Advertisement

Home » » “Pedestalizing Pets - Evening Sun” plus 3 more

“Pedestalizing Pets - Evening Sun” plus 3 more

“Pedestalizing Pets - Evening Sun” plus 3 more

Pedestalizing Pets - Evening Sun

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 09:13 PM PDT

None of the pet food in Walmart is healthy. They only sell the brands that are considered pet "junk food". Country Max, Houndstooth and Tractor Supply sell brands that are better for your pets, with real meat and no corn.

When your dogs are sick with heart disease, hair loss, hip problems, you can blame it on a diet of cheap dog food and table scraps. You should learn to train them properly, smacking them with newspaper isn't the answer dogs don't learn that way.

And of course if you don't want to feed and train your pets right, don't bother getting any.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Face time with Amy Rupert - Kane County Chronicle

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 07:26 PM PDT

Face time with ... Amy Rupert, 49, of Batavia, while out walking with her husband and three great Swiss mountain dogs at the Riverwalk

Where did you grow up? Elmhurst.

Immediate family: Husband.

Pets: Three great Swiss mountain dogs, Aspen, Shiloh and Sophie.

What's the last song you listened to? "I Used to Love Her" by The Beatles.

Last good book you read? "Drive" by Dan Pink.

Favorite charity? The Heifer Project.

Do you play an instrument? Piano.

Do you have a hobby? Dogs and stained glass.

Favorite food? Pizza.

Favorite local restaurant? Fantastico Italian Restaurant in Batavia.

What is an interesting factoid about yourself? I sailed across the Atlantic three times in a 44-foot sailboat with my husband

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Shelter dogs benefit from volunteer’s photographs - Herald Times

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 08:30 PM PDT

Pet Talk: Ride-along with rescue group reveals dangers ... - USA Today

Posted: 20 Apr 2010 04:48 PM PDT

'; jQuery("#topSocialButtons").append(sclListTop);

The man grimaces and steps forward, expecting the worst. Then he smiles. The dog is alive. Its hips rise and fall slightly with each breath.

Grim squats near the other side of the pipe, just out of sight of the dog, and coaxes it forward with his favorite reluctant-mutt enticement — raw hotdogs. Speaking softly, tossing frank after frank just beyond the animal's reach, Grim encourages it forward until it emerges, big, panting and scared to death.

Once the dog is out of the pipe, once he realizes he's with well-meaning people, he clings to me, a ride-along writer accompanying Grim, founder of Stray Rescue of Saint Louis, as he scours decaying neighborhoods for dogs in need. We call the dog Seward. Rescued from a drainage pipe.

A man working on his car down the road yells to us that a white couple had rolled by three days earlier, opened the door and tossed out the dog. Unable to cope with abandonment in an urban wasteland so foul, so unpredictable that the mayor was killed on the streets earlier this month, the dog had dived into the pipe and stayed there.

"It's your lucky day," Grim says, ruffling the dog's ears. Lucky because by some miracle, Grim happened to get out of his vehicle a few feet from where this dog was hiding, and by some bigger miracle, happened to notice him. Lucky because although this dog wasn't on Grim's rescue list today, there's room for him in the vehicle of the other Stray Rescue employee prowling the streets.

Part border collie, part Lab, the plump, good-natured dog, about 5, leaps into Donna Lochmann's SUV and falls into a deep sleep.

"We have to triage our choices," says Grim. "If a dog looks pretty good, it's probably not going to be rescued yet. If I had room to put them, I could bring in 100 dogs a day. But we have to focus on the most needy, the ones that really can't stay on the street any longer." Injured, sick or pregnant dogs are first priority because their life expectancy is severely shortened by their conditions.

Grim and his staff keep tabs on several packs that live in the shadows of the poorest neighborhoods in and around Saint Louis, leaving food to keep them alive until one of the 300 foster care-givers can take another dog. (The group, which rescues about 2,000 dogs a year, has two tiny buildings but no real shelter, though it is building one.)

Although most of the street dogs have been abused and are so ill or damaged — many of them missing legs, eyes or ears, some shot repeatedly, most mange-, tick- and heartworm-infected — the non-profit organization, which spends about $70,000 a month on vet care, has rehabbed and found homes for all but 10 of the 20,000 dogs they've rescued in 12 years.

On this April day, Grim's rescue priority list includes a pregnant white Lab mix, part of the AT&T pack (so named because they live in abandoned warehouses near the AT&T building in East Saint Louis). She's spotted for a second, but isn't captured.

Two other dogs, however, join Seward in the lucky-day sweepstakes.

A mail delivery woman has reported that a big mange-infested pregnant pit bull has been hanging around a school for days. As we approach, the raw-skinned dog, her butt wriggling joyfully, kisses Grim repeatedly and then sits politely in his SUV as we continue scanning burned-out buildings and mattress-strewn fields. She smells bad, her festering mange oozing in spots. "Another dumped dog," Grim declares unhappily. "She probably stayed right where she was dumped, hoping they'd come back." He names her Rose of Sharon.

Neither she nor Seward have the survival skills necessary to live long here, where people with weapons and the packs of street-savvy dogs don't always welcome outsiders graciously. Grim is glad to have discovered them quickly enough.

The third rescue: a puppy that had been snatched from a stray Lab/hound mix by a woman who stashed the pup in a little wire cage in her yard. The mama dog had kept a worried vigil for days, her own health declining as she quit scavenging for food to watch her whining puppy from a distance. For a few dollars, the woman surrenders the pup to Stray Rescue.

The day was, Grim declared after the three dogs had been left with vets, a "regular one." Not a red-letter day because they didn't get the dogs he was most concerned about. But a "good enough day" because a puppy got pulled from an awful existence in a box, and two adult dogs, "dogs that had been someone's pet, sweet dogs, wonderful dogs, didn't die on the street."

All three are still getting special care. Rose of Sharon is receiving heartworm and mange treatment. She wasn't pregnant (though she'd had puppies earlier); she was fluid-bloated. Seward is undergoing heartworm treatment. And the puppy, after de-worming, was reunited in foster care with its litter-mate, who'd been rescued the week before.

The pups' mother was captured the next day and is being treated for heartworm and a sexually transmitted venereal cancer that most vets have never encountered in their practices but which is so rampant among Saint Louis' strays that protocols have been developed that cure nearly every dog.

Grim, meanwhile, is, as always, worried. The pregnant Lab is still at large. Two vagabond dogs he's been tracking for months haven't been seen for weeks. And there's a little white dog with a bum leg living in a burned-out shell, and she's finally warmed to him. He can't take her yet; no foster is available. "Boyfriends are protecting her from harm," Grim says. "Her day for rescue will come. I hope we're not too late."

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.


Recommended Posts :

Posted by Blogger at 11:02 PM

0 comments:

Post a Comment - Back to Content

:)) ;)) ;;) :D ;) :p :(( :) :( :X =(( :-o :-/ :-* :| 8-} :)] ~x( :-t b-( :-L x( =))

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)