Talaya was fixed and got her full workup at Emancipet. She is disease free, except for some pesky tapeworms so she is being treated for that now. She was in heat when I found her, so we are waiting another week or so until her hormones settle down before we start officially looking for a new family.  She is incredibly sweet and loves to lay in my lap and purr away as I give her chin scratches. 🙂

Kringle was fixed and got his full workup at Emancipet as well.  He is also disease free and actually had an interested adopter already! Kringle will be going to his forever home very soon.

Sitting in the airport waiting to board the plane for my flight home, I noticed a very small silky terrier puppy being paraded around by an obviously proud owner.  I know what you are thinking – I’m going to now write about how people need to adopt and not go to a back yard breeder/pet store/online store when adding a new furry friend into the family.  But that’s not what I’m going to talk about here.  While it is very important to adopt instead of support puppy mills or backyard breeders, most intelligent people already know this by now.  No, I’m writing to address another matter that it seems less people know about:  vaccines.

The dotting mother of the little silky was walking her pup up and down the terminal, letting everyone and anyone pet the dog.  I politely as possible asked how old the puppy was and if she had all three of her booster shots yet.  The woman told me that the dog was 15 weeks old and was “up to date on all shots”.  I asked again if the dog had all three boosters, not just if she is on schedule for said boosters.  She didn’t realize that being up to date and having all your boosters were not the same thing.  She also did not realize that her puppy could still get parvo from walking around the ground.  Yeah, you might want to pick your puppy up now.

Vaccines for dogs and cats are just as important as they are for human babies.  The set of three booster shots of fvrcp (cats) and dhlpp (dogs), as well as the required by law rabies vaccine, are all incredibly important for the health and well-being of your pet.  All three boosters are required for the animal to be fully protected against the diseases.  Before all three boosters are given, you should not let your pet meet other animals, go to the dog park, or touch the ground outside unless the area has been sanitized.  Working at a shelter that takes the animals other shelters are going to kill, we see way too many parvo and distemper dogs and far too many FeLV cats.  FeLV cannot be cured, so the cats that have it have a shortened life.  Distemper is tough to beat and I have witnesses an incredible amount of pain and suffering for both the dog and the foster parent as the battle is lost to this nasty disease.  Parvo is easier to beat for a puppy, but there still is a mortality rate and the suffering from the disease is heartbreaking.

And here’s an interesting side note:  not all shelters vaccinate their animals upon intake.  This is incredibly stupid as it opens the door for a variety of disease outbreaks.  The first of the booster shots will almost completely protect dogs from distemper.  So if your local shelter announces that they have a distemper outbreak (I’m talking about you, Wisconsin Humane Society) – yeah, that was completely their fault because they do not have the common sense policy to vaccinate all their animals immediately as they enter the program.  Please contact your shelter and demand they vaccinate on intake to avoid unnecessary disease outbreaks and deaths.

Kringle

Meet the parking lot strays!

My friend Wendy and I both separately picked up super sweet stray kitties the night of Wednesday, December 21 and saved them from the cold and rain by putting them in our warm and safe bathrooms. But now we need your help.  Neither of these kitties were microchipped, so they need a combo test (testing for FeLV and FIV), dewormer, revolution, fvrcp vaccine, rabies vaccine, microchips, and – most importantly – need to be spayed/neutered while we look for their real home and/or find them a new home.  Being employees of a nonprofit, both Wendy and I cannot afford the costs of all this, so we are looking to you for help!

Any extra money once all expenses have been paid will be donated to Emancipet for helping us get low cost care for Talaya and Kringle.  Thank you!

Talaya

Donate Here!

“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog.  You are his life, his love, his leader.  He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of this heart.  You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”

As I was packing up after an adoption event last month, a woman tried to give me her dog.  She kept telling me that if I didn’t take her that she would have her killed immediately.  This woman refused to listen to me, take any advice or my offer to help her rehome, nor would she even consider holding onto her dog for 24 more hours to give me time to find a rescue.  She would not even consider just surrendering her dog to the city shelter in the morning.  Rather, the two options she was allowing were a) I could take the dog that very minute or b) she would walk into the vet clinic and order the dog put to death.

This poor dog, which I eventually learned is named Mandy, did nothing to deserve this treatment from her owner.  And this owner in no way deserved the love and affection Mandy had been giving to her for the four years they were together.  While I understand that some people out there have situations in life that require them to surrender their pet, there is NEVER a good reason for someone to have their pet killed unless the pet is suffering from an illness that cannot be treated or cured.

The good news is that we took Mandy for the night and she was then taken to the city shelter in the morning where she was adopted within a week of being surrendered.  If her owner had been a decent person, who actually respected her pet – an animal who depended on her – then she would have tried working with Mandy, or would have found a proper home for her, or would have surrendered Mandy to the shelter herself.

These animals are helpless. We have bred them to depend on us and therefore we have the responsibility of caring for them with all the love and affection they so selflessly give us.  “…He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of this heart.  You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.“

The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity.  Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

Rescue animals are not broken, they have simply experienced more life than other animals.  If they were human, we would call them wise.  They would be the ones with tales to tell and stories to write, the ones dealt a bad hand who responded with courage.  Do not pity them.  Do something.  Help rescue.  Donate.  Volunteer.  Foster.  Adopt.  And be proud to have their greatness by your side.

People need to alter their mindset to viewing their pets as family members, rather than as a possession.  Pets are a lifetime commitment, much like your children are, and not like a piece of furniture that one can simply leave behind.  I will never cease to be amazed and disgusted by the reasons individuals give when trying to dump their pet at the shelter… and one of my favorites is the moving excuse.

I hear this excuse on almost a daily basis.  “I’m moving to another state and I cannot take my pet with” or “My new apartment doesn’t allow my dog(s)/cat(s) “.  Why can you not take them with you?  I adopted my cat, Loki, when I lived in San Diego and he moved to Milwaukee with me.  I adopted Monty, my dog, when I was in Milwaukee and both him and Loki moved with me to Austin.  It did take a little extra planning to make sure the hotels on the route would allow them, but it literally was an extra 30 minutes at the maximum for the effort.  Would you leave a family member behind due to an extra 30 minutes of planning?  Of course not, so please stop to consider your pet’s life and future.

And it’s your fault the apartment does not allow pets – when you were apartment searching, you should have been asking about their pet policy and making sure they allowed all your pets.  Again, if you had a child you would make sure the place you were moving appropriately accommodated him/her so why would you not put in the effort for your pet?  Your pet is not a piece of furniture that you can just decide is not worth making room or effort for in a move – this is a living being who is dependent upon you and you are responsible for their well being.  Take that extra ounce of effort and make sure your entire family can live where you are going.

Last night, I left work around 8:30pm a little tired and with plans of dinner, a shower, and some rest after another long day of work.  Before I shut my computer down around 10pm, I made a quick check of my work email and noticed a plea from our dog foster coordinator stating we were probably going to be helping Bastrop’s shelter evacuate their animals as they were being threatened by the wildfires – we needed fosters, volunteers, and staff to come to the Austin Pets Alive building as soon as possible to prepare.

I arrived back at work about five minutes before the masses did.  The sheer number of people who responded to our facebook post and email, who saw that homeless animals needed help, left the comfort of their beds and came to APA to offer their hearts and homes to these helpless animals was one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen.  People started coming soon after 10pm and we left a little after 4am with all our building dogs in foster, half the new Bastrop dogs in foster and the other half safely in our facility.  And so many of us were back before 10am to continue doing the work needed.

Sometimes with the work we do in animal welfare we lose faith in humanity.  We see too many cruelty cases, field too many angry phone calls, have one too many conversations with a friend or family member who does not understand why we do the work we do.   Soon we become jaded and bitter, always holding a grudge against others.  But a little over 24 hours ago, my faith was restored.  The number of volunteers, donors, fosters, and adopters who have supported us still blows me away.  There are so many wanting to help in whatever way they can, it finally brought me to tears when I saw the amount of donated supplies stacked outside our door this afternoon.

Honestly I am still emotional now, finally resting in my apartment and having a moment to reflect on what has actually happened and is still happening here in Austin.  I am so proud to work for Austin Pets Alive and both humbled and honored to be working alongside such amazing people.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers in the coming days as we continue to work tirelessly to ensure the safety of animals in Central Texas during these wildfires.

“They came first for the bloodhounds, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t have a bloodhound.  Then they came for the doberman pinchers, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t have a doberman pincher.  Then they came for the pit bulls, and I didn’t speak up because I didn’t have a pit bull.  Then they came for my dog and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Never tolerate breed discrimination – no matter what you have heard or think you know about specific breeds, there is no breed of dog that has it in their blood to kill.  There is no breed of dog that can lock their jaw.  Every single dog breed is capable of biting or attacking, it has nothing to do with their DNA and it has everything to do with their training.  Demand your legislators NEVER allow breed specific legislation and to not even spend a minute of their time or a single tax payer dollar on a failed concept.