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So I have been doing like almost 100 hours the last week for rescue, had a party for Jennifer with everything homemade. Dealing with a teenage daughter, a teenage dog and Zeus who still hates everyone except Buffy. A husband who is well.... lets not go there.

And to make my life just a liiiiittle bit easier my MIL is dropping off her dobie and her four puppies here tomorrow, I will be babysitting them for a week when they go to mass. that means 9 dogs, 1 cat, 2 degus, 1 parrot, 3 children, 1 husband, rescuework, cleaning, cooking, laundry and Chris birthday is tomorrow so I have to have another party.

Ladies if you have some energy to share, you know where to send it. I am getting tired just thinking of it. the puppies are 9 weeks, galahad is 17 so it should be a blast, they are not the least potty trained and cant walk on a leash, hahahahahahaha I am going to have such a grand time.

Marit

I have not been on here more than a few mins here and there during the last well almost week now. As most of you know, I work in rescue, and we have had a BUSY time to say the least. It is kitten season (yes work in cat rescue alwell) and most of the time it is good. By no means instant gratification, but most cases end up good. But you also meet a whole lot of people who are jack a..es, potentional adopters who shouldnt even be allowed to adopt a flea. The other day I had one of the not so fun to work with adopters, A guy who cursed me out, told me what a total dead beat we rescue workers were, how we were not fit to make decisions and so on and so on. It happens from time to time, when an adopter gets turned down, that they let you know what a horrible person you are, and I have kinda gotten used to it. The sad thing about this guy, was that the reason he thought we were a sad a.. rescue group, was that we dont let the kittens go to the new home until they are 12 weeks old, and if they are not in a weight to be altered before they go "home" we need a contract with the adopters vet. and for the adopter to have pre paied the spay/nutering. THIS was what ticked the guy off. He had no understanding whatsoever to why these are the rules. I tried to explain to him, that most of the cats/kittens we get in have had a horrible start in life, and need to be mature enough to go on into a family. And the only reason we have all the rules we have to follow is to be as gentle and caring as we can to the cats.

To have spent hours and hours on a case just to have it flushed down the drain because of someone who cant wait another two weeks. I started to think about just how much time that is put into every animal that is rescued before it actually finds a forever home.

The animals come in either from kill shelters where we "pull" them from, it is phone work, emails, letters, and leg work, call and visit, making agreements with, for to how we can pull, how much do we need to pay for each animal etc. Then that has to be constantly followed up to actually get to know when animals that "fit" in that certain rescue group comes into the shelters.

We also get animals through people who surrender them, or feral cats who have been trapped. Or from breeders/horders. Not long ago there were two cases of so called breeders who had to give their cats up because they were so neglected, MCR ended up with about 80 cats in a little over three weeks. In situations like that we are also with the police when the cats are loaded and transported.

After the animals come into our care, they get a good vet checkup all tests run and vaccinations started, they are being transported to foster homes we have by a transport network created by volunteers.

In the foster homes, they are given the love and care they often have never had before, cats that need meds every day several times a day, trips to the vet, soc. some of them dont even come out from underneath something during the first two weeks. Some foster families foster as many as 12 to 15 cats at a time. They "live" cats day and night it is like a 24 hour nursery, some kittens have lost their mom and need bottle feeding.

When the cats are ready to be adopted we put them on different rescue pages, petfinder is one of them.

The other part of the adoption process is when we get applications in, they have to be screened, we check and cross check pers. ref. we check vet. ref. we talk to the adopter on the phone, look into how previous animals have done and been taken care of. we do home visits. Then we try to find the right cat for that precise adopter, and what needs the different cats have. When the screening is done, we post a detailed report on our Board and each and every adopter get to be approved or not, by the rescue committee. We vote for a yes or no, and they need a certain amount of yes to be approved.

Once cat and adopter is matched, there are forms needed to be filled out and then depending on where the adopter is located they either get to go get the cat themselves, or again the transport network is put to work and we transport the cat to its new home.

And then we have a wonderful day, and on the board the Case Manager and foster get to "ring the bells" for another lucky cat.

Most people though never get to know about all the work that doesnt show. But I added up a little and the actual adoption process for a "normal" application is probably 10-12 hours. That is the work most people see, but between pulling, going to shelters, calling, caring for, vetting and all the paper work that also needs to be done. Every dog or cat who is adopted has been cared for and work put towards it, no less than 500 hours, and that is a very very short stay in a foster home included. And most of the time 5 - 6 people not counting the transport who can be several different depending on distance, have been working on that animal.

And sometimes it just sucks to work so hard for the animals and be told all kinds of stuff just because we want to give our babies the best we can. I know this is a long and dragging post, but I just had to vent. I have been putting in about 90 hours the last week and I guess I was not up to taking this guys crap.

If you are still readin, thanks bunches for listening and God bless all our foster families

Marit

Jaimie, I know you might not be on more tonight, you must be totally tore up. I just cant stop thinking about him and you all. Please let us know when you feel up to it.

lots of huggs

Marit

We have a drive thru zoo about an hour from where we live, it is a great place to take the kids on a sat or sun. You get to drive thru or ride a horse drawn wagon. And buy buckets of food you can feed to all the animals, giraffs, zebras, texas longhorn, emus, lama and water buffalos, you name it and they have it, it is such a great way to spend a day, and of course I am steeling all the kids buckets so I get to feed more then they do hehe.

Anyway, they have the funniest rules on how to behave when you are in the park, thought Id share them with you all.

1.  Please stay inside your car. Only the animals are allowed to walk around.
 
2.  You are not allowed to feed your children to the animals, no matter how bad they are behaving.
 
3.  Don't run over the animals with your car, and they will try not to run over you.
 
4.  Don't honk your horn or turn on your lights unless you need help because it gives the animals heartburn.
 
5.  The speed limit is 5 mph.
 
6.  When you stop to take photos from your car, pull over to the side. This will allow other cars to drive around. It will also give the animals time to fluff their hair.
 
7.  Use the buckets for feeding the animals- we want you to leave the ranch with all your fingers.
 
8.  Please don't litter…it's gross behavior and offensive to the sensitivity of our animals.
 
9.  So you get animal slobber all over your car… they're just trying to be friendly. You can wash it off later.
 
10.  The Lazy 5 is open every day of the year, including Christmas. Christmas is a special time here. Santa's reindeer vacation here before and after their midnight flight.
 
The park is called lazy five ranch, and is located in NC

Marit

A lot of you know that about 3 weeks ago we found a dog in the middle of the road on the way home from a baseball game. I have tried all the ways I could think of to find her owners. Have put up plenty of posters, had several ads in the papers, called all the shelters and lots of vets in the area. I know that if the owner wanted to get her back, they would have found her. there is no way if they were looking they could have missed all the ads and soforth.

So after 2 and a half weeks I put an ad in to see if I could find her a home. We had I am sure 35-40 calls, but man....... so many people were total nuts. Some were looking for a yard dog, and I told them that "puppydoggy" (we called her that) was an escape artist, she has dug under the fence, jumped over a dog pen I have inside my fenced in back yard, climbed over. So she would not make a good yard dog, and she was very very comfy inside and a happy dog, when with a family and got to go out for walks and out in the yard playing under supervision. I had one guy who said. "Ohhhhh he.. I will take that out of her in no time" and he didnt sound nice let me tell you, do I need to tell you that she was not going with him hehe. I had people who asked if she would be very very big and if it possibly were pit in her. When I said she was the sweetest thing ever they lost interest real fast. I had people who came to look at her, and stood 10 feet away from her and never petted her, never even touched her and then said that yes they would like to bring her home. noooooo i dont think so.

Anyway after a lot of strange people, we had a family here yesterday. They were here for a couple of hours, the dad is a teacher and the mom is some kind of manager for a home for mentally challanged people, they have a 10 year old daughter. The girl and puppydoggy sat and snuggled the whole time they were here.They seemed very very eager to learn as much as possible about what they should do and expect now when they brought her home, had a long talk to the daughter about the commitment a dog is and how important it is to always put the dogs needs first. They decided to bring her home, and was all excited about going to petsmart on the way home to buy her all the things she needed. They live not too far away from me, and said they will call every week to let us know how she is (that may not happen, but at least they know I will call hehe) They will also bring her to me, when they need a babysitter when they go out of town.

It is sad and I will miss her, even though we didnt have her here for long. Both Malin and Jennifer cried when she left, but with all the animals we have, I am sure she will get more attention there and she has her very own little girl to love and who will love all over her.

So a happy ending for puppydoggy

Marit

So I am now officially the fairy Dog Mother in Matthews. We still have puppydoggy who has yet to get a call from her mommy and daddy. Today when I took Hera and Galahad out for a potty, there was a German Shepherd in my front yard. My dogs went back in and I got a collar and leash, this GS didnt have a collar either (seems to be the case with every dog we find) it was a girl, she was way too thin and in a REALLY bad need of a grooming. She had big hair clumps hanging, under coat that noone had been bothered to brush out/away. My house is now filling up with strange dogs, so I didnt know what to do with her, but after awhile Malin said, "I think I have seen that dog on another street when I am on the school bus" so off we went and lucky lucky us, we found the home. But it is bad when you find a home and you are almost sad you did......... They didnt seem to be the least bit worried, I dont even think they had missed the dog. She looked like an old lady (the dog) and I felt soooo bad for her. I almost wish I had not found her home

Marit

Soooo, you thought it would be some cute pics of puppies in the couch. Nope...... This eve. they took over the couch, they started off playing on the floor, Hera got tired of Galahad and thought if she got up in the couch he'd leave her alone hehehe. He was  not done playing, so Malin and Jennifer had to move to the floor or they'd get dog slobbers all over.

Marit