Some dog rescue resources

I thought I would share a few resources on dog rescue for anyone interested in helping out with transporting or for anyone interested in rescuing a dog him/herself.

I find out what sort of transports are going on, where they're going through, and contact people to help out through two sites:

Acme Pet Transport
This link will take you directly to the "transport needed" section of the message board. Each transport will list the states it will be going through in the subject header. Within the body of the message, you will find the legs of the trip (each will include location, date, time, and how many miles it is). Generally legs fall between 50-75 miles. You contact the person listed with your information and this will hook you up with the transport! Warning: It's addictive once you start!

Canine Rescue (Yahoo group)
This is a mailing list that includes not just transports, but dogs that desperately need to be pulled out of shelters. It's a resource for rescue associations, transporters, and kill shelters looking to move animals out to rescues. It is a very active group and at times can be heartbreaking to read. I have it filtered so I can easily sort through what comes in.


If you are interested in rescuing a dog to make your own pet, I know of two great sites to help you out.

Petfinder.com
This is really the site for finding a new pet. Here you can find pets of all types located in all places in the USA. You can search by area and breed. You can make sure your potential new friends is good with cats or young children, if those are important to your situation. You can search for animals with special needs, if you want to adopt a truly needy animal. Also included on the site is information on what to do before you plan on adopting a pet and a place to list and look for lost animals.

Rescue Info Center
This is a part of the larger dogbreedinfo.com site. If you've always wanted a particular breed of dog, this place is for you! There are listings of rescue associations for every type and breed imaginable (cats, dogs, small animals, and farm animals included). If you're not sure if the breed you're interested in is really right for you, you can head over to the main site (dogbreedinfo.com) and read up on the breed and see pictures. The entire site is a great resource.


The other place to look is at your local shelter. There are so many unwanted animals in the USA. Please do not adopt a puppy from a pet store! Do not support puppy mills! There are many wonderful dogs and puppies languishing in your local shelters. Give them a home. You and he/she will be happier for it.

Where are they now?

I'm set up to do another transport this weekend -- two Brittany spaniels. But I thought, in the mean time, I would update anyone who reads this on where the dogs I've helped so far are.

Transport 1
Molly, the old arthritic lab, met the woman who was hoping to adopt her the same night of the transport. The woman was thrilled with her and Molly went to her home that very night. A very happy ending for an old girl.



I think I have the final word on one of the beagle pups. It seems that one of them was adopted into a family with two kids and a 90lb doggie brother and was renamed Trixie. The other is unknown at this point, but as she is not up on the site as needing to be adopted, I'm guessing she went to a home. She's not on the "happy tails" list either which leaves me to assume she was quickly adopted, too quickly to be listed on petfinder.com.


Transport 2
Buddy...despite the wonderfulness of all the other dogs, Buddy still remains my favourite and still remains the one dog I wish I could have brought home with me (so far!).

Buddy was slated to meet a family who was interested in him the day of the transport. He met them, a family with two teenage boys, and they were thrilled with him. He went home with them that day! That family really has no idea how lucky they are.



Transport 3
Like Buddy, Marvin was meeting up with a potential new family. Well, the family (a mother and a young boy) just adored him. They renamed him Patches (which fits!) and he went home with them to his new life.

Bernie was put up on the petfinder website and his post was taken down almost as quickly as it went home. The note on the "happy tails" section says he went home with a wonderful family. Another lucky family. Bernie was 85 pounds of lapdog (and no doubt even more than that by now!).

I'm unsure of what happened to Buttons at this point. Hopefully we'll hear about him sometime in the near future!


Transport 4
Bea was going to a new home, rather than a rescue. Her new mom wrote the day of the transport to say she was home, excited, and happy to be spending time with her big brother (another beagle). Bea was an absolute sweetheart and it sounds like she's got a wonderful new home to call her own!

Transport #4: Bea

This was probably the craziest transport I've done. Not because of the dog -- the passenger was just one sweet little beagle. But because of everything else.

First, I headed out the door at 8:30am with the intention of getting on the road by about 9am. I needed to brush off my car (it snowed last night) and I needed to pick it up a little bit. All of that was accomplished easy enough and after getting gas, I managed to get on the Thruway around 8:50am. Wonderful, right?

Well, right before exit 45 (I needed to get to exit 46), I suddenly thought "wait a second...shouldn't it be more like 10:50, instead of 9:50???" And then I realized I'd left an hour early. I stopped at the travel plaza and called the transport coordinator to confirm. Yep...sure enough...I'd left an hour early. D'oh! No biggie really though. I got a muffin and coffee at Tim Horton's (and could only think "there is no food in Canada!" -- long story there), bought a paper, and sat down to read for a little bit.

About 20 minutes later I looked up and out the window. It was snowing. And I don't mean flurries. I mean all out raging blizzard with high winds. I wasn't expecting that! I knew they were calling for occasional lake effect, but they weren't calling for much! I decided to get back on the road and get going, since I thought it would be a little slow-going.

Well...it was. I couldn't see a thing. It turned out that between the heavy snow falling and the wind, I was in white out conditions. Lovely. Luckily, I was close to exit 45, and some guy was nice enough to let me get in front of him (since everyone and their brother chose to get off there). I stopped on the side of the road and called David. He confirmed that it was a fairly small patch of heavy snow coming through and that there might be a couple smaller bands, but that was the worst. Sure enough, while talking to him, the snow lightened a lot and I decided to get back on the road and get to exit 46.

The roads were a bit slick and I was fighting the wind, but I made good time and by the time I GOT to exit 46, I was under blue skies (gotta love the weather around here!). I was 45 minutes early, so I spent some time listening to an awesome radio station (called "Fickle 93.3" because they play rock music from any period) and took some pictures of the area around me.

Finally, the driver before me showed up with Bea, a sweet little beagle. They pulled her out and she was shaking SO BAD. I was told she was shy, but she seemed fairly calm despite the shaking. They tried to walk her a little bit, but she didn't seem to want to do anything, so we put her in my car. After the door was shut and the heat put on, Bea stopped shaking, sniffed around the whole back seat, and then settled down, curled into a ball, and fell asleep.

The drive back was fairly uneventful. The wind was horrible -- it kept hitting my car and nearly knocking me off the road (I found out later that the winds were gusting at about 40mph!). We made good time despite that and pulled into the Liverpool exit's parking lot around 1:15pm. Amy, the woman who was meeting me, was running a bit behind thanks to an accident on the thruway which kept her at a standstill for a little while.

I tried to get Bea out of the car to go for a walk, but as soon as I opened the door, she started to shake. Instead, I opted to crawl into the backseat with her. Again, as soon as the door was shut and the car warmed up a bit, she calmed right down. Eventually, she crawled over to me and into my lap, gave me kisses, and curled up into a little ball next to me and slept some more. I finally figured out that she wasn't shy -- she was COLD...and quite likely scared of the intense winds. So instead of walking her, we spent some time just hanging out in the backseat, much like I did with Buddy.

And much like Buddy, she really wormed her way into my heart. She was such a little sweetheart! Amy finally showed up and we tried to get poor Bea out of the car. She did NOT want to go and resisted with all her might. I finally managed to pick her up and we immediately got her into Amy's warm car where she no doubt settled down once inside.

I was really sad to see her go. But, on the good side, she's with her forever family right now and they're so thrilled to have her. She has a beagle playmate and a cat playmate who she already seems to adore. It's nice knowing that little sweetie has a real home!

Pictures of Bea can be found here.

A few of my favourites:







To get an idea of the weather, check out the following pictures.

These two were taken about a half hour apart. The weather was basically the same between the two times (though it was slightly more cloudy in the first picture).

With wind:



Without wind:



Footstep in the snow:



Look...there's a face in there!


A few more pics can be found here.

Transport #3: Bernie, Marvin, and Buttons

Today started off with a phone call from my somewhat frantic parents telling me I shouldn't go on the transport today because the weather was going to be awful (lake effect snow and all that). I told them it was on and I would deal with it. A short while later my Dad called and offered to help out. So we took his car (a Chevy HHR we call the Great Pumpkinmobile) and he and my mother accompanied me.

The weather was fine the whole way out. Windy, cold, but clear and sunny. We picked up the dogs at the same exit I've been meeting everyone at. The St. Bernard/Bernese Mountain dog puppy (who everyone has been nicknaming Bernie) was MASSIVE. I knew he was going to be, but you never realize how big 85 lbs of dog is until you meet him face to face! Marvin was a sweetheart, but he definitely was not a big fan of Bernie's -- whenever the big clumsy oaf would get near him, he'd growl a bit. Some of that might have been because he had JUST been neutered, still had the stitches and all. Poor kid! Buttons, the Shih Tzu, was as sweet and calm as could be. He so desperately needed a trim and a bath, but other than that he was doing well.

Buttons ended up curled up on my mother's lap. Marvin we put in the back seat with me. And we put Bernie in the back part (it's a station wagon). Things were going along fine until Bernie decided he wanted to get some attention from me. First he stuck one foot over the seat and kept tapping me on the shoulder. I started paying attention to him and the next thing I know, he's trying to crawl over the seat to get up with me. Bernie was absolutely convinced he was a lapdog, despite the fact that he weighed at least 85 lbs! We managed to get him to stay in the back and he finally settled own and slept the rest of the way there. Marvin also settled down and slept most of the way (after having to give everyone a kiss! awww!). Buttons spent part of the trip curled up on my Mom's lap and part of it laying on her feet, sound asleep.

All three were absolutely sweet dogs. When we arrived at the site, the people who were taking Marvin off to his forever home were already there. We walked him, let him do his business and passed him off to them and he was off. We walked the other two dogs and then hopped back in the car with them (poor Buttons was so cold he was lifting his feet off the ground). Bernie crawled over into the back seat with me and tried to crawl into my lap. Like I said...massive lapdog!

The other people finally showed up and we handed them off easily enough. And then they were on their way to the rescue association. I hope they both find good homes!

As always, I took some pictures. My favourites:






Bernie:







Buttons:


The rest can be found here.

Transport #2: Buddy

Today was my second transport. I had agreed to take Buddy, a cocker spaniel/poodle mix from Syracuse to Rochester. I met Patti, the woman who had the leg before me at exit 38 and got to meet Buddy. My first impression of him was "spaz." He ran all over on the leash, couldn't calm down. But he seemed to love me on first sight (and I felt the same!). He rushed over to me and jumped up to give me a big "hug." He was so sweet!

We got him into the car really easily and we were on our way. The trip out was rather uneventful. Buddy paced back and forth for a little while, looked out the windows, stuck his head between the seats to get a pat, and took to ripping apart the the paper thing I had put down to keep the pet blanket from slipping. Note to self: toss that thing out! lol

He finally settled down and slept for much of the rest of the trip.

We arrived some 45 minutes early at the meeting place. My first thought was to call and let them know I was really early. But then I decided...why should I? That gave me a lot more time to hang out with Buddy. So we walked around the ground of the Hampton Inn a bit. He had a ton of energy and so it was more like a pulled run. After making the rounds, I decided I was too cold to stay out in that wind much longer, so I got into the back seat and Buddy followed me in. Once in there, he was TOTALLY calm. All he wanted to do was crawl onto my lap and get petted. Every time I stopped, he would look back to me and curl up a little closer. He was such a sweetie! We had quite a time to bond and he really seemed to like me.

He didn't seem to like the people who showed up to pick him up (lovely people, I'm sure). He growled at them, barked a little, and immediately tried to run back to me. It was really strange. I SO wanted to take that dog home with me. He was such a wonderful sweetheart. Whomever adopts him is going to be REALLY LUCKY. He's perfect: sweet and cuddly, but with plenty of energy to burn off on long walks! It was really hard seeing him continue on the transport.

I managed to get some great photos of him (and a few of me with him, despite having to take them myself! lol).

A few of my favourites:











The rest can be found here.

Transport #1: Molly & beagle puppies

So I'm all done my very first transport and it was so much fun!

I took off a little before 1pm and just as I was leaving, I got a call from the person who was meeting me there. She had arrived early. So I rushed off, put some gas in the car, and met up with them. The dogs were just ever so sweet. Molly hopped right up into the car, though she limped a bit and shuffled her way over. She's the calmest dog I've ever met.

The beagle puppies just wanted to play, but it was easy enough to get them into the crate. They chewed on the towels and shoved them around a bit, but settled down within the first 5 minutes of the trip. I almost forgot I had them most of the time because everyone was just so quiet. I regretted not having Molly on the front seat as she kept sticking her nose in between the seats for a pat.

I arrived at Herkimer really early. So I took Molly out for a bit first. The main problem was that they didn't provide leashes for the puppies, so I had my leash plus Molly's which meant only two at a time. Since I couldn't get Molly to go back in the car at first, I had to take the puppies out one at a time. Of course, this gave me a chance to play with each and get photos of each. By the time the other woman had arrived, I got Molly back into the car and had the two puppies out.

I didn't quite count on Molly's intelligence there and left the back door open by the crate, thinking she couldn't get around it. She did and got out of the car, but luckily, we were both there and the other woman (Marci) just hooked her up with one of her leashes.

The transfer went pretty smoothly and we got the puppies into their crate, Molly into the car, and we were off in our opposite directions.

And then came the real fun. ;-) My key chain had come undone in Herkimer and I didn't think to check the keys until I was well on the road. Well, one was missing..the one to our apartment! Oy! I stopped at a rest area, got the number to the apartment office, and managed to talk the woman into leaving a key for me in the box. Phew.

So now I'm back and with lots of pictures!

Here are a few of my favourites:















The rest can be found here.