Hello friends, welcome to Ruff Life. Boy oh
boy, the last time we talked, I was a two dog
household only. And just two short weeks later,
we have grown by five ducklings, one nine week
old Kunekune piglet, and a 15 day old baby
mouse that I am bottle feeding. And the next
time I hop on here, we should be more than double
this amount because I currently have 17 chicken
eggs in our incubator due to hatch on Thursday
this coming week. I'm so excited. It is a full
blown farm around here now. Mary Sue and I are
living our best farm girl lives and she has come
so far from her kitten strangling days. She is
finally so gentle with everything now I'm so
proud of her. It was her second birthday this
week and her party was oink cluck ba moo Mary
Sue is turning two themed. hence all of the critters.
But I'm sure you're wondering about the mouse.
Justin was working in our field last week when
he saw the mom run away and saw something fall
off of her. So he went over to see what it was
and it was a teeny tiny little pinky mouse. So
he brought him inside for me to bottle feed and
I thought there was absolutely zero chance of
him surviving. It is so hard to keep a pinky
alive, but Here we are. It will be two weeks
on Monday that I've had him and he is doing fantastic.
He is fully weaned off the bottle now and lapping
up his formula, which means I get to sleep through
the night again. And he's already starting on
real food. I'm so proud of him. He will be released
soon. I have since learned though that mama mice
will come back for their babies. So in hindsight,
Justin should have. left him where he was and
come in the house for the day to just give her
time and space to take her baby back, but we
didn't know that. It was super cold that day
and though he is a wonderful man who brings me
newborn babies to save instead of just waking
raking them up in his brush pile, he definitely
would not have agreed to stop working for the
whole day just to let a mama mouse come and get
her baby. He is my precious baby angel though
and I love him so so much. The mouse, not my
husband. Have no fear though, I may have a baby
mouse in my incubator in my kitchen, but we do
have mousetraps out in our utility closet just
like the rest of you. I love them dearly until
they start pooping in my house and then they
do need to go. Anyways, enough farm talk. Today's
transport is just a mini one, and it was by the
skin of our teeth that we even got enough fosters
for this. I know everyone and their mothers,
especially my mother, wonders why we do an intake
on Easter weekend basically every year. Unfortunately,
there is so much that goes into planning transport
schedules than just the day it arrives. Dr. Burton
has to look at driver availability, availability
of the vets for intake day, plus who and how
many vets and interns will be available which
weeks for surgeries. Then there's availability
at PetSmart for adoption days that have to line
up for the public and the private adoption events.
There's just so many things to consider every
time. But thank you so, so much to every one
of you that is fostering this week. We needed
this transport to happen so badly down here,
and we are so thankful for everyone who stepped
up. The theme is Easter brunch. Thank you to
our wonderful Lauren for doing the names for
me. Although she did give my foster a terrible
name, so I did have to go in there and switch
him to Honey Butter because him my sweet honey
baby. But other than that, she did a great job,
and it made my life so much easier this weekend.
Mimosa's owners left her and her two older babies
running in the city streets in a nearby town.
Our rescue partner Tasha got a call that she
had just given birth to a second litter in the
cold, so she went and got them. She has been
in foster care since November when all of her
puppies left. A shelter agreed to take the mom
and all of the puppies. but the foster did not
want her sent to that rescue because they were
a shelter and she could potentially be euthanized
if she wasn't adopted and she would be staying
in a cage. so our transport driver actually drove
her down to Florida where the local rescuer who
was fostering her had recently moved to and she
was planning on keeping her but her resident
dog was not a fan of her and she eventually decided
it was just too much stress on her to keep them
separated so she brought her back to Mississippi
a few weeks ago after Wolf Trap agreed to take
her, and tonight my transport driver is driving
her to Virginia. She said, I just keep driving
this dog around. We've come full circle now.
Granola came up to a house all alone. The lady
called asking for help, but then she offered
to foster until she could leave on transport
so that she would be a distraction from having
a miscarriage. How sad is that? Eggs Benedict
was being given away for free in a parking lot
and he was the last puppy. Our parvo foster got
him and then took him to a non parvo foster to
foster him. Furtada was found in the woods and
had to be coaxed out with chicken. She was super
skinny, had several huge ticks on her and missing
fur in a couple places. Like she might have been
beat up by something, but she is so precious
and everyone is going to love her. Oh, honey
butter, known as baby down here. The animal control
contacted us about this puppy that a lady had
picked up on the side of the road. When we got
in touch with the lady, she said that he was
wandering in the road. She knew where it belonged
to because they have two litters of these puppies.
So she took it back to them and they said, we
don't want it. and he was already back in the
road by the time she was pulling out of their
driveway so she just loaded it up and took it
home with her because she said she could not
stand the thought of driving by in a few days
and seeing him dead on the side of the road.
We could immediately tell by looking at the picture
that she sent that he is a double merle. Double
merles happen when people breed two merle coated
dogs together so the merle is like the the look
that they are and people want the murrel breeds,
so they breed two together hoping that they get
more murrels in the litter. But it results in
blindness, deafness, or both. Luckily it seems
like Baby can see at least out of one eye. I'm
pretty certain he's completely blind in the other
eye and he is 100 % deaf, which is actually so
nice. Fostering a deaf puppy is wonderful. I
don't know anything about owning a deaf dog.
I'm sure it has its challenges. I'm sure it's
not ideal, but fostering a deaf puppy is a dream.
He has no idea when we walk in the room or get
up in the morning or anything. He would cry for
about 30 seconds when we would put him in his
crate at night, and then he'd pass out for at
least 12 hours. Justin would get up, get ready
for work in the morning right next to him. He'd
sleep through the whole thing. I'd get up, take
care of all the other animals, and then he'd
finally get up and whine to go outside like late
morning. And y 'all know, I'm not an early riser.
It is late, late morning. He'd romp around in
the backyard with the pig the majority of the
day, too. And then he would come running when
we would call the pig and the pig came to us.
Plus, he let Mary Sue tote him around like he
was a stuffed puppy, which was the absolute highlight
of her birthday week. She has loved him so so
so so much. I am working hard to make sure that
we get the rest of the puppies from this home
and these litters so stay tuned for that because
they're gonna be adorable. Hopefully they can
hear and see. Devil'd Egg showed up as a stray
and was wandering back and forth between a lady's
house and a trailer, just a few houses down from
the doghouse actually. Jess showed me the picture
that they sent to us and asked if I wanted to
pull it. And I said, cute, but let's get a picture
of its teeth first so we can see how old it is.
A few days later, she showed me the pictures
they sent of the teeth. And she said, this is
the quote unquote, cute puppy's teeth. And they
were very clearly puppy teeth, not adult teeth.
So I said, oh, he's even cuter now. And since
then, he has been called cute puppy down here
and will forever be known as cute puppy. Jay
Litterip2, a guy in another county that we've
taken from before, contacted us about two puppies
that showed up in his yard. If you guys remember
the Ewok litter? I think they were last year.
They might have been two years ago. I'm pretty
sure they were just last year. This is the Ewok
home. He said that they would come and go, but
they were definitely hungry and they were starved
for attention. He's almost an hour away from
us, so Jess stopped to see him when she was working
in his county one day. they weren't there but
as she was leaving she saw them at the neighbor's
rundown house so she stopped to see if they belonged
to them and a very very elderly lady a young
special needs girl and a like newborn infant
they were taking care of all came to the door
together the older lady said that they were just
strays and that no one was taking care of them.
So we told the guy that first called us to grab
them the next time that they were in his yard
and bring them to us, which he did a few days
later. B, litter of three, a guy we've taken
multiple dogs from before that owns a used car
lot and gets a lot of strays, noticed that an
adult dog was roaming around his car lot. A few
days later, she had three teeny tiny puppies
trailing behind her. She is very feral and he
hasn't been able to get his hands on her so the
puppies followed her lead and had zero socialization
their first few weeks. Both times that Jess went
to vaccinate them and the day she picked them
up, she had to chase them down and pull them
from under cars, an assortment of other junk
that they found to hide behind. They cowered
in the corner their first few days that she had
them, and then they slowly started to like her.
And now they attack her as soon as she goes into
the kennel. They are going to absolutely love
getting more attention. We are still working
on the mama, but we hope to trap her and get
her spayed as soon as possible. The tea litter
of five, these are half siblings to the tea litter
from last transport. They have two different
mamas, but we're pretty sure they have the same
dad. They were born two weeks apart and they
were raised just as one litter and they just
went between both moms. They were kept in a nasty
old horse trailer. They were going to surrender
them when they were much, much younger but then
decided to give them away locally and then when
they couldn't and the puppies were three months
old, they reached back out to us and it took
us over a month to finally get them all up there.
Just as a side note on the family that they came
from, they're a very nice couple but obviously
have too many dogs to know what to do with. Two
days after our last transport left that had the
older litter on it, we woke up to a text from
the owner saying that she had a dog in labor
and she was having trouble. We didn't even know
that there was another dog. It sounded like she
was in a lot of distress so we told her to take
her to the vet as soon as they opened and that
we would split the bill with her if they agreed
to surrender all of the puppies to us when they
were weaned and let us spay the mom. The mom
was a healer mix pregnant by something much much
bigger than her and had to have a c -section
and she delivered ten puppies. That night the
lady texted us that four puppies had died and
she thought that the mama had actually killed
them and she was refusing to feed any of them.
So we offered to reach out to our bottle feeder
foster, but the lady insisted that she was going
to feed them herself. So about 24 hours later,
she texted again that two more puppies had died
and could we get our bottle feeder to take them?
So Jessica got all of that arranged, but the
last four puppies only lived about 24 hours after
that. So when Jessica texted the lady to let
her know she tried to be as gentle as possible
and explain all the things that could have been
wrong and also asked if the vet mentioned that
they were premature and she goes, oh, yeah, he
did say that. He said that probably none of them
would make it. Side note, there are two other
newborn litters at a neighbor's house that are
all doing very well and he is pretty sure that
all five of these moms got knocked up by one
male at another neighbor's house. So we are going
to neuter him even if we have to steal him for
the day to get it done because this is ridiculous.
The A litter of two were found at an abandoned
house. People were just pulling up and picking
up free puppies and leaving, but these two were
left alone. So a friend called asking if we could
help after they were trapped. They've been with
a foster and have been socialized with their
seven dogs on a farm with goats and chickens.
And now I think we might need to add goats to
our farm. the c litter of five were owner surrenders
to the alabama shelter um i thought that the
the real scruffy looking one that's just solid
white i thought it was a really weird color it's
almost like a tinted blue gray white color and
so i was talking to the alabama shelter about
it tonight and she goes oh yeah that's because
we put newspaper and it's great it's just like
if you give it a bath it'll be solid white don't
worry i was like man i thought that was the coolest
color ever but it's fake as for the cats waffles
was a stray that wandered up to someone's house
The R litter of three were owner surrenders.
When we picked them up, we told them that we
would pay to get the mama spade and the lady
who is pregnant and about to pop any day and
has been keeping the flea infested kittens in
her baby's nursery looked at her husband and
says, do you think we need to get our spade?
Yes, you do. The rest of the cats are from the
Alabama shelter. The O litter of three were seen
being dumped at someone's house. We don't know
that they're litter mates, but they were all
dumped together and they were all brought in
together. The P litter of four were owner surrenders
from the Alabama shelter's animal control officer.
The mom is a feral cat that lives on her property.
The S -liter of four were owner surrenders. The
mom was dumped during our ice storm a few months
ago and she was pregnant. The finders kept them
all until the kittens were weaned and then surrendered
the kittens to the shelter but decided to keep
the mom because she was so sweet. That is all
the stories for today and I can't say too much
about what's coming soon because it's still an
active case, but... I will say, if you have been
waiting on a hypoallergenic and or fluffy dog,
you better get your bespoke applications in quick
so that you will be notified as soon as we get
word that they're ours and you can pick out which
one you want. They are so, so, so, so cute. But
that is all for today. It's a Ruff life, but
someone's got to do it.