Thank you.
Hello friends, welcome to Rough Life.
Lord have mercy, I'm gonna be real with y'all, I don't even remember the last time I sat
down to do this podcast.
It has been quite a few weeks.
I know we went to the beach on a family vacation in the middle of May, and I meant to pre-record
an episode but just ran out of time.
And then when we got back, it was just non-stop chaos trying to get everything ready for this
transport after being off for five weeks.
And then, on top of everything else, I went and got myself a litter of sick puppies to
take care of.
But I'll tell you all about them in another episode because this is already gonna be a
long one.
I know I typically start my stories off with the singles, for no reason other than the
fact that they're listed first on my spreadsheet, but this week I'm going to start with the
litters that have littermates or relatives coming on a later transport.
I'm going to refer their foster families back to this episode for their stories, so I don't
want them to have to listen to 15 minutes of me blabbing before they get to their puppy's
30 second story.
So up first is the end litter of three.
Like I said, not all of them came this week, so this is actually a litter of four.
And actually, I didn't even want to pull them.
They were posted on Facebook and my mother saw them and sent me the screenshot of the
puppy who we held back and begged me to pull them.
This puppy's eye is like all but falling out of its head.
It is nasty, y'all.
All four of them had been dumped on a bridge several towns over.
They were all skin and bones, so people had been stopping and throwing food out for them,
but no one offered to pick them up or foster them.
So because this wasn't medical case, I sent the screenshot to Dr. Burton and I asked if
I could pull this litter.
But because she was on her honeymoon at the time, it took her like four or five hours
to get back to me.
And she said no, don't pull them.
But the damage was done.
My willpower had been worn away and I had already agreed to pull this whole litter.
We got them the next day and we took the eyeball puppy.
That's actually what we named it at the vet.
Eyeball puppy.
We took it straight to the vet.
They ended up keeping her overnight because they had to sedate her to do like a deep clean
and examination of her eye.
We picked her up the next day, but because she had to be kept separate from her litter
mates anyways, we went ahead and just scheduled the other three for transport.
The vet thinks it's likely an infection and or trauma that's causing her eye to be so
gross.
And because it's probably super sore and sensitive and because we need to keep it clean, she
couldn't be with the litter mates who might accidentally scratch it or hurt it.
And they did end up being pretty sweet, so I guess I'm glad we pulled them after all.
The P litter of two and the O litter of six are actually all related to four more that
are coming next week, hopefully.
They are all labradoodles that were surrendered to us by a breeder.
From what I understand, it was someone's mother's breeding business.
She died or maybe she just went into an assisted living facility or something, but her son
and his wife took it over.
I think they thought this was going to be way easier than it actually was.
The litter of four that's still here in Mississippi is a year old and hasn't sold.
Then this litter of two was born in January this year.
They sold all the other litter mates, but the female had something wrong with her eyelid
and it makes the eyelashes curl in and poke her eye, so she had to have a fairly expensive
surgery to correct it.
And then this litter of six was born in March.
I don't know if they sold any of them, but thankfully they realized this was not the
money making business they thought it was.
Two of the breeding mamas have already been spayed and then we gave them a voucher to get
the last one spayed as well.
I will say, as much as I cannot stay in the backyard breeder, I really think these people
just didn't know what they were getting into and they truly just wanted what was best for
the dogs.
They could have just euthanized the one that needed the expensive surgery just to save some
money, but they went ahead and got it done anyways.
And although they did end up putting them as free to a good home on Facebook, that's
how we even ended up with them, I know that they weren't mistreated or anything like that.
Definitely not a puppy male situation.
They love, love, love the parent dogs.
I think they just kind of got stuck with all these puppies when they didn't sell.
The S litter of eight are part of a group we're calling the washer machine dogs.
I actually have a column on our spreadsheet where I put the group names of each litter.
So for singles, I usually just put single or the main single things like that.
But for litters, I'll say something like the bank litter because they were found at a bank
or the culvert puppies because they were found in a culvert, just things like that.
So I can easily identify which litter is which.
So the team at Wolf Trap was very confused when they saw washer machine as the group
name and even more confused when they saw three litters named washer machine litters.
Okay, so why do we call them that?
Well, a man posted on Facebook a few weeks ago that he had like 20 something puppies
he was needing help deworming.
Jessica told him to reach out to be to cast and we would help him.
They talked and then she went out to his house like a day or two later and she sent me pictures
and videos of the yard they were living in and I'm not even exaggerating when I say this.
There were seriously 50 to 75 washer machines all over their yard.
Several microwaves and dryers too, but mostly washer machines.
It's so weird.
So anyways, this guy had a dog who got pregnant, then had a stray wander up who was pregnant
and then his daughter's dog that she left behind at his house got pregnant.
So this man went from already too many animals because he has like bunnies and pigs too,
to way way too many animals.
They are taken care of definitely not well taken care of but taken care of decently enough
that we cannot force him to surrender the mamas to us with their puppies or anything.
But he is very happy and very relieved to be getting spay vouchers for all of them.
So this week we sent eight of the puppies and there is still a mama with six and then
a mama with newborns that will be coming in a few weeks.
And if anyone needs a washer machine, let me know because I know a guy.
The B litter of seven were owner surrenders, kinda.
The people who found parton and puppy love from the April 12th transport also found the
mama dog of the B litter with the P puppies as well.
They were all dumped near their house on the side of the road and she ended up being pregnant
so they just kept her and let her have her babies with them.
They ended up just falling madly in love with her and decided to keep her and just give
us the puppies.
They took such good care of those sweet babies and they were heartbroken at transport when
they were giving them to us to load up.
I know they wanted to keep all of them.
The T litter of six have been with us for literally forever.
They were the litter we got when the police shot and killed their mama dog right in front
of them when they were just barely a few hours old.
I actually will never forget this litter not because of how traumatic and awful that story
is but because of how awesome and wonderful all of you are.
We got the call from Animal Control and he basically said there are six newborn puppies
here come and get them.
In his defense he knew they would die at the shelter if we didn't come and get them.
But we had no idea what we were going to do with them.
None of us were able to bottle feed them at the time and we had no idea where we were
going to put them.
Only in a state of panic I made a facebook post in our wolf trap fosters group and I
said something like emergency no time to explain we definitely need formula and canned food.
Like that's it.
And within a few hours without even knowing the reason why y'all had bought all the canned
food and puppy formula from all of the surrounding walmards in my area and you purchased everything
I had put on our amazon wish list.
You didn't even know the story or the reason or anything but you saw my cry for help and
you sent me everything I needed.
I literally cried when I was telling Justin about it that night.
So anyways at the time we had a mama dog Mary D who had nine three and a half week old
puppies.
They were staying at the dog house and I at my house had 11 four week old puppies and
a mama who would have rather died than feed them.
It was Dolly she was the worst mom.
So mine were already weaned.
I ended up taking the nine puppies from Mary D and weaning them at my house so that Mary
D could take in the six newborns and nurse them.
Obviously it's never ideal to wean puppies that young but they don't have to stay with
their moms just for food.
They learn a lot from their moms and their litter mates and it helps them be better dogs
when they grow up.
So they were still getting all of that with me at my house from my mama dog and their
11 new litter mates.
They were drinking formula and they were eating canned food so they were getting all the nutrients
they needed.
It was just bittersweet for us because we hated to take them away from their mom.
We were so thankful though that Mary D took the new puppies in and I mean she took them
right in.
She heard them crying and she laid down with them and started nursing them like they were
her own.
She cleaned all of their moms blood off of them because they were covered in their moms
blood splatter and she was just the absolute best mom to them.
We actually let Mary D have a family reunion with her actual puppies before they left for
transport back in April and she was like who are these gigantic puppies please take me
back to my little babies.
So she was not missing them too bad and they weren't even really that excited to see her
either.
She ended up nursing these new puppies until they were almost 5 weeks old and then she
had just had enough.
Her original owners wanted her back and so we were super thankful that they even let
her stay longer with us so that she could nurse the second litter but when she was done
we just went ahead and sent her back home to dry up.
We actually saw her just a few days ago when we took her and her baby daddy to go get fixed.
And I still don't know why the police were even called out to the house where the mama
dog was.
I don't know if they weren't there specifically to shoot her or if they were there for something
else and she was acting like she was going to attack them so they shot her.
But regardless she was close enough to her puppies that they were covered in her blood
splatter and they were young enough that they still had their umbilical cords attached
to them.
So whatever she was doing she was absolutely doing because she felt like she needed to
protect her babies and her hormones were going crazy.
I don't even know if she was done giving birth or if there were more puppies that died inside
her when she was shot.
But these six puppies have had quite a rocky start but they are some of the sweetest puppies
we have ever had.
Now for the singles.
Fox River is a beagle-dash-hound mix.
Supposedly.
Someone was selling him and his litter mates in a Walmart parking lot in Tennessee for
$50.
Someone from Mississippi saw and bought him because he was the last puppy and they didn't
want him to fall into the wrong hands.
They brought him back to Mississippi and they gave him away to someone who gave him away
to my mom's neighbor.
She reached out to my mom and asked for help because she was told it was a two week old
puppy and it needed to be bottle fed and she didn't know how to do that.
When my mom went and got it she was very relieved to see it was actually more like a six to eight
week old puppy.
Hubstone is a feist mix that was found tied up outside a building at our local college
campus.
She was left there with a bag of food and a dog toy.
She was barely four weeks old at the time.
Our chief of police told us that she had to stay at the shelter until her stray hold was
up because he was certain that she was a lost puppy and that her owners would be looking
for her.
After 36 hours at the shelter Jessica called him back and told him the puppy was scared
to death and hadn't eaten a single thing since it got there because it was four weeks old
and it had no idea how to eat.
She told him that she needed to take her home for the stray hold so that she could make
sure it was eating and so it didn't die in a cage all alone before its owners came looking
for it.
He finally agreed and big surprise here no owners ever came forward.
So I don't know if you listened to my story time about doofus a few weeks ago but the
fosters that I took doofus to and then they were like no this isn't working out and I
had to go back and get him.
They took Knobstone when her stray hold was up so much better and much easier than doofus.
Greenstone Ridge is a boxer mix that was found outside our local Hardee's restaurant.
Guys I specifically made sure that any single animals whose names I was going to have to
say in this podcast were names that I was confident I knew how to pronounce.
But apparently I missed one so I have no idea if I'm saying this right but Madabesit?
Madabesit it's gotta be Madabesit.
She is a littermate to the be litter of two that were sent on April 12th.
She was originally adopted out down here by another rescue but then her owner changed
her mind and gave her back to the rescue and they gave her to us.
So she and her littermates were originally found dumped behind a restaurant in that
town.
Hey Duke or Hank as we call him down here stole everyone's hearts.
My mom was on vacation a few months ago and ended up getting really sick and coming home
a few days early.
We had had transport a few days before she even left for a vacation and she likes to
go through all the donations that come back on the van but she didn't have time to go
through all of them so she just left them all in a pile in her garage to sort through
when she got back from her trip.
So when she got back they opened the overhead garage door, unloaded everything from their
trip in the house and then they just closed the garage door and went to bed because they
weren't feeling good.
They slept in late the next morning and when she finally got up and opened the garage door
she noticed a dog peek its head up from the pile of blankets in the middle of her garage.
We still have no idea how he got in there.
Someone might have opened their little garage door in the middle of the night and dumped
him in there which seems very risky and very unlikely to me.
Or he just wandered in while they were carrying everything inside that night and they just
accidentally locked him in there all night.
Either way he was in there for over 12 hours and he didn't make a peep that whole night.
No accidents either.
My mother was convinced he had an owner and literally drove him all over her neighborhood
area going door to door asking if anyone recognized him.
And a lot of people did recognize him and they said they had seen him wandering around
for weeks.
She ended up going on another vacation a few weeks later and usually we time our vacations
better and we watch each other's fosters when the other one is gone but we both ended
up being gone the same week this time.
So she lined up people to come three times a day to her house to sit with Hank and pet
Hank and brush Hank so that he wouldn't wander away while she was gone.
So the day they're coming home she got up extra early and she hurried home because she
was so excited to see him after being gone for five days.
She saw Hank on her nanny camera just a few hours before she got home.
By the time she got there he was gone.
She looked all over for him for days and he had totally vanished.
We had just gotten used to the idea that he had just wandered back wherever he came from
and we would never see him again when we got tagged in a post by a fellow rescuers daughter.
He had wandered up to her house several, I mean several miles away and she was looking
for his owners.
And because my mom had made so many Facebook posts herself weeks ago looking for his real
owners everyone was tagging us because they thought my mom was the owner and that they
were like reuniting a lost dog with its owner.
So she went back and got him anyways.
And then she finally came to the realization that he did not have an owner after that.
We had also discovered before she went on vacation that he had been hit by a car a while
ago and had an old injury to his back leg.
He was also heartworm positive and he had a terrible ear infection.
So definitely not our best pull but we didn't really pull this one.
He made us take him.
And when he thought we had left him and we weren't going to send him up north he went
to another rescuers house ironically.
As for our cats the W and the L mamas and their litterers are from our new rescue partners
here in Alabama.
Both mamas were picked up ashtrays with their newborn kittens.
The R litter of two kittens wandered up to someone's house and their dog was trying to
kill them so they asked if we could take them.
The I litter of two is actually not a litter.
They're actually just both singles but they've been fostered together for so long that I went
ahead and just made them one litter because they love each other.
The orange kitten was found outside a theater when my mom went to see a play.
This was back in like March.
And then the black kitten was posted on Facebook by another rescue when it was found in someone's
yard with super gunky eyes and we picked it up from a vet when it was dropped off there.
Duncan Ridge was found on the side of the road and posted on Facebook with a sister.
Both were given away but Duncan's home ended up not working out so she reached back out
to us when we had originally offered to take them and asked if we would still take Duncan.
And here we go again with another name that I am not confident how to pronounce.
Allegheny?
Allegheny.
I feel like it's Allegheny.
Anyways, the A kitten was found thrown out with its whole litter.
Duncan stopped and picked them all up to take home and bottle feed them but did not take
this one.
I don't know if they didn't see him or if he wasn't cute to them so they only took
the cute ones and left him behind.
I have no idea.
But someone else reached out to a shelter in Tennessee to see if they would take him
but because he was found in Mississippi they directed her to us and we had someone bottle
feed him.
And with that, that is all of the background stories for all 54 critters on this transport.
I'm so sorry that it has been so inconsistent the past two weeks but we've got another
transport this Wednesday like just a few days away and I've got lots of crazy stories
on that one and then I've got a super great oldie but a goodie story to tell you the next
week.
But until then, I'm gonna go take care of some sick puppies.
It's a rough life but someone's gotta do it.