahead and do it but I did realize for the first
time ever that some of you have been leaving me reviews on apple podcast.
I had no idea that that was a thing until last week because I'm on Spotify I don't get
on apple podcast.
I can't even tell you guys how happy that made me reading your reviews.
It means so much to me that not only do you listen to me complain every episode and laugh
at my own jokes but you take the time out of your day to say nice things about it.
You people are just so wonderful and I'm so thankful for everything that you do for me
and my critters.
You guys are the best.
So keep saying nice things about me.
Also after this transport we only have three more transports in 2024.
Three that's not even a handful.
We need to make sure they are all packed to the brim to save as many lives as possible
so make sure you sign up to foster and you can get your puppy fix in too before we end
up closing for the year.
The next one is October 13th and then we have won the beginning of November and won the
end of November and that's it baby.
Let me know if you need help signing up and we will make it happen.
It's a ruff life but someone's gotta do it.