4th of July Festivities

The 4th of July can be an evening of anxiety for our companion animals.  Poor Bogey, pictured above, trembles like a leaf when he hears the sound of fireworks. Don't worry Bogey, it's common for dogs and cats to become anxious, sometimes escaping from their yards, and running frantically in the streets.    

To make Bogey's night a little easier, I close all the windows and doors, make his bed super comfortable, and leave the TV and a my Marpac white noise machine on.

This week I will make sure all my cats and dogs have their collars on with proper identification.  I love these Red Dingo ID tags.

Kitty designs:

Canine designs:

Happy Independence Day!

Cat Ladders

I came across this blog a while back, and just had to share:

http://catladder.blogspot.com/

A blog dedicated to posting photographs of home-made cat ladders from all over the world. Brilliant.

Here are some of my favorites:

And then, of course, the indoor cat ladder:

And here is my very own home-made cat ladder, with Dagger demonstrating:

Best Friend's Animal Sanctuary

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is self described as the nation’s largest no kill animal sanctuary at 3,700 acres and home to over 1700 rescued dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, birds and wildlife.

They are known for their National Geographic show “Dogtown,” and for rescuing and rehabbing half of Michael Vick’s most traumatized fighting dogs. See an incredible segment from NBC’s Nightly News about it here.

One of the many things that makes the sanctuary so amazing is their volunteer program. I am astounded at how well-run this program is. I don’t think I have seen this level of organization since I visited Japan. And it has to be organized, otherwise people wouldn’t do it. Last year Best Friends utilized 1600 volunteers!

Best Friends encourages their volunteers to work directly with the animals. They promote sleep-overs with the dogs, which is fun for us, and the dogs! They get a break from dogtown, and a whole night of love and affection.

Tonight I am hosting Didgeridoo, aka Diggi, in my lovely Best Western hotel room. As you can see, we are having some technically difficulties with the Internet.

Best Friends also offers free workshops for their volunteers. Today I went to a demo on clicker training, and learned about a book called Click To Calm which I think would be a great tool for me to use with my foster pitty Daisy.

My first day at Dogtown was very exciting. I got to see and meet all the familiar faces from NatGeo’s "Dogtown." I spotted John Garcia, Jeff Popowich, Dr. Mike Dix, Dr. Patti Iampietro, Michelle Besmehn, Pat Whitacre, Ann Allums and met Karina, the energetic dog who learned to turn on and off the lights.

I also got to spend time with a future dogtown star, Reggie Boy. Reggie arrived here with a severe bacterial skin infection, and possibly an auto-immune disease. This is a picture of Reggie when he first arrived:

and here is a picture of him now:

But the big celebrity sighting of the day came at the very end. While I was signing paperwork at DogTown Headquarters, from the corner of my eye, I saw sparks fly as Lucas the Magnificent made a brief appearance walking from the clinic, through the lobby, to his tricked out ride outside (a golf cart).

Lucas was one of Michael Vick’s champion fighting dogs, and he has the scars to prove it. This was, for me, the most special star to see in person! What a survivor!

Who is Maple?

This is Maple today. One year ago, she was dumped at East Valley Shelter in Los Angeles after being bred, suffering from scarcoptic mange and, a traumatic, high impact injury to her right hind leg, shattering her femur into 7 pieces. Here is her original plea video:

Veronica Perry sent out this photo as a last ditch plea to save Maple from being PTS.

Lee Goldberg from Animal Advocates Alliance left work in the middle of the day from her law firm job to pick Maple up and get her to a vet. (thank you lee!)

Animal Advocates Alliance took Maple to 6 different vets before they found one willing to put her leg back together. The first six wanted to amputate because it was in so many pieces. Thank goodness we fought for her.

She was to be spayed while under anasthesia, but surgeons decided against proceeding. It took them so long to put her leg back together, they didn't feel it was safe to keep her under anesthesia any longer. The spay was put off until one month later.

Two weeks into her recovery, Maple went into labor. She was pregnant through the whole ordeal! She gave birth to 2 live puppies, but with her scarcoptic mange, we had to find bottle feeders for the babies.

Happily, the babies survived and were placed into forever loving homes! It was at this time that Maple came to my house as a foster.

I quickly discovered that Maple didn't know how to take a walk. She was terrified of walking along the sidewalk. It took me about 6 weeks to get her walking comfortably, and going into stores.

But at my house, Maple was a perfect fit! After seeing how great she was with my neighbor's children and my own kitty, i introduced her to a litter of kittens I was fostering upstairs. It was love. She raised them as if they were her little babies she never got to mother.

All the kittens got adopted, but one, and she got older and older without any interest. Maple and her became great pals. However, a great home did finally come forward for Maple's kitten. The kitten's last night at our house was a sad one. It was as if Maple and her baby cat knew it was there last few hours together. There was snuggling, kissing, and tears on my part.

I do believe it was that evening that I decided to keep Maple for myself!

A few months later we packed up our things and made our escape from L.A. to the beautiful Northwest.

And here we are today!

And a video of Maple no longer scared to walk or run!!!