Daisy was adopted!

Daisy, the last puppy from the Donald Duck litter, has been adopted.  So many times people ask me how I can possibly let my fosters go.  But unless it's a dog that I've had for a long time, or very closely bonded with, I usually have no problem sending the dog into a new home.  I worry about them of course, and miss them a bit, but I'm mostly just happy they're in a good home. It means I have room to save more dogs.  And it helps that I have several other fosters here to keep me busy so I don't have too much time to miss the ones who are adopted.  Right now the Scouting litter of puppies are doing their best to keep me entertained (and they're doing a great job!)

Brownie, Pixie and Cadette

Scout

Cubby

One left

It was a good week for puppy adoptions.  First Huey was adopted, then Donald, then Louie, then Dewey.  So now Daisy is sitting here with me all alone.  She doesn't seem to mind that her siblings are all gone.  This could be because now she gets all the attention.  She's cuddled up with me and Roxy on the couch right now.  She doesn't have to share her puppy food with her brothers.  She gets to go outside with the big dogs now, and we'll start working on house training.  But with as cute as she is, I am pretty sure she'll be adopted before long too!

Dog Update

Gizmo

Gizmo has been adopted!  He is now living with a family with six kids, another dog and a cat!  I can only imagine the mischief he will be able to get into with that crew.  It's a wonderful family and I think he'll be very happy.

Huey

Huey was also adopted!  He was the only puppy to get adopted this past weekend, but hopefully the others will have better luck this coming weekend.  Donald, Daisy, Dewey and Louie are starting to grow a lot, and starting to develop their own personalities now.  Donald and Dewey are the two cuddle-bugs.  They just want belly rubs and attention.  Daisy and Louie are too busy running around and playing tug to stop for cuddles.  They're into everything!

Bunny

Bunny is still doing about the same.  She continues to enjoy the outdoors, and continues to take treats from me, but still doesn't like to be petted.

Tulsa

When I first fostered Tulsa as a puppy several years ago, my husband really didn't care for her.  So I am really enjoying the fact that she's improved so much that he actually asked to foster her!  Since he's still living at our old house with our dogs Remi and Noelle, I didn't expect him to ever want to foster another dog.  But several times while he was here at the cabin he commented on how much Tulsa has improved, and eventually said he'd like to take her to his house to foster!  So last week Tulsa moved back to our old house, where she's doing great with Remi and Noelle.  We're still trying to find her a permanent adoptive home, and I'll still be taking her to adoption events, but in the meantime it's nice to know she's somewhere that she is doing so well.

Ziggy

And then there's Ziggy.  I'm very happy that he's back, but he told me today that he's ready to go back and live with his second mom again.  He's talking about the trainer who has been fostering him and working with him for several weeks.  She's awesome, but I told Ziggy that she might not want him to come back again.  He said that was ridiculous.  So we'll see.  We've been trying to learn how to do agility weave poles, and I may have been pushing him too hard, because he says that she's more fun than I am. So now I'm determined to change that, and we'll be going for another river walk soon - one of Ziggy's favorite things!

Roxy

Roxy is still continuing with her Canine Good Citizen classes.  She's learned to lie down on command and is doing very well with her stay command.  Around here she's doing much better too - she doesn't follow me everywhere, and will lay down across the room instead of having to be touching me constantly.  She's such a great dog, and I really enjoy fostering her.

Toby

You may have noticed that there have been several dogs leaving here recently (Phil, Gizmo, Tulsa, etc) and not so many dogs coming in.  There's a deaf dog in Memphis that I'm hoping to foster soon, so I want to leave some room for him.  And since Roxy had no one to play with, I also brought home Toby for a short visit.  I fostered Toby a few months ago, and then he moved to another foster home for awhile.  He'll be going back to that foster home again soon, but for now he's taking a short vacation with me.  He's a great dog, but he has so much energy that it's difficult to get him to ever calm down.  This is probably the main reason he hasn't been adopted yet.  He goes to adoption events every week, and hopefully his turn will come soon!

The Puppies Have Names

There were some great submissions for names!  I had a hard time choosing, but because I have the maturity level of a five-year-old, I had to pick the Donald Duck theme.  Congratulations on selecting the winning names, Harper!  I'm a huge Donald Duck fan.  I even have a poster of him on my wall.  Okay, I don't really have a poster of Donald Duck.  But I am a huge fan, and I might just have to hang up a picture of this Donald:

Donald

 

Daisy

Huey, Dewey and Louie

And just because he's so cute, here's one more picture of Donald:

Daisy was adopted! and other news

Daisy has been adopted, after only her second week at PetSmart. I am sad that she left so quickly - she was a great dog. But she went to a family with three boys who are very excited to have a dog to play with, and are willing to work with her to overcome her fears.

Since Daisy left on Monday, and Murphy went back to his home on Monday, the house is much quieter. It has left me with just Remi, Vala, Kiya, Bailey, Whiskey, Brandy, Ginny, Scout, George, and Ella to take care of. Normally that wouldn't be too bad, and I'm anxious to get Samantha back to foster now that I have room again. However, since I'm going on vacation soon, and since the puppies are starting to need more care, I'm going to wait a few more weeks before I get Sam, unless she gets adopted first of course.

Ella was supposed to go up for adoption at PetSmart last week, but they found a mass in her abdomen during surgery and now we're waiting until the end of this week to find out the results of the biopsy and make sure she can be put up for adoption. She's fully recovered from her spay surgery though, and is even getting braver around the dogs now. So this extra time at my house might help her get adopted since she'll have more options if she is a dog-friendly cat.

Kiya and the puppies went to the vet yesterday for a follow-up exam and they think they might have ringworm (mother and puppies). So now the poor dogs have to stay quarantined for even longer, and start on some medication to treat it. The battle to keep Kiya in the exercise-pen with her puppies has been won - by Kiya, that is. After covering the top with chicken wire and spending a lot of time and money trying to keep her from getting out, I've finally admitted defeat. The puppies need to stay in the ex-pen because there are too many things in the basement that could hurt them -but Kiya is now climbing out of the pen whenever she wants. My biggest concern is I've never seen her climb back in, and her puppies are hungry without her there to feed them. They're starting to eat puppy food now, but they're still trying to nurse, so I need to find out if they'll be okay without her now. They're all continuing to grow - the biggest one (Ginny) is 6 pounds now, and the smallest one (Brandy) is 4.25 pounds. They're walking around really well, and playing all the time - they've even started growling and giving these baby puppy barks more often. They love to be held and be allowed to get out and explore their world. It's always fun to let them out and then try to round them all back up again. They're easier to round up than the kittens I fostered were - which is good, because there were only three kittens and there are five puppies!! Either way, puppies and kittens seem to have an instinctive knack for getting into trouble, but they're so cute that they can get away with it!

Pictures!

Here is a picture of my newest foster - Daisy! As a reminder - click on any picture in the blog to see it full-size.

Here is a newer picture of Sam - just 'cause I like her so much. :-)

And finally - what you've been waiting for - pictures of Kiya and her puppies!

Here is Kiya - we think she is an Ibizan Hound mix.

And here are her puppies....we think they are possibly part Akita. They are now 23 days old!

This is Bailey. She looks a whole lot like her brother Whiskey.

This is Whiskey. He's the puppy with the ear infection - poor guy.

This is Ginny. She has a spot of white on the back of her neck, but not across the top of her forehead like Bailey and Whiskey.

This is Brandy. She has the least amount of white on her - just a little bit on her chest.

And this is Scout. He has a ring of white around his neck.

You may have noticed a theme with the names, other than Scout. One volunteer named Scout after her dog, and the rest were named by another volunteer. I tried to figure out a way to make Scout fit the theme, but when I Googled it, I only found a lot of web sites about Boy Scouts and alcohol... a surprising number of them, actually! So much for that idea. :-)

Here is my favorite picture of all the puppies... aren't they adorable?!

Introducing Daisy, and other news

It's been a busy few days! Saturday was a bit slow for dog adoptions, and once again neither Vala or Sam were picked. There was one dog returned due to her owner having medical issues. Daisy is a German Shepherd/Husky mix who was adopted out last December (she was named Elkie then). She's only about 7 months old now, and is a beautiful dog. I haven't had a chance to take her picture yet, so hopefully I'll get that and post it in the next day or two. She was very shy and overwhelmed by the other dogs, so I offered to take her to my house and help her get used to her new surroundings. To keep from having too many fosters, I let Sam go back to the main foster home. It was hard to let her go, but I went and visited on Sunday and saw that she was very happy and settled in immediately. Sam loves to play and isn't shy at all, so she loves having other new dogs to play with now. Daisy has quickly become a model dog - anyone thinking about fostering should sign up for her - she's practically perfect! :-) She likes to play with Vala, although she's still not sure about Remi. She's quiet and obedient and house-trained and affectionate. I am really enjoying having her around.

In other news, its been a long week with Kiya and the puppies. One of the puppies has an ear infection, but other than that they're all doing great. They've started sitting up, and walking around a little bit. They're very wobbly and fall over sometimes, or they'll nudge each other and knock each other over. It's so cute to watch. Kiya has been a bit of a challenge, as she needs to eat a lot to feed her puppies, and therefore needs to be taken outside a lot more often than other dogs. Since this isn't always possible to take her out every few hours, she has become an escape artist at getting out of her kennel to go as far away as possible. I can't blame her, I would want the smell as far from me as possible too! But instead of using the puppy pads that I've strategically placed around the basement in case she does get out, she prefers to find more interesting places to do her business. My husband's working on finishing our basement, so there's a lot of tools and construction items lying around. The tools are a favorite spot of hers. Also in boxes of spooled wire, inside a bookshelf that he built into the wall, and even on top of the extra-large container of Nature's Miracle stain/odor remover that was sitting on the floor (guess she told me!). It's been a losing battle on my part to keep her in her exercise-pen where she's staying with the puppies. First, she squeezed between the door and the side of the kennel. I blocked that off, and she managed to get under the kennel by pushing it into a corner and squeezing underneath. I blocked it in so she couldn't move it around, and she somehow lifted the whole thing straight into the air and got out underneath. I tied it down with bungee cords, and she started climbing over the top. I tried a blanket over the top yesterday, which didn't work, and this morning I tried a fitted sheet which will hold better than the blanket. If that fails, my husband offered to find me a piece of plywood to try next. Hopefully that will work!! It'd be funny if she didn't make such a big mess everytime she got out. :-)

In happier news, Murphy is coming back! Murphy, who used to be called Coal, is my favorite previous foster dog. Every now and then I get to dog-sit for him while his owners are gone, and this weekend is one of those times. I am so glad that his owners kept in touch and let me be his honorary aunt. I generally don't have favorite fosters - or actually, I tend to think of each one as my favorite whenever I'm around them. But Coal somehow snuck in and stole favorite dog forever spot in my heart. So I'm really looking forward to seeing him again.

And finally, there's Ella. She's the mother of the kittens that I fostered, and she's finally almost ready to be put up for adoption. She goes in to the vet tomorrow to get her vaccinations and be spayed, and then on Saturday she'll be moving up to PetSmart to find a home. There are some cats that live at Petsmart 24/7, and volunteers come in during the week to care for them. Ella will become one of those cats, and hopefully someone will see her during the week and fall in love with her and adopt her. She's a great cat, and I hope she finds a home quickly, although I hear it will be challenging during "kitten season".