This is the hardest part of what we do. Sometimes a dog (or cat) we’ve adopted out, gets returned. Sometimes it’s for really ridiculous reasons, the type we work so hard to prevent with our adoption process… and trying to make compatible matches.

Other times, the dogs really turn out not to be a good match for the home. Try as we might, we just can’t seem to find that crystal ball…

So this little girl, Shasta, is coming back. Shasta is a young (very puppy acting) American Eskimo mix, probably with Pomeranian. She loves other dogs, but is a little apprehensive about new people at first, and can be very barky (consistent with her breed). She really needs to go to a home with another dog, but more important, SHE NEEDS A NEW FOSTER HOME!

Luckily, we had a foster step up for our little Rotti mix, who turns out to be a small Rottweiler (no mix). The short little ears were actually only one ear, and that ear had scarred down with tissue from having had a hematoma in her ear flap that was never drained and repaired. Eventually, the ear suffers permanent damage that is otherwise referred to as “cauliflower ear”.

Luckily, Raven, as her rescuer named her, is really happy to be in a home again! She has her bad skin, and a little kennel cough, and we had to do a urinalysis today because she has some funky urine, but hopefully that’s a urinary tract infection we can get under control with antibiotics.

We are still looking for a foster home for the little scared Minature Pinscher, and for Jada, our super happy, super active Lab/Boxer mix. Help!

Elijah had his second spinal tap today. If you haven’t been following his story, the lab lost Elijah’s spinal fluid sample. We couldn’t believe it. The poor guy! So he had to go back under anesthetic and have it done again. The good news it that he doesn’t seem any worse for wear today.

So now we wait to find out what the sample will tell us. Hopefully we’ll have an update later this week.

This weekend was our big Tag/Yard Sale. Wow! The weather was supposed to be rainy in varying degrees, with high winds, but instead, it was actually pretty nice. Not 72 degrees like the day before the sale started, but better than the forecast!

We had people chomping at the bit on Friday morning before we opened, and a steady stream of people from that minute forward. By the end of Friday, we’d probably already sold 1/4 of our merchandise! Saturday was chillier weather but we still had a steady stream of visitors and sold another big chunk of stuff. By Sunday, it was raining on and off and we had the occasional gusts of wind blowing through, but people still showed up to shop!

By the end of the sale we had raised just under $2000, and we figure we have another $500 worth of stuff we’re going to try to sell on Craigslist. Whoo hoo! That was a really good fundraiser for a cool October weekend and we owe it all to you, our donors, our shoppers, the people who loaned us tables, and a few diehard volunteers:

Huge THANK YOU’s go to: Diane and Darrell, Mary Lou, Kristen, Jan, Susan, Jaye and Meagan. Some of us donated, and then bought each others stuff. You know what they say about one mans junk…

Some time ago I forbade our volunteers from saying any of the silly designer mutt names. Instead, I asked them to refer to these dogs as exactly what they are. Mixed breed dogs (aka MUTTS!)

Examples:

Labradoodle = A Labrador Retriever and a Poodle

Puggle = A Pug and a Beagle

By describing them as exactly what they are, nothing more than a mixed breed dog with a silly, made-up name, we can help put it all back into perspective.

For nothing more than the opportunity to say a silly breed name like ChiWeenie (Chihuahua/Dachshund), people will spend upward of $1000! REALLY?!

You spent all that money on a MUTT! Don’t you feel silly? You contributed to a world that is already so overpopulated with dogs and cats that millions are euthanized every year in shelters for nothing more than lack of homes (or homes that will keep them for their entire lives).

Breeding and selling designer mutts is nothing more than greedy, and purchasing designer mutts is the epitomy of frivolous behavior. If we all stop buying designer mutts, the greedy people will stop breeding them. Another lesson in basic math.

People often drop their mutts off at the county shelters and boast that their dog is a purebred Pompoo, and they have papers from the breeder to prove it. Lets say it again out loud: You mix Pomeranian with Poodle, guess what? You have a MUTT!

And don’t believe them when they tell you they mixed the breeds together so you could have the temperament of a Labrador with the non-shedding coat of a Poodle, because guess what? You have exactly a 50/50 chance you will get a dog with the temperament of a Poodle and the shedding coat of a Labrador Retriever!

Oh, and stop making the argument you have to buy a puppy so you can train it to be how you want it. Most traits are inherent in dogs by breed or genetics. You can have it from the minute it’s born and you will still not be able to change certain traits.

ADOPT a rescued pet instead! This is Stanley, a purebred Dachshund who is available for adoption through Indigo Rescue, and has been for over a year…

Remember Fresno? He was the little Shepherd/Sheltie mix who was shot and hit by a car, then laid in a ditch for days while people thought he was dead,  in Fresno, California, and we flew him to Oregon because no one in California could pony-up the money to pay for his surgery.

We fundraised for quite a while to take care of that little guy, but he had surgery and recovered beautifully.

If you aren’t familiar, click here to see his original rescue story and pics

Here’s an update and a few pics from Fresno’s dad. SO sweet!

Hi there!

Fresno is doing great!  He doesn’t do a lot of playing with other dogs (he’s very selective about his playmates), but that’s the way it’s been from the beginning.

He hangs out a lot with Willie, our next-door neighbor’s dog (a golden lab), but only gets playful when I join the fun.  People on the other hand, he can’t get enough of.  He’s really good with our 5 1/2 month-old daughter, Arabella.

He’s a total couch-dog and loves curl up on the couch and sleep or snuggle.  Our daughter is absolutely fascinated by him too.  She wants to pet him all the time (though she’s still working on fine motor-skills, so it’s more like grabbing fistfuls of his fur).  He doesn’t seem to mind it much.  He’ll just get up and flop to a different part of the couch if she gets too intense.

I’ve got a few pictures, some as old as a couple years ago, at least one as recent as last week (the one of him and our daughter).  The one of him wearing the Santa-hat was last December, and the one of him standing on the deck in the snow was two years ago just before all the snow really came down.

We’ve taken him camping with us the last couple years (we usually do July 4th weekend) and the one included is from his first trip in 2008.  He had a blast!

We were camped out right next to a stream (somewhat visible in the background), and as expected at first, he didn’t want to have anything to do with the water (we had to cross the stream to get to our camp site).

I decided to clean myself up in the deep part of the stream one morning (I was up to my neck), but he got all upset and started whimpering and picking his feet up (like he wanted to follow but didn’t know how).

Within a minute, he jumped right in and came swimming after me.  He didn’t even stop there.  He swam two full circles around me and climbed back up on the stream shore.  Everybody in our group were standing there, mouths agape at the spectacle.  Nobody had seen that one coming!

Since then, he has no problems with water (other than when he gets a bath).  Last year (2009), we went back to the same stream and he went straight for the water (the shallow part anyway) and raced Bella to the camp site.

Unfortunately, I was lugging all our gear at the time and couldn’t get a picture of it.  Would have been a great shot of the two of them tearing down the stream, splashing water everywhere like a couple of rain-soaked kids, stomping in puddles!

This little guy is at the shelter and they are really full right now so we really need to work on getting him into a foster home. Evidently he is very sensitive and although we are told he is super sweet once he knows someone, he will re-direct and bite if he is startled. I honestly believe this is a manageable trait as long as he is in the right situation. Is anyone up for a project?

Oh, and while we’re on the topic of Min Pin’s, Susan thinks our little broken puppy may be a Chihuahua, mixed with Dachshund. Anything is possible! We still aren’t able to get comments on our blog so if you have name suggestions, go ahead and email them to us at: info@indigorescue.org

Thanks!

The story is long and sordid, but suffice to say that Jada is back and needs a new foster. She was returned by her recent adopters, but not because of anything she did. There was an unexpected illness in their family. We have Jada in a temporary foster home, but they don’t have a yard and Jada needs a lot of exercise. She is great with other dogs, but she is only 1.5 years old and she is a Lab/Boxer mix so she has LOTS of energy. Jada does best with structure and either running, or spending a lot of time in daycare or at a dog park. She can be crated, but not for the usual ten hour work day because her busy brain can’t take that long period of time.

Help!

Just got off the phone with Dr. Skinner, who had called to go over the results found in Elijah Blu’s spinal fluid. Unfortunately, instead, he got the not-so-easy job of telling me the lab had lost Elijah Blu’s spinal fluid sample. NO!!! That poor little guy has to go back in for a second spinal tap. I asked if he could wait a week or so, just to recover from the last time he went under anesthetic, so he is scheduled for a week from this Monday. It will be two days to get the lab work back (and it better be hand delivered this time!), and we’ll finally have an idea what we’re dealing with. Oy.

So last night I let the dogs out for a last pee around 10pm. I was looking forward to going to bed early because I hadn’t been getting much sleep with the two puppies. The dogs were outside for less than ten minutes.

I opened the door and everyone came in as expected, except for little Zamora, a cute little fluffy black and tan mixed small dog. I wasn’t too alarmed initially because sometimes Zamora likes to hang back and trail in last, after she’s had a few more romps around the yard.

After a few minutes, I opened the door and called for her, but she was nowhere in sight. I grabbed my flashlight and went out in the yard and started poking around. This wouldn’t be too big of deal, except that my yard is .5 acre with lots of trees and shrubs, and it was pitch black and really cold!!

I called my friend Diane while I walked around seaching the yard with my flashlight and told her I was worried that Zamora hadn’t come in with the other dogs because she almost never wants to be away from Maybelle. I stood still and listened to see if she was moving around, but heard nothing.

After more than half an hour of poking around my yard with the flashlight and two other dogs, I started walking the fence line. I couldn’t believe there was any area she could get through!

I eventually wound up behind my shed and realized there was a small gap along the bottom of the chain link where the earth had eroded away and at least my boot could fit through. But could Zamora fit through?

By now I was convinced she was not anywhere in the yard, so she had to have somehow gotten out. PANIC! It was nearly an hour since I had let the dogs back in and realized she had disappeared. This is a little black dog missing in the pitch black and cold, late on a Saturday night!

I quickly jumped in the car and drove to the neighborhood behind mine so I could see if maybe she was stuck in the yard of the house behind mine. I realized as soon as I got there that they have a huge gap at the bottom of their gate, and she could have easily gotten through there and kept going…it was now 11:30pm. No!!

I drove around and around the neighborhood looking for her until just before midnight, and all the while my friend Diane had stayed on the phone with me.

Diane finally convinced me to go home and try to get some sleep so I could get up early and start searching again. I felt sick with worry, but agreed I couldn’t do anything more in the dark.

I went ahead and called the sheriffs department and reported Zamora as a lost dog just in case they got a call from someone about a found dog (they have access to the kennels at the county shelter for after hours stray dog drop-offs).

I clung to the hope that I would come home and somehow find her in the yard waiting for me, but unfortunately, she was still nowhere in sight. It was a very surreal experience. You can’t believe they could really be gone so you keep checking, but they definitely aren’t there and your heart sinks every time. Still, I went to bed and kept the light on the porch on just in case she somehow made her way back.

I finally slept for about three hours, then got up at 5am so I could make flyers. I went through my backyard in the dark again, then made a LOST DOG flyer with a picture of Zamora, and drove around in the dark hanging them on posts and at every place where you can enter or exit the neighborhoods.

My hope was that as soon as people were up and leaving home, they’d see my flyer and hopefully have seen Zamora, too. I hung flyers in my neighborhood, too, just in case she’d figured out how to get back into my yard from someone’s backyard in the other neighborhood.

By a little after 7am, at sun-up I was done. I took one more slow drive around the two neighborhoods and then went home to wait and see if someone would call.

At 7:40am I got home, and on auto-pilot I walked back to check my yard one more time. I opened the door, and what do you think? There was Zamora walking toward me with a sheepish “Am I in trouble?” look. I looked back at her in disbelief. Seriously?! Were you hiding in the yard the entire night, or did you get out and come back?

It was freaking 34 degrees outside and she’d been gone nearly ten hours! I reminded myself that I had told myself during the numerous loops I’d made around the neighborhood looking for her, that as frustrated as I was, if I found her alive I would be so grateful that I wouldn’t be mad at her.

I scooped her up and she gave me a few chilly licks. Poor little girl was cold! Brrrrrr. I have NO idea what in the hell was going through her little head when she pulled that prank, but she definitely lost her off-leash-in-the-yard rights, at least at night. I also pulled a railroad tie and three cinder blocks over and blocked the weak area at the bottom of my fence. I definitely rained on her parade!

Sigh…I got back in the car and drove around pulling down all of my flyers and walked around in a bit of a coma today, but I guess all’s well that ends well…little angel.