Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life!
We had a great transport day today with lots of critters, so I've got quite a few stories
to tell you.
But before I begin, I realized last week I didn't give you any identifying details about
each litter other than their litter size.
And it worked for last week's transport, but it certainly would not work for all of them,
like today's specifically.
So I'm going to refer to them by their transport name now.
And in case you aren't familiar with how that works, each transport has an overall
theme.
So this week's theme is Crayola Cran colors.
Every animal is named after a crayon, and animals that start with the same letter are
from the same litter, and dogs with a letter that no one else has came up alone.
So all of the R names are the seven Doberman Mix puppies.
But Dandelion doesn't have any litter mates, so he's the only one with a name that starts
with the letter D.
We do this for multiple reasons, but worst case scenario, if an animal ends up being
sick we can say, this puppy is sick, any puppy that starts with this letter needs to be brought
in for testing, and any puppy named within this theme needs to be watched closely.
It just helps us quickly and easily keep track of who's related to whom and who's been exposed
to whom.
Anyway, let's get started.
Dandelion is a 10-ish month old miniature pincher mix.
He showed up at someone's door and just wouldn't leave.
She lived right on the four lane highway, so she was really worried that he would get
run over if he did decide to wander away, so she took him in and she tried to find his
owner.
She ended up keeping him for over a week and when she never figured out who he belonged
to she asked us to take him.
Kryptonite is a three month old lab mix with an absolutely horrific story.
She was found over a month ago wandering with electrical tape wrapped around her mouth.
Her mouth was taped up so tightly that she couldn't open it at all.
The finders couldn't even get the tape off of her because of how tight it was taped to
her, so they rushed her to the vet.
It's the same vet we use, so we know he's seen a ton of awful things because we bring
half of them in.
And this was the first time I have ever seen him truly disgusted by something that happened
to an animal.
When they got the tape off of her mouth they could immediately tell that something was
wrong because she wasn't eager to eat or drink anything and after everything she had been
through she definitely should have been.
So they did a parbo test and they realized she was a very sick little pup.
The finders went ahead and kept her during her treatment and they worked around the clock
to get her well again and when she was finally feeling better they asked us if we could take
her and find her the home that she deserves.
Jazzberry Jam is a ten week old cada hula mix.
She was thrown over the fence into the play yard at our local doggie daycare one night
when the workers got there the next morning she was hiding in the corner.
They've kept her the last few weeks for us until we got room on transport to send her.
Electric Lime was found on the side of the road.
The finders kept him and looked for the owners but they never found one.
Because they're in the city limits they could have just called the kill shelter to come
pick him up but they went ahead and held on to him for us until we could get him on transport.
The W letter of two lab mixes were found roaming around in the city limits.
A kind lady saw them and picked them up to take them to the shelter so that they wouldn't
get run over and the shelter told them that they couldn't take them since she was dropping
them off and she didn't live in the city limits.
They said that she could have just called animal control and left them there and she
explained her concerns about them getting run over in the city and they told her well
if you're insisting on us taking them then it's considered an owner surrender now and
you need to pay us $50.
The V letter of two Aussie mixes were found at a fishing club.
They had been dumped there to fend for themselves and they took shelter under the stairs of
an abandoned house.
The last three German short hair pointers with G names are on this transport.
I told you their story last week when the first four were sent so go listen to that
if you missed it.
But I did just want to add something real quick.
I didn't talk much about the actual result of the cruelty case so the owner surrendered
all seven dogs to get out of paying any fines or even potentially jail time which I doubt
he would have gotten but it was on the table.
But and this is a super big deal for Mississippi.
He actually legally cannot own another dog for seven years.
This is the first time I'm ever hearing of that being enforced down here.
I'm not saying it hasn't happened before I'm sure it has but just not in any of my cases.
So this is a huge step forward for animal welfare in Mississippi and I can't believe
I forgot to mention that last week.
The T letter of three lab mixes were owner surrenders.
This was actually the owner's personal dog who just never got spayed and unaltered male
wandered into their yard and got their female pregnant.
They surrendered the puppies and are very happy to get the mama spayed for free.
The F letter of four labs were found in the middle of the road.
There was another puppy and what we think was a mama dog with them when they were first
seen but when the finders went back to get them they couldn't find the fifth puppy or
the mom.
They actually live close to there so they looked for weeks but they never saw the mama
or the puppy again.
The S letter of four healer mixes were originally a mama and four puppies.
They were dumped at an abandoned house and the neighbor was feeding them and taking care
of them.
They were eventually moved into a foster home down here and the foster just fell in love
with the mama dog.
She had to keep her.
So she will be spayed and she'll live her life as an indoor dog.
She's just gonna do it without the whole transport part and do it down here.
The C letter of eight were an owner surrender a pregnant mama just wandered up into their
yard and gave birth.
The mama is so sweet so they have no problem keeping her.
They just didn't want to have to find homes for eight puppies.
They were very happy to surrender the puppies in exchange for getting the mama spayed for
free.
The R letter is the letter of seven Doberman mixed puppies.
This is another fairly weird story.
The mama dog of these puppies was actually stolen from the owner while she was still
pregnant with them.
They were given to a rescue under the guise that she was found as a pregnant stray.
When she delivered the puppies, the puppies were actually pretty sick so the rescue surrendered
them to me.
After doing some searching on Facebook pages, I found the post of the dog's owner looking
for the dog.
Long story short, she surrendered all of the puppies to me but she did want the mama dog
back.
She was very happy to let us spay the mom for her though so that mama dog will not be having
any more puppies.
Mumbo Jumbo is a dashhound mix and she and her puppies are part of the M letter and they
are a letter I will never forget.
We pulled Mumbo and her sister who at the time had five newborn puppies from a kill
shelter.
Mumbo was severely pregnant, like Belly dragged the ground pregnant.
We were originally hoping she could go on the airplane transport that we had planned
five days later that her sister and those puppies actually went on but the pilots were
concerned that she was too pregnant to fly.
Not because it's dangerous to give birth in the air or anything but because they were
afraid her juices would spill out into their plane and it would cause them a fortune to
clean it up.
So MJ hunkered down with me in my dining room because at the time the Doberman mama and
newborn puppies were in my laundry room and we waited patiently for these babies to arrive.
Well I guess patiently isn't the right word because this hussey was so big I was certain
every single day she was going to deliver them that day but she never did.
So on a Friday afternoon I took her to my vet to get an x-ray done.
This was done for several reasons but mainly just so we could get a head count so we would
know how many puppies to be expecting.
That way if one of them gets stuck we would be aware of it and we could get her to the
vet before it's a life threatening emergency.
We usually do this for small breed mamas when we're not sure who they've been bred
with.
The dad could be a very large breed which could make the puppies too big for the mom
to push out naturally on her own.
So you want to get a head count just so you know if there's a big old puppy still stuck
in there it won't die and it's not going to kill the mom because you're aware and you're
going to get them to the vet in time.
So the vet counted eight puppies and they were fairly confident that she wouldn't have
any problems delivering them herself.
They also said it could happen any minute or it could be two weeks from now.
So the waiting game continued and we actually went to my parents house to celebrate my birthday
and went home later that evening to prepare for the airplane transport the next morning.
No.
If you've listened to all of the introductory episodes you know I took this job because
I was promised I could sleep in every day.
Obviously that's not the only reason I took this job but it's for real a very big reason.
I'll be the first one to tell you, ya girl is not a morning person.
If you need someone to jump up and help you at a moment's notice at 10 o'clock at night
that's me.
I got you.
Let's go.
10 p.m. to 2 a.m. is my prime time.
But if you need someone to spring into action at 10 o'clock in the morning I am not the
girl for the job.
I need at least four to six business days notice so I can stockpile my sleep in preparation
for that very early morning.
So I was already dreading the airplane transport day only because it was going to require me
to get up at 7 o'clock in the morning.
That's like actual morning people morning time.
That's middle of the night for me.
So I'm getting ready to go to bed that night you know very early around 1 a.m. and I'm
noticing that MJ is acting a little funny.
She's a little pacy.
She's breathing pretty heavy.
She's turning down treats.
She's acting like her body knows something terrible is about to happen to it.
But there's really nothing I can do for her in this stage.
So I set up my nanny camera and I head to bed.
At 2 a.m. she wakes me up to go potty.
I open her crate and turn to open the back door and she runs into the kitchen and pees
on the floor.
And as I'm cleaning that up she runs into the living room and poops.
Like seriously?
But I'm not mad.
She's like 900 days pregnant at this point.
I understand.
I get everything cleaned up.
I put her back to bed and I finally get myself settled back into bed around 2 30 that morning.
3 30 rolls around and she's making all kinds of racket.
She was so loud even the best noise machine money can buy wasn't drowning her out.
So I go out in the dining room and I see she's in full blown labor.
Now I've birthed a lot of puppies in my ears.
It's typically a one man show.
I'm just there for moral support to cheer them on but they do all the work.
For about an hour of sitting with MJ though I'm noticing that she's pushing pretty hard
and there's just a little bubble hanging out of her that's not going any further.
By 4 30 I'm now on the phone with our vet that we saw just a few hours prior and Dr.
Burton.
Both agree she needs to go to the emergency vet and both agree it just doesn't make any
sense for me to drive her an hour and a half to the vet in Mississippi when there's an
emergency clinic that I could literally walk to from my house here in Alabama.
So I call the clinic I give them a heads up that will be there soon and we get ready to
go.
Also fun little fact I'm actually super allergic to cats and dogs.
I know I know but anyways I somehow when I was putting my contacts in you know so I could
actually see the other cars on the road while I was driving to the emergency room got a
piece of dog hair between my eyeball and my contact.
Of course I didn't realize it until we were at the clinic and my whole body went into attack
mode and I literally couldn't speak a full sentence without sneezing and that I was swelling
shut by the minute and watering so bad it looked like I was crying from one eye.
So embarrassing.
Anyway we're at the vet about five minutes later so you know how it seems like paramedics
are moving in slow motion when there's an emergency but really it's just because they're staying
calm and you're panicking.
Okay that was me at this emergency vet.
I walked in with MJ in my arms and half of a puppy sack hanging out of her that she can't
squeeze out and I'm thinking I'm about to bust in the store they'll see my panic they'll
quickly realize the seriousness by the lack of makeup that I'm wearing and they're going
to immediately rush her into surgery.
No time to scrub in just lay her out on the floor spray bed a dime all over her and get
these puppies out of her.
No it was not like that at all.
They took her temperature to see if it had dropped below 100 degrees to show that she
was in labor.
Um ma'am that's a puppy head hanging out her hoo-ha we are deep in labor over here.
They asked to do an ultrasound to check the puppy's heart rates to see if they were in
fetal distress.
Ma'am I can tell you mine right now from my Apple watch and it's saying I need to do
some serious meditation and deep breathing because I'm in so much distress.
Then they asked if they could do an x-ray to see where in the birth canal this puppy
was.
Ma'am do you not see that puppy head prairie dogging back there right now?
I think I can pretty accurately tell you where the other half of him is at.
But in all seriousness I fully understand that there are rules and procedures and reasons
behind all of these things and they were so kind and they were so professional.
But this was my baby and we were so stressed.
So I am thankful that they didn't meet my anxiety and chaos with their own or we would
have all just lost our minds but it really did seem like time was standing still when
we got there.
The praise Jesus when they took her back there to get that x-ray they had to place her on
her back and sister girl freaked out.
She fought to get back on her feet and somehow during that wrestling match she strained so
hard that the puppy shot right out of her and he was alive which was shocking.
So because she technically delivered the first one herself and he was alive they sent us
home and told me to just follow up with our regular vet if there were any more complications.
By 6.30 that morning mama and newborn puppy were snuggled up resting and I was basically
army crawling to the couch for my last 30 minutes of sleep.
When I woke up MJ had delivered two more puppies on her own and after talking with Dr. Burton
and giving my husband Justin a crash course in birthing babies I felt comfortable leaving
them home for the day while I went to the airplane transport to send her sister and
her five puppies off to Virginia.
Mumbo did deliver all eight puppies on her own.
I am so proud of her.
Unfortunately two weren't fully developed and they did not come out alive.
This is fairly common when a mama dog isn't given proper nutrition when they're pregnant
and we're afraid that's probably what happened here.
But we are so glad that Mumbo and all six of her puppies are happy and healthy after
a very dramatic birth.
As for the kitties on this transport there are two cats.
One is a pregnant orange female which I'm told is fairly rare.
She was found in an abandoned house last year as a newborn kitten and had to be bottle fed.
There's also a two year old Maine Coon who has been surrendered because the owner's new
husband is very allergic to him.
We certainly made up for last week's somewhat smaller transport this week.
We've got 46 on this one which is fantastic because it's going to be five weeks until
our next transport.
No worries though I've got lots of stories to tell you between now and then so make sure
you hit that subscribe button to get notified when the next episode drops.
It's a rough life but someone's got to do it.