Back for more

Funny how time drags when you’re not having fun.  I can’t believe it’s been less than three weeks since “the tragedy” when it feels so much longer.  It seems like a million things have  happened since that I need to catch you up on, yet at the same time I feel frustrated because it feels like I’ve had the same dogs forever and nobody is going anywhere.

So what has happened in the last few weeks?

Well, for starters, the polydactyl kittens and their mama; and the Siamese mama and her two surviving babies all went and got fixed about ten days ago and are now halfway through their first weekend of adoption availability.  I had not been home from the sanctuary more than one hour after dropping them off than I was called to pick up a new litter of four bottle babies.  So last Saturday (a week ago today), I went and picked up four little orange tabbys — not the litter I had been called about initially, but a newer one.  We’ve had them one week, lost one yesterday morning, but the other three are strong and have already moved out of every containment system I’ve designed and now have free run of my bedroom where (hopefully) they’ll be content for at least another week or two.

Meet the Weasleys, Fred, George, Bill, and Ron (RIP).

 The day before I picked up the Weasleys however, I got a call from another CVAL foster asking if I could take on one of her fosters since she was over her limit.  I had kind of decided I really didn’t want to take anyone new on until I had placed the two I still had from that “batch”, but I have very little impulse control when it comes to dogs so I went down to the pet store and picked up “Vegas.”

Vegas (aka) Rita Skeeter

Rita (her stage name), is a bassett/Scotty mix (best guess), she’s a real sweetheart and a bit of a ditz.  She’s got one of those “Hey I’m just happy to be here”-personalities that is very endearing.  She and Remus have taken to each other nicely and are now crate-mates at night and pal around during the day.  Yesterday, they got spayed/neutered together.

"You're taking us WHERE?!!!! Where they're going to do WHAT?!!!!! OK, we're just happy to be going for a car ride!!! WHEEEEE!!!!"

That means that every dog I have is now fully-adoptable.  Honey, Rita, and Remus are all fixed, and Honey at least is microchipped.  I’ll have to chip the other two myself, maybe tomorrow — sounds like a fun way to spend Sunday.  Not to sound insensitive, but I’d really like to move them all along.  I don’t know, maybe I’m still a little stung by what happened with the others and really wanting a fresh start.  Plus, I somehow wound up with three adult (or almost adult) dogs, which is not really my preference.  Having a bunch of adult dogs is kind of like having a bunch of kids, each has a very different personality you have to cater to — it gets a bit exhausting and you always have the nagging feeling that someone is getting the short-end of the stick (Remus, in this case).  I’d just like to find them all good homes and then go back to what I feel is my strong-suit, puppy litters.  But from this point forward, I’m not mixing litters.  As much as I like having an ambrosia salad of puppies and forming my own non-traditional litter – there is just no way to introduce a new puppy to a litter without taking a risk, even a puppy that seems fine.  I don’t want to go through that again.

So, I guess I’ve mainly spent the last three weeks hiding out in my dog house and now I need to get my butt back in gear and start working things a bit.  It’s lousy to be on a roll, then brought to a screeching halt, then trying to get that momentum back but there really isn’t any alternative.  There are still more dogs out there and CVAL is working hard lately on branching out and establishing relationships with the more rural animal services and that’s a great thing.  Winter is coming, we’ve still got debt to pay and preparations to make.  Time to get moving again.  Yeah.  Now if I could just get that from my head to my hands we’d be in good shape.

Magic coupons

I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with pet fostering, other than that the Magical Creatures’ most special magical power seems to be making me go broke.  Inspired by a friend of mine who drives around town with a trunk-full of pet food and treats, cleaning supplies, and toiletries that she doesn’t really need but got for free or close to it, I have started “extreme couponing.”  I even have a binder. o_O

Since there isn’t a whole lot on the pet front to share at the moment (everybody is inside since it’s 96F on its way to 103F –day three of an expected seven-day stretch of triple-digit temps–even the kittens and their mamas have taken over my bedroom), I figured I’d share some of the tips I’ve learned in the last week–yes, I’ve only been doing this one week and I already have a binder.

First, take a look at this…

and now take a look at this…

Now, this may not seem like a huge deal or a super-cheap trip, but this was a grocery visit to Vons, which is not a bargain-rich store ordinarily.  In fact, I only got a Vons card last week precisely because I’ve never wasted my time in there.  But that was before the coupons.  Those cleaning supplies and cereals alone are easily worth $40-50 — even with some “sale” prices.

These are the basic rules of couponing:

1. NEVER buy anything you don’t have a coupon for (except for absolute necessities, i.e. milk, eggs, toilet paper — though there are occasionally coupons for these also, I just got 18 free eggs this week).
2. NEVER buy anything with a coupon unless you can also stack that coupon with either: A) a store coupon; B) an in-store sale; C) a cash back, rebate, or register reward; D) a good Catalina reward; and, E) Stack as many of A through D as you can.
3. Know the difference between “good” prices and “stock up” prices– (print this and this to start).
4. Understand and have a printed copy of the store’s coupon policy (hence the binder, here’s a Coupon Policies .pdf of a bunch of store coupon policies – but not all — that I made by cut/pasting for myself)
5. Hoard coupons, don’t just rely on what comes in your weekly newspaper.  You can find duplicates or triplicates of practically all of those coupons online for free (I’ll post links)  – plus you can buy coupons on eBay (either sets of full inserts, or batches of particular coupons).  It seems counter-productive, but those Buddig lunch meats were on sale today for 0.59, and I had five 0.55 off two coupons.  I paid about .30 each.  You shouldn’t ever pay more than $5 for a coupon auction (shipping included).  I won’t buy coupons very often, but it was a big help in getting started.  Also, this is why you need a binder.
6. Don’t base your shopping list off of your anticipated menu for the week.  Instead, stock your pantry and freezer with items you know you can use when they are at their lowest prices, then base your weekly menus off of what you have in your pantry and freezer.
7. Sign up for every rewards card you can find, even stores that you don’t necessarily shop at.  I just added a Kmart, Vons, and CVS card to my wallet and have used each with great results.  You can sign up for a lot of these online, but it’s easier to just get one when you walk into the store, it takes just a minute and you’ll have your card in your hand to use that day.  There is also this great (FREE!) iPhone app that lets you scan all of your rewards cards so you always have them with you.
8. Create a couponing email account.  Signing up for coupon sites, registering for free samples, and the like will mean a lot of spam you don’t want in your regular account.
9. Cut (or at least save) coupons even for things you might not use like my friend does.  If you can get extra toiletries, soap, pet supplies, and cleaning supplies for free you can always donate those items to your favorite pet rescue, women’s shelter, or classroom.  I’m making a care packages for each of my girls’ teachers loaded with hand sanitizers I got for free, some of my super-cheap cleaning supplies and back to school finds.  As a former teacher, and wife of a current one, I can tell you that the annual supply budget most teachers are allotted lasts about one month — seriously.
10. MAKE A BINDER!!!  Especially if you think you don’t have time to coupon, a binder will keep you more organized and saves A TON of time.  Then, once you are in the store you won’t be that a**hole that totally holds up the line trying to get their stuff together.

All of this sounds like a ton of work, but not with the internet.  Find a few good couponing websites (I’ll list some for you) and they’ll do the work for you by providing match-ups. What’s a match-up?  The websites will go through the weekly ads for the different stores and “match” them up with the store coupons, manufacturer coupons, register rewards, and Catalinas that are out there and will tell you exactly where to go for the best prices.  All I did this week was print out the matchups, then sat down with my binder and pulled the coupons I needed.  I had to do  my own “matching” for my local Savemart and Vons but that’s no big deal, I just made sure to check my prices against thestock-up-price lists to make sure I was really getting a good deal.

*Just remember that the match-ups get update all through the week as real shoppers get into the stores and discover matchups on unadvertisedspecials, last night I went back to Target because of the specials on trial/travel-sized that weren’t advertised. If your coupon doesn’t specify a size minimum you can get this stuff for free or darn close.  For this reason, it’s a good idea to sign up for daily emails and/or fan the Facebook pages, so you can get these updates as they happen.  Last night’s FB post let me know I need to be at Walgreen’s bright and early tomorrow to score my eight 0.25/jars of  peanut butter.

You may get to your store and realize that your store isn’t offering the same deal.  Last night I went to Walmart (yes, I know it’s evil) to get cat food that was supposed to be on sale for $2.57.  I had nine $2 off of 1 coupons, I was going to get nine bags of cat food for 0.57 each.  Unfortunately my Walmart wasn’t running this particular sale.  Damn.  As much as I despise the Mart, even I will get off my moral high-horse for 0.57 cat food these days.

You might have to get over your brand loyalty.  I have one particular family member who tends to be a little “picky”, shall we say, about which brand of this-or-that they prefer.  Suck it up.  For 0.25/jar, you can eat a different peanut butter.

Here are the Couponing/Matchup sites that were recommended to me, all of these sites have links or entire pages dedicated to online printable coupons.

Hip2Save

Krazy Koupon Lady

Fabulessly Frugal

Coupon Divas

Totally Target

I Heart the Mart

What next?

When I started this blog a month ago I did not realize I would soon be playing blogmistress to the most depressing animal rescue blog on the whole interwebs.  Those of you who follow us on Facebook know that yesterday was a really sad day.  It turned out that we did have an outbreak of distemper and that all of our puppies were infected and declining fast.  Yesterday afternoon I made the decision to euthanize Padfoot, Nimbus, Norbert, Rosie, Veela, and Gryffindor.

I’m glad I had 24 hours to process the possibility of a distemper outbreak while for all practical purposes living in denial that it was just pneumonia.  It gave me the chance to consider if I would be able, or even willing, to care for the puppies if indeed they had distemper.  By Sunday afternoon I had decided that I would take care of them no matter what and so I headed out to the feed store to stock up on supplies for whatever was ahead and then spent the evening preparing the medications and figuring out a dosing schedule, all the while in my mind running through how I was going to manage the puppies during my daughters’ first weeks at school.

So on Monday afternoon, when my friend at the SPCA took one look at my puppies and shook her head sadly, it made the decision easy in a way.  I knew I wasn’t making a decision based on what I was willing to endure, but what I was willing to let my puppies endure.  Distemper is a horrid disease that kills slowly and tortuously.  I would not put them through that.  It was the easiest most difficult decision I’ve ever made.

What has happened over the last few days is every rescuer’s nightmare and everyone, from my family, our friends, and the whole CVAL rescue team grieves this loss.  There is no way not to feel guilty and responsible for what happened.  I know and understand how this happened, and I know and understand that because of the nature of distemper, there was no way anyone could have foreseen or predicted what would happen.  Once it was here, the distemper was airborne, and no amount of cleaning and bleaching on my part could have stopped it.  Still, there are lessons to be learned and they have been duly noted, but I just don’t want to get into that now.

So what are our next steps?  For starters we are going to have a very nervous couple of weeks while we watch Remus, hoping and praying that he does not begin to exhibit symptoms.  He was easily 4-6 weeks older than the oldest of the other puppies and came to the shelter in relatively good condition which makes me hopeful that he had a couple of booster shots under his belt before he came to us and that will be enough to protect him.  Honey came to us full grown and already spayed, which makes me fairly confident she was probably vaccinated as a pup and since all dogs receive a booster as soon as they arrive at the shelter, she should be pretty safe.  Honey was exposed to the virus at the same time as everyone else, about 18 days ago and so far has not shown any signs of illness.

Until we are in the clear with Remus, which is at least 2-3 weeks away, there is no way I can bring a new dog into this environment.  Even after we are in confident that Remus is fine, I wouldn’t want a new dog here until both Remus and Honey have been placed.  Distemper is a weak virus outside of a host, it doesn’t last more than a few hours on its own.  But I kind of feel like I just need to start from scratch, clear the books of all the dogs that were here during the outbreak, take a breath, and jump back in.  Which I will.

I wasn’t allowed to be with the puppies as they were put down yesterday, which was probably the worst thing of all for me.  I said goodbye to them by putting my head in the middle of all of them as they sat in my laundry basket.  There were lots of kisses.  When they carried the puppies away I walked over to the stray animals building and walked the aisles.  Why on earth and what kind of person walks the aisles of the stray animals building at the pound for comfort and hope is beyond me, but that’s what I did.  When I returned to the office they were still not done, but I had to go pick my kids up from their first day at school.  I decided I really didn’t want that laundry basket back anyway.

I’d had 5 of the 6 dogs for more than five weeks, longer than any other puppies I’ve fostered, and with the orchard puppies we had been through so much.  For the last month or more the hours between 6:00 and 9:00 (am and pm) have been nothing short of chaos.  Feeding the puppies, feeding the kids, cleaning up after the puppies, cleaning the house, giving everyone their medicine, their attention, their love, feeding everyone dinner, cleaning everyone up again, cleaning up the backyard and the house again, tucking everyone in, etc…..not to mention that picking up dog poop was practically a full time job in and of itself.  Last night was so quiet.  There was nothing to do.  Nothing.  The cats and kittens had all been fed in the morning and had plenty of food and water to last them through the night.  There were no messes on the back patio, no four bowls of dinner to prepare, no 14 doses of medication and 7 squirts of Probios to deliever.  I slept all the way through the night, no 12:00 am or 4:00am potty breaks, until 8:30 this morning as there was nobody to wake me promptly at 6:00am for breakfast.  That’s the hardest part.  It’s so quiet, they’re all gone…and there were so many of them.

Yesterday I broke down all of the crates and stacked them outside.  Today I put them all back up and fixed them up with blankets and litterboxes for the kittens.  The kittens are all old enough, heavy enough, and (knock on wood) healthy enough to be spayed and neutered.  They have an appointment one week from tomorrow for their surgery.  We may bring them home for a day or two to recuperate, but they’ll be surrendered back to the shelter September 2 so they are there for weekend adoptions.  In the meantime they’ll be nice and spread out, two per cage, and hopefully will keep themselves a little cleaner and not play in the litterbox anymore.  Today they all got baths and I may even give them run of the house during the day and just crate them in the evening so they don’t keep us up all night attacking our feet under the sheets.

So that’s about all there is for now.  It’s quiet–too quiet–but hopefully it will remain quiet for a couple of weeks, and Remus will be fine.  Then we will start again, because this is what I love to do.

…PS, we’re broke, please donate.

Disbelief

A brief but sad update.

I had to take Veela to the Veterinary ER this morning.  She seemed “off” most of the last two days, yesterday especially.  I slept on the floor next to her crate all night.  This morning she followed me around as I cleaned up the backyard.  After I hosed things down I noticed she was gone.  I found her cowering behind our fish pond. She just looked wretched and when I went to pick her up she cried as though every inch of her hurt.

Based on my descriptions of her activity for the last five days and some scabs on her belly, the doctor believes it’s Distemper, but he hopes that it’s just a really bad pneumonia.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been told one of my dogs had Distemper, last year the vet I took Woody to for kennel cough said he might have Distemper too.  Of course he didn’t.  I hope this vet is wrong too.

Regardless, we’re in for a rough road.  Besides Veela, Gryffindor, Padfoot, Nimbus, Norbert, and Rosie are all symptomatic.  They are all inside and comfortable.  I’ll update when I can.

Dog Days…

Sunday is bath day, at least it was last week, they put up a stink but sure are frisky once they're done.

Five days since the last post — way too long, my apologies.  This was the last week of summer vacation at our house, the wife reported for duty on Wednesday and kids head off to school on Monday.  There’s been some family things that have been taking priority over other endeavors and of course the magical creatures are a non-stop handful.

Sadly the work week ended with the loss of the second Siamese kitten.  What ever was wrong with her I’ll never know.  There were no GI issues and the goopy eye and respiratory issues cleared up within a day of starting treatment.  In spite of daily subcutaneous fluids and ultimately tube-feeding formula she just never seemed to get better.  She did at least improve to the point that she no longer seemed uncomfortable.  I waffled between hope that she was getting better and dread that I’d find her deceased in the morning but each morning she was there, awake and seemingly fine except for the fact that she was so frail.

On Friday morning she looked particularly good, I removed her water bottle and popped it in the microwave for 3minutes to get it nice and warmed up.  When I returned to put it into her crate with her she had moved up to the mouth of the crate and meowed gently.  I replaced the bottle and leaned her against it on top of her blanket and went to prepare the morning fluids.  When I returned, she was gone.  Just like that.

sharing a moment with the kittens as they sun-dry after their baths last Sunday

My 5-year old happened to peek into the crate at that moment and commented how cute she looked asleep.  I didn’t tell her otherwise.  Sometime later she went out to play and when she did I removed the kitten, wrapped her in her blanket and placed her in a bag, then in the shoebox in my garage freezer that has become my makeshift morgue until I go down to the shelter again where the remains can be handled appropriately.

Eventually my daughter noticed the empty crate and I had to tell her what had transpired.  She insisted on seeing where I had put the kitten and then seeing the kitten itself.  Our family is dealing with issues of mortality on various levels right now and she is trying to come to terms with these difficult concepts, so the topic of death and dying is particularly resonant with her now.  Curiosity aside, she handled it well, far better than in February when the pet snake died, or April, when the first foster kitten of the year, a two-day-old kitten who had been in our care for 2 days, died, and way better than last summer when two guinea pigs died under curious circumstances — then she didn’t get it at all.

She’s not becoming immune to the loss, but has matured a lot over the last year months in her capacity to understand.  Having pets provides a more gentle way to introduce the harsh reality that nothing is forever to a young child, and hopefully to also inspire a reverence for the fragility and value of life.

what is that thing you are pointing at me?

Aside from that the week has been rather uneventful.  The 8 remaining kittens and two moms seem more or less well — every morning it seems someone new has a bum eye, but that’s just from rough-housing.  The puppies too seem to be ok, except for the heat.  Veela and Rosie in particular, I think, are not handling the heat well.  Both look wretched, as though they are losing weight, but it’s really just that their growth in height and length is outpacing their weight gain.  The orchard puppies also seem to be growing into their baby fat.  I think mostly though it’s a combination of those things and the fact that nobody really feels like eating much when it’s a bazillion degrees outside.  Still, I don’t care for the way they look at the moment, and I’m a little paranoid after this past week that all 20 of my foster pets are going to start dying off one by one.  So tomorrow I will figure out how to manage keeping all the dogs inside for most of the day, the hot parts of the day at least, and hope that will boost everyone’s appetite and make all of us rest a little easier.

 

We had a new addition to the foster family this week.  Remus is a 3-month old Schnauzer-mix I had spotted at the SPCA two weeks ago.  I tried rescuing him then, but he was so cute the shelter wanted to keep him around and tried to place him but without luck.  So I got the call on Tuesday to come get him.  He’s a sweet boy and ready to be fixed, so we will get him in early next week and he’ll be ready for a forever home by next weekend.  Rosie and Veela would be ready too, if it weren’t for their weight/appearance, I don’t want to take them in until they look as healthy as they seem — I just don’t want to tempt fate.  Gryffindor is pretty close to being ready, he’s old enough but still a little small.  Provided they continue to stay healthy, the orchard puppies are about three weeks away from being adoptable.  My fingers are crossed that everybody is ready to go by then.

Honey, on the other hand, is a different story.  I don’t know what I’m going to do with her.  She’s adjusted fine to her current environment, she’s healthy and has gained weight.  She is wary of strangers still but I think that’s just a breed characteristic she will always have to some degree, she was pretty relaxed when some friends came over the other day.  She certainly is happy here and there is a part of me that still worries she’d “relapse” if we tried to re-home her, but another part of me thinks she really belongs on a ranch or someplace with a ton of acreage.  I’m beyond the “I don’t ever want to let go of this dog”-stage, but finding the right placement for her, a strong, dog-savvy owner with a lot of patience and a super-active lifestyle, plus a lot of space and a really good sense of humor.

Cata-who????

Our first meeting, I sent this picture to my wife to let her know I'd found my running partner.

The first time I ever heard of a Catahoula Leopard Dog was just about one year ago.  We had adopted Woody, our Pit Bull mix from the CCSPCA in July.  At the time we thought he was a pure bred pit bull, he certainly looked like it (now I’m learning that virtually all puppies look like pit bulls to begin with).  As he grew though it became obvious that he was definitely mixed with something, just what we didn’t know.  About the time he started going to the dog park and then puppy kindergarten, we started hearing the breed “Catahoula” tossed around.  I googled it, and he certainly did bear a resemblance.  When our kindergarten teacher, who had some experience with the breed pegged him as Catahoula mixed we decided to take the possibility seriously.

Looking at pictures of Catahoula-Pit mixes convinced us that this was as likely as anything to explain what Woody was.  As we researched the temperament and personality of Catahoulas, a lot that rang true to Woody as well.

Woody today

When I started fostering dogs this summer I was really shocked at the number of Catahoulas and Catahoula-mixes that were available at the shelter.  Fresno County has always been heavy on Pit Bulls (a side-effect, I’m sorry to say of a significant gang problem throughout the Central Valley) and Chihuahuas (something I’ll never understand, sorry, breed bias — I’m a big dog gal),  but it looks as though Catahoulas (along with German Shepherds I’m afraid) are gaining in popularity as Pit Bulls become a little more closely watched (we have an outstanding Bully Rescue in Fresno that has done a tremendous amount to educate and rescue the breed).  If I had to guess, based on the characteristics of the breed and what they’ve been bred for, I’d say Catahoulas have emerged as an alternative to pit bulls for guarding and protecting illegal marijuana farms in the foothills from wild boar and other intruders.

at the shelter

One of the first dogs I rescued this year was a Catahoula.  When I walk the aisle of the shelter I tend not to have a specific idea of what dog I want, I more just look for a dog I connect with.  I pick every dog as though it is a dog I would keep forever.  I have some boundaries of course, I have two little girls and dogs and cats of my own, so obviously I wouldn’t bring home something that looked remotely aggressive.  Because I usually have other foster dogs, it’s unlikely I’ll bring home and obviously sick dog (not including kennel cough and upper respiratory, which is basically a given).  Since I have neighbors, I’m usually turned off by a dog that goes nuts barking when I approach.

at home.

 

And like I said, I’m partial to large breed dogs, but have been known to bring home smaller breeds too. The tipping point though is always the eyes, the eyes have it for me.  There are just some dogs, that when you look into their eyes, you connect — you can’t explain it, you can’t predict it — but when it happens, you know.

 

 

 

So you can imagine when I saw this…

Honeydukes, in the shelter on Tuesday

…I was hooked.

The future of the internet…is cats

and in case you’ve never seen “Ninja Cat” or “Maru”….

 

Maru is known for his love of boxes

 

then there’s Ninja Cat

 

and just for good measure…Sparta