Hello friends! Welcome to Rough Life. These three transports have come and gone so fast.
I'm hoping the next five weeks fly by too. If you're new to WTAR, I don't want you to
think this is normal. We do not typically take 10 weeks off in the first six months
of the year. This is a special year and Dr. Burton's getting married. She's not taking
five weeks off, but because it's so much work on her to spay and neuter everyone before
they're adopted and always being on standby in case someone gets sick and needs help,
we needed to time transport so that everyone would be done with surgeries and up to date
on all their vaccines by the time she leaves for her wedding in her honeymoon. So they're
still going to be working these next three weeks until this transports adoption date.
We just can't send anything until they get back in June, which is a bummer, but totally
understandable. I actually crunched the numbers a few days ago. Fun fact about me, I am slightly
dyslexic and am shockingly terrible with numbers, but I love transport data. I have
literally a million spreadsheets with all kinds of transport information on them. So
I was looking the other day and we have sent over 471 animals so far in the first six months
of 2023, despite taking 10 weeks completely off. That's 352 puppies, 31 adult dogs, 63
plus kittens, the plus because one of our pregnant cats is still pregnant up there,
and 25 adult cats. We're averaging about 35 puppies and three adult dogs on every transport
right now. And compared to last year in the first six months of 2022, we did 511 total
animals, only 38 more last year than this year. And we worked every week last year. Last
year at this time, we had 393 puppies, 45 dogs, 62 kittens and 11 adult cats. We were
averaging 32 puppies and 3.5 adult dogs per transport last year. It always makes me laugh
when it says like 0.5 because I'm like, yeah, no, we can only take half year adult dog this
week, we'll have to get the other half next week. So that's not too shabby. If I do say
so myself, considering we took so much time off, but I already told Dr. Burton I am never
doing this again, so you better make sure this is her one and only wedding. Anyway,
let's get into the background stories. Don't Rock the Jukebox was posted on Facebook by
one of my friends. Her cousin gave him to her. He could no longer keep the puppy. He
is a purebred eight week old blue fawn pit bull. And when I saw him, I immediately called
Jessica who's better friends with this girl and told her get him for us right away. Hey,
because he's adorable. But more importantly, because Mississippi does not need another
purebred unaltered male pit bull running around. The girl met one of our fosters at a gas station
a little while later to give him over. And it's a fairly sketchy gas station. And she
said six different people asked if they could buy him from her just while they were there.
The are litter of two were dumped at a friend of mine's house. She posted them as free on
Facebook and I asked her if she could hang on to them until transport for us. They were
a little mangy when she got them, but she took them to the vet and got them started
on medicine for it. All red and her four Oh puppies were owner surrenders. Red was getting
off her chain and the owner kept getting citations for it because she lived in the city limits
and you cannot let your dog be walking loose. When the animal control officer came a second
time, she didn't want to pay the fees. So she said she would just surrender the mom and
four of the five puppies to the shelter. She said she was keeping a puppy because and this
is a direct quote. The mom was getting old. When the ACO officer told her that he is a
kill shelter and the mama would be euthanized if she didn't find a home in time, she said,
that's fine. He did get her to agree to keep the puppies until we had a foster open to
take them. He did this so they wouldn't be at risk for catching parvo or anything. Unfortunately,
the place they were living with so awful, I think they probably would have rather taken
the risk of getting parvo. Jessica went out there a day or two later to vaccinate them
before we took them to a foster home. And she said it was so terrible, we need to define
someone else to take them sooner because they couldn't stay there two more days. Luckily,
we found a foster to take them the next day. Meanwhile, red was taken to the shelter all
alone. No toys, no bed, no comfort blanket. They didn't even tell him her name. She did
say though that red is a nine year old purebred chocolate lab, which I don't believe. And
that this was her third glitter. We took red to the vet the next day and she had the worst
case of ear mites I have ever seen. Imagine tiny little bugs crawling deep inside your
ear canal 24 seven it is maddening and hers were so bad. And of course she has heartworms.
We did end up doing some PI work. And we found out that her real name is actually Coco. And
if you hear anything in the background, that is Coco trying to get in this room with me
because she does not like it if she cannot be touching me 24 seven. We've just been calling
her big red. But when I found out her name was Coco, and I said it for the first time,
I wish I would have recorded it, but I didn't. I honestly didn't think it was really her
name. But so I called her Coco for the first time. She hadn't heard her name in at least
five days. Who knows how often they even said her name to her. But she looked up at me with
the sweetest look in her eyes like, That's me. You know me. It was so sweet. She wagged
her tail so sweet. You could tell she was like, You finally know who I am. You figured
out what my name is. It was precious. The a litter of five Beagle mixes were kind of
an owner surrender. Pregnant Beagle Mama wandered up to someone's house and had five puppies.
The homeowners love the mama so much that they are going to keep her and spay her with
one of our voucher cards. But they did surrender all of the puppies to us. The sea litter of
lab mixes were found on the side of the road when they were about probably eight to 10
weeks old. When the finder asked us if we could take them, we had no room on transport.
Then he asked us to take them when we were closed for March and April. Then another
rescue was going to take them but couldn't. And then he finally reached out to us right
before this last transport and said he still needed help. So we're so glad we finally got
them on this last transport because they would have been gigantic by June. The be litter
of seven feist and boxer mixes were actually dumped at the landfill. One of the workers
saw them running around one day and called us to come get them. He actually tried to
keep one of them to be the landfill puppy. But thankfully we talked him out of that.
They never saw a mama dog, although there is another mama dog, not their mama though,
that lives at the landfill. That's totally feral that we've been trying to trap for a
while. The F letter of three feist dashhound mixes were posted on Facebook as free, not
even free to a good home. Just quote, if you want one, tell me now. She actually only posted
one puppy and said in the post quote, there might be two or three other ones around here
somewhere. So needless to say, they came from a horrific home, their pen or maybe it was
even just the ladies whole backyard looked like it needed to be condemned. The age litter
of five labs were owner surrenders. The mama dog just walked up to someone's house one
day and their male dog fell in love with her. Neither were fixed. So no one was shocked
when she ended up pregnant. Luckily they got their male neutered and are using a spay voucher
to spay the mama. The two are so in love though that they can't bear to separate them. So
they're going to keep the mama to the tea litter of eight lab shepherd mixes are owner
surrenders. The mama dog belongs to a 72 year old almost completely blind lady. Her husband
died recently and her children got her the dog to make her feel safer at night because
she refuses to go to a nursing home. And what do we know about dogs? They reproduce. So
it should come as a surprise to know one that the dog wound up getting pregnant. A foster
for one of our rescue partners took the mama and her babies to her house until transport
so that the owner wouldn't have to take care of them or risk tripping over them. We spay
the mama and she's back taking care of her old lady once again. As for the cats, mamas
don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys is a very long name but a very good song.
She is the mama of the age litter of four kittens from last week and I know I know I
should have picked an age name but I love this song and she's the only mama that I
could use that on because all red had to be named old red. Remember she was brought into
the shelter after I left last week and the man was carrying her in his arms like a baby.
The W litter of three were owner surrenders. A young couple moved into an apartment and
soon discovered a mama cat had delivered kittens inside their walls. One of our rescue partners
picked up the kittens as soon as they were weaned because they had really irritated eyes
probably from all the insulation in the walls. After a couple days of medicine though the
kittens are doing fantastic. So I was done with my podcast already had it ready to upload
and everything before I left to go to transport today and when I stopped at the shelter I
picked up the mama cat from the kittens from last week and just as I was getting ready
to leave one of the employees walked in with a super adorable long hair kitten. She was
like someone just dropped these off their owner surrenders. I'm like hang on let me face
time Dr. Burton well she didn't answer. So I texted Jenny and I said are you with Dr.
Burton and she said yeah we're in a team meeting right now what's up. I'm like face
time me. So I face timed her and I showed her the kittens and Dr. Burton said no absolutely
not and then Jenny passed the phone around to everyone sitting around the table and they
were like oh my gosh they're so cute. Pull them. So Dr. Burton was like fine you can send
them. They were so stinking cute. So I don't really know the full story with them. They
said this lady has a hundred cats literally. They said literally a hundred cats and she
just brings them in every so often litter by litter. So I don't know where the mother
is of these kittens. They said she was supposed to bring it in too but she never did and I
kind of got the impression that these kittens were supposed to be brought in earlier than
they were. But anyways I had to jump back in and add that so you guys would know their
story too. And that's all the stories for this week. I'm sure you noticed Peanut Story
wasn't in there. She didn't have anyone sign up for her which I cannot believe because
she is so little and she's so sweet. But that just means she's going to hang out here with
me until June. It's going to be another long five weeks until the next transport but you
already know I've got lots of stories for you in the meantime. Let me know if y'all
want me to do another episode with Jessica and Becky or even just an FAQ episode if you
have some unanswered questions. It's a rough life but someone's got to do it.