Calling Victoria-area animal lovers!

Those of you living near Victoria BC will likely have seen reports in the Times Colonist or heard on the radio and TV of changes at the Victoria BC SPCA.  In recent weeks they have lost three key staff members - dedicated, passionate animal lovers well-respected in the rescue community.

Cory Bond, former assistant manager at the Victoria SPCA, resigned in July.   Penny Stone, who has been the manager there for ten years, was 'let go'  this Tuesday. And yesterday, the kennel master Marty Meszeros resigned  in protest of Penny's firing.

A shelter is only as good as the staff and volunteers who work there, regardless of policies, practices, or personnel of the broader organization.  The Victoria SPCA was one of the best, and it is not only local animals who will feel the loss of these key players.

Those of us who support Cory, Penny and Marty are being asked to post the following message:

This Sunday, August 18th @ 1:00 PM.  Meet behind the shelter to have a public demonstration demanding accountability and answers to the recent and ongoing changes to the Victoria SPCA.  We will present ourselves as a professional group who are supporters and/or volunteers of our local shelter and animals.  Feel free to draft your own placard with messages you wish to portray to the BCSPCA.  Feel free to bring your four-legged family member(s).  Walk will be on public pathways around the shelter.  This is Canada and we are allowed to have a peaceful demonstration.  PLEASE SHARE with your family and friends.  

Unfortunately, I have an equally important volunteer commitment Sunday so am unable to attend.  If you can, please do. The Victoria SPCA is located at 3150 Napier Lane.

I will also post this publicly on my facebook page so you can easily share with friends and family in the area.

Jean

For those near and far.....

For those who live near:

There is an awesome Craft and Bake sale going on today at the Cowichan and District SPCA - incredibly low prices on some great dog stuff like coats and placemats, stockings and blankets, as well as some great human goods too.  As for the baking - well, you can get cookies and squares and tarts and loaves and you can mix and match - great stuff, and I've already taste-tested some of what I brought home.  I came away with two big shopping bags, one of baked goods and one of craft stuff, for about $30 total!

And if you have room in your house and your heart for a dog, they also have some really great ones there.  While I don't recommend adopting at Christmas (unless, of course, you are not having company, not going out a lot, and are just sitting home alone in a peaceful environment with nothing to do but get to know your new best friend), do check them out and fill in an application. 

Here's a link to a video that Sadie B's mom Gail, SPCA volunteer extraordinaire, put together this week showcasing our current shelter dogs.  (I tried to upload it here, but can't get it to work in Blogger).  

And for those far away: 

Ever wonder what Vancouver Island looks like?  My friend Ann sent me this link to an aerial tour of the south half of the island, starting about a thirty minute drive north of here, going down Saltspring Island just across Osborne Bay, looping around BC's capitol city of Victoria, back up the west side of the island, and across Cowichan Lake (30 minutes west of here)  and back to the Nanaimo airport.  It's a twenty minute video, but worth watching - the best part showcasing our beautiful Cowichan Valley starts around half way through.  Videographer and pilot is John Veale.   Enjoy! 

( Note of interest:  about 30% of my regular blog readers are from other countries - USA, Australia, Switzerland, England, Mexico, Germany, Phillipines, and I'm sure I've forgotten some;  and another 20% are from other provinces in Canada; and about 35% from mainland BC.  About fifteen percent of my regular readers are island folks).

The deaths of one hundred dogs.....and a hundred more....

....and around the world, tens of thousands more each and every month.

Let’s face it, the massacre (and there is no other word for it) of 100 sled dogs in Whistler was horrible. But I’m betting it was no more horrible (and certainly no more tragic) than the 100 who were shot in Northern BC a few weeks ago. And it is no more tragic than the hundreds who are put down in shelters in North America every single day. And no more tragic than the hundreds of animals of all species who are sold for slaughter at auctions, culled by animal mills and even reputable breeders, or abandoned in fields, houses or country roads to die from starvation and other preventable deaths.

The 100 who died in Whistler is the tip of the iceberg. It reflects not only society’s disregard for the lives and feelings of other sentient beings, but also society’s greed. The breeding or purchasing of animals as an entertainment commodity, be it to give tourists sled rides or to thrill children in petting zoos or to race (or fight) against one another and then be killed when they are no longer profitable is, in my opinion, unconscionable. It is a reprehensible practice and it has to be stopped.

The SPCA is being blamed by some, after the business claims to have asked them to take the dogs (though without telling them they were going to massacre them if they couldn’t dump them on someone else’s door). The vet who refused to euthanize healthy dogs is being blamed. The rescues who were supposedly contacted (so far, I haven’t heard of a single rescue who received a call or email from them - and there are lots of rescues on the two BC rescues forums I frequent) are being blamed.

Where the f*** (I don’t usually use such offensive language, but I can think of no other word strong enough) do those blamers think these animals were supposed to go? The SPCA, like ethical rescues, survives on donations, not 'profits' – and with society’s attitude and lack of commitment for the animals it breeds, they are stretch to the limit to handle what they do handle. The same is true for other rescues. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if petting zoos dumped their potbelllied pigs, goat kids and chickens on the rescue/shelter community at the end of each summer? It is bad enough that they dump them on the unsuspecting public, who then in turn dump at least some of them into rescues.

Every time that someone breeds a dog in this province and sells the puppies, they are contributing to the problem. Every time that someone fails to spay/neuter/geld their animal and then lets it conceive – by neglect or design – they are contributing to the problem. Every time a business starts up which is grounded in the purchase and disposal of animals according to the vagaries of economics, they are contributing to the problem.

We need legislation, to be sure. But more than that, we need a new moral fibre for society. I am almost betting that some entrepreneur out there is already drafting the script for a movie about the Whistler massacre. It sickens me. What kind of civilization have we become? Where is the "humane" in humanity?

If you are at all touched by the events of the past few days, if you feel outrage about the Whistler dogs, then put the blame squarely where it belongs – on the owner of the business.

And then go volunteer with a rescue or make a donation to one. Heaven knows there will be more than 100 dogs killed in the coming days. You just won't hear about them on the six o'clock news.

Adopting pups from shelters and rescues

Deli has a family!

Yesterday I received a call to let me know Deli has gone into foster-to-adopt (pending her spay). She is the long legged brindle girl with lots of energy, and has gone to a home with two young boys who will no doubt give her a run for her money. Good luck, Deli, I hope you had a good first night with your new family.

Whee! I gotz kids!

On a dog forum I belong to, a poster put up a photo of her new pup (who looks quite a bit like Zuke from our Lucy's litter!) - a pup she obtained from a newspaper ad when she was looking for a Doberman pup. Three months later, she can tell it is no doberman - more like a lab/rat terrier mix. But she loves it and she is very involved with her dogs, so it will have a good forever home. Her post got me thinking, though.

Some of Lucy's litter are now listed on the SPCA website. I chuckled - or to be honest, I groaned - to see them listed as “corgi cross”. There may be some corgi in there somewhere, but the pups like Pumpkin and Hubbard are much more Newfie cross or Mastiff cross than corgi!!!

I'z no corgi - I'z gonna be a GIANT breed! Mah mama's genes sure don't fit ME!

In fact, the only ones that may be corgi-sized as adults are Peanut, Summer, Patty and Acorn. And even that is a “maybe”. Many, like Deli, are more likely to be lab sized.

For those who have been reading this blog for information on the pups, a relative of Lucy’s late owner says Lucy is a corgi-pitti cross (which would be my guess too-- corgi with either rednose pitti or possibly some Rhodesian ridgeback), and there is a good chance the father of the pups was a newfie cross (newfie-pitti, perhaps?) who also lived on the property.

It is also possible there was more than one dad (as often happens in backyard breedings) –those fawn pups with black muzzles look like they have some mastiff or boxer in them somewhere!

Whatever we are, we is 100% CUTE!

So here is the bottom line: the breed identities on both the BC SPCA site and on sites like Petfinder.com , may be misleading and sometimes downright wrong. This is particularly true with pups - young pups often look amazingly similar regardless of breed. These sites are excellent resources when looking for a pet, but searching by breed may mean you miss a dog that would be perfect for you; searching by size is no guarantee that the pup will end up the size you want.

Meet the pup, find out what you can about its history, consider its current age and weight (an eight week old pup who weighs 15 pounds is NOT going to be a small or medium sized dog!), and be prepared for anything. Hopefully by the time you accept the fact that this cute little pup is a hundred and twenty pound fur-covered teenager, you will have spent lots of time teaching good manners, and will love him/her so deeply that you would no sooner get rid of the dog than of your human kids. In fact, if you've done your job as a doggy parent, you might even prefer to get rid of the human kids!

And if you really want to know what size your dog will be as an adult, please consider adopting an adult or senior dog. In fact, consider adopting Lucy - a lovely, lively, cuddly 2-3 year old - um - corgi cross!

Lucy and her litter are currently in foster care and are available for adoption through the Cowichan and District SPCA, pending their spays/neuters.

Hubbard

Hubba Hubba

Hubbard is a big boy named for a big squash. Today, at five and a half weeks, he weighs 9 pounds 5 ounces. He and Pumpkin vie for top place among the heavy weights -one day Pumpkin is heavier, the next Hubbard.

Hubba Hubba is a brindle boy with longish fluffy fur which appears to have a grayish hue mixed in with the brindle - perhaps foretelling an undercoat. Given his size, he will be a big dog. When I looked at growth charts for various breeds, he and Pumpkin both match the average weight for 5-6 week old Newfoundlander pups or Mastiff pups. They are considerably bigger than their eight littermates.

Like most of his siblings, Hubbard has a black muzzle. He also has a flash of white on his chest, and one white-tipped toe. He has sad, slightly droopy eyes, and his legs appear midlength - neither long and gangly nor short and stubby.

Hubbs is the pup who worries me the most. He is quite lethargic - very occasionally engaging in play but tiring quickly and going off by himself for a nap. He often whimpers after meals, and his heart rate is always very, very rapid compared to his siblings. He will, of course, be checked by a vet when he goes for his neuter. My best guess - though I have no medical training - is a heart murmur. This is not uncommon in dogs and not usually a life threatening situation, but certainly a concern.

Hubbard was mostly nonresponsive to his photoshoot, despite my best efforts to get some lively shots by squeeking toys and whistling - this is fairly typical of Hubbard who prefers to just lie quietly and watch the world go by. He is a sweet, sweet boy.

Hubbard being unimpressed with squeeky toy

Hubbard standing

I don' wanna play, fank you.

Cuddling Hubbard

Hubbard in a Basket

Being Coy

I wouldn't look so sad if ya didn't have a stoopid cat collar on me! Itz even got picshures of catz on it. How embawwasing!

(Hubbard is one of ten pups I am fostering for the Cowichan and District SPCA. Each is being featured in a seperate blog entry. The pups and their mama, Lucy, will be available for adoption shortly. All applications should go to the Cowichan and District SPCA. More information on Lucy and the pups can be found by reading the past two months' blog entries - starting September 11/2010 for Lucy and October 1/2010 for the pups. If you are considering adopting Lucy, feel free to email me with any questions you have about her personality and behaviour, using the link on the side of this blog. )

A little comic relief

I hate the first hour of the morning with the puppies. I am a person who likes to spend my first hour of the day sipping coffee, reflecting quietly on my plans for the day, being totally alone. My own dogs respect this. My guests usually respect this. I don't talk, I don't move around, I just sit.

But with ten pups screaming for attention, and wall-to-wall poop and pee in the pen (in which they pounce and roll), and three adult dogs and a cat getting all excited at the commotion, morning solitude is not an option.

I gingerly step into the pen, trying to avoid the forty paws and ten tails that mob me at the entrance. A pup squeals as my avoidance technique fails - I yell at them to "MOVE OUT THE WAY THEN!!" Patience and positive training are not gonna happen during the first hour of my day.

I hate this. I hate this I hate this I hate this.

I plonk down their food dishes and while they madly gobble up the softened kibble, I try to whip out the soiled newspapers without stepping in the muck myself. To my early morning disgust, one or more of the pups has also soiled liberally in the bed - the bedding is so covered in poop I am going to throw it out rather than wash it. The little bit of early-morning-tolerance I have is fast fading. It vanishes totally when the pups decide they would rather mob me again than finish breakfast, and all of a sudden I have ten little vermin....er puppies...crawling all over me as I try to clean the pen. I shudder.....I can't deal with this.....I want OUT....Pups and mama are going back TODAY......

I give up and race out of the pen. One of the adult dogs has reacted to my stress by pooping all the way down the hallway (they DID all go out and do their business as soon as I crawled out of bed, so I know it was reaction to the environment that caused the accident). My cat is hiding - she is pissed off because usually the first thing I do in the morning is feed her and I forgot. Charley has her head in a corner. I feel terrible.

And then I see Lucy. Lying on the couch Lucy. The cause of all this woe Lucy. And she does this:



And all the stress of the past hour magically evaporates. I head to the computer with my cup of coffee, the pups settle down for another snooze, the cat comes out of hiding and the dogs go back to their customary beds, and all is right with the world. All because of a goofy dog who knew when I needed a silly face to make me smile.

Pumpkin

I'z a party boy!

Pumpkin, aka chunky monkey, weighed over a pound at birth, and at 8 lbs 9 oz today (one day after turning five weeks) is the largest of the pups. He is also the lightest in colour, being almost fawn in appearance. However his light brown colouring is accented with a black muzzle, black ear tips and tail, white tips on three paws and some whitish-grey chest hairs. He appears to have midlength legs - not stubbies like Lucy's, but not long and gangling either. His fur is quite thick and fuzzy compared to several of his siblings, so he may have a midlength coat when mature. He has the potential to be quite a big dog given his current size.

In the pen with his siblings, he is outgoing, rambunctious, a bit of a bully, and has been humping the other pups from the time he was three weeks old. He also likes to bark and growl and pounce around, letting everyone know he is the boss. Pumpkin is also an escape artist, having climbed over the 18" barrier on more than one occasion, and having squeeeeeezed between the end sections of the x-pen on the one occasion I tried putting a few pups out on the grass. He's going to be a handful, and a very big handful at that.

Curiously, when taken away from his siblings for his photoshoot, he became shy and nervous (even though he has come out for cuddles and socialization at least every other day for the past four weeks). Consequently, it was hard to get a picture of him standing tall as he usually does.

I'z shy!

I cud be a soccer player, mehbee???

I likes cuddles

I don't wanna stand up, mama!

I sitz in cosy basket wiv mah new toy!

Peanut

Peanut

Note: For the next week or so, I am going to feature one pup in each blog entry - or most entries, anyway, give or take the occasional diversion. 'Way back when Lucy was pregnant, I commented on her similarity to a butternut squash, and someone commented that we could name all the pups after squashes. I've taken that idea, as well as the suggested squash names readers offered, and I'm somewhat arbitrarily applying a squash name to each pup. Until now, I've avoided naming them as I have a notoriously bad memory for names and figured I'd never be able to remember/identify them anyway. But...for the sake of the blog...I shall give them names. For some good images of squash varieties, check out this link. Like squashes, these pups are truly diverse - as different from each other as acorn squash is from Hubbard squash, reflecting their unknown and very mixed genetic heritage .


Peanut is a little boy who has inherited his mother's short legs. At six pounds four ounces on this his fifth-week-birthday, he is the smallest of the male pups - smaller by only one ounce from the next male pup, but over two pounds smaller than the largest pups. His short fur looks tan in colour , and he sports a black muzzle and tail, light underbelly, and some black hairs on his back. Some of his paws have the slightest hint of white tips.

Peanut is one of the most timid of the pups, but sometimes takes it upon himself to pounce on his brothers and sisters to initiate play. Peanut is wearing a blue collar with white dots and red bones on it, and doesn't mind it in the least.

Peanut sitting

Beautiful face

Doesn't struggle!

Short legs and black tail

And Peanut has this to say:

I luvs my mama

We's good buddies

I weally luvs her...

...even if she won't let me nurse no more!

(Ha ha I sticked my tongue out at her!)

Puppy Poop and Puppy Play

I gots teeth to chomp you wiv!

Yesterday morning, the pups weren't feeling well. Some really gross stuff, which I won't describe in detail lest I challenge your gag reflex, led to a decision to immediately deworm them rather than wait until week five* as is customary at the SPCA. Fortunately, two SPCA volunteers were coming over to puppysit while I went to a couple of appointments (thanks, Ann and Sheila!), so they picked up the Strongid-T dewormer enroute. They also brought along a basket of toys to keep growing pups busy.

The dewormer led to even grosser stuff, not for the faint of heart (or stomach) ....but the upside is that most of the pups are now full of piss and vinegar** instead of worms and mucus. (While I don't ever plan to foster pups again, this past twenty-four hours is certainly something to remember if I am ever even slightly tempted to do so!!!)

And so, now that most are feeling better, they have discovered TOYS...and paper and tarp and wire and clothes and anything else they can get their teeth on to shred, whip, chew, shake, tug, or simply take a nap on.

Here's a few of my favourite pics from this morning:

Is there a way out?

Pup meets rope toy

Boys can too like pink !

A nummy ball

Paper fun

Shake it!!!

Duz you like mah paper hat?

Dog with ball

Footnotes:

* Ninety-five percent of puppies are born with a roundworm infestation. Eggs lie dormant in most healthy adult dogs, but are passed on to the pups in utero and/or through nursing, where they grow in the immature immune system of the newborn pup. Personally, I would recommend deworming at week two or three, before they have a chance to create a serious health risk. Deworming is then repeated every couple of weeks until twelve weeks, then monthly until six months, and annually after that.

**Piss and vinegar: an expression which likely arose in the 1920s or 30s (as it is found in Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, 1938) and which means rowdiness, exuberance or enthusiasm, youthful energy. I remember my dad using it when I was sassy and boistrous.

***And a final footnote: One of my appointments was with my doctor, regular follow up on a chronic medical condition. I mentioned to her the stress I was feeling with the foster pups to care for. We both had a good laugh when we discovered that my blood pressure had dropped from 143/90 (high) just before the pups arrived, to 117/70 (very good) - the lowest it has been in over a year! I guess animals really do reduce blood pressure....even ten monster pups and their very needy mama. Sigh.... and I was so hoping the doctor would say, "Whoa, danger, danger, danger....you'll have to send the pups back!!!"

Houston, we hasza pwoblem!

Good mornin'!

I fink we hasza problem.

See my sleepy bruder?

An' my udder sleepy bruder?



Dey fell asleeps in DE FOOD DISH! Like a couple o' loaves of bread!



WE WAZN'T FINISHED EATIN' YET!!!

Dat's jest not fair!

Do sumthin' bout that, pwease.

My Annual I-Hate-Halloween Rant

It's that horrible time of year again - greedy noisy kids, overpriced candy (has anyone else noticed how the mini chocolate bars are approximately half the size they were two years ago, yet the price has increased?), firecrackers, lost dogs and cats who bolted when their careless owners gave them accesss to the scary outside, vandalism, UGH! Halloween is my least favourite time of year. I hate it even more than I hate a month of nonstop rain, three feet of snow, or anglers who leave all their trash behind at the river.

What??? You mean I got all dressed up for nuthin'????

I haven't quite figured out the logistics of handling tonight. The brats...er...kids will start showing up around 5 PM ,and the last will trickle through about 8 PM. Three dogs in the house, two of which are reactive to anybody daring to walk down the street, let alone up the driveway to the door (Sadie and Lucy, are you listening to me??) will add to the excitement. And while I customarily put my own dogs in the gated mudroom so they can't storm the door each time someone comes, Lucy can leap over anything. I may have to try crating her with a stuffed kong or a sweet potato chew tonight - though she is not a fan of crates unless the crate door is wide open.

My plan was to sit in my carport with the goodies. But over the last two days I have finally got the puppies on some semblance of a workable schedule, feeding at 6 AM, noon, 6PM, and midnight. Each feed takes approximately one hour as it requires supervision to make sure all pups eat AND there is considerable clean up of poops and pees both before and after the feed. (I go to bed around 9:30, pups wake me up for the midnight feed, and then I get to sleep for another five hours before the pup alarm tells me it is morning. Works for me.)

So....how do I feed pups at the same time as hand out goodies and/or prevent kids from ringing the doorbell/knocking at the door?

Hmmm....I might have a solution to all my problems. Pop a puppy into the first ten treat bags, and eat the chocolate myself.

Foster mama, you wouldn't!!!!

Ain't NOTHING gonna stop me!

(The pup is four weeks old today and stands about 6 inches tall when on all fours; the barrier is eighteen inches. This boy takes after his mama - can escape out of anything! The time is 2:30 AM - hence the out-of-focus photos!)

Goin'

Goin'

Goin'

Gone! I'm outta here!