Your One-Stop Update on 2015’s Posts

Thank you all for following me during 2015, and sharing Up on the Woof with your friends and family. Every year the blog gains more readers, and I appreciate everyone’s stick-to-it-iveness.

I was looking over the year’s posts and saw that I could provide updates on many of them, so here you go…a follow up to much of what was written about this year, working backwards.

IN OCTOBER, I wrote about the botched store set-up at our local Walgreens, and asked my readers if I was crazy, or not so much. The results of the poll were:

70% said  not crazy

20% said other (but only one person commented)

10% said  definitely crazy

0%   said  maybe a little crazy

Although the store manager promised me that they would reset the pet food aisle after Christmas due to my concerns, when I checked the aisle at the beginning of November, it was already reset. So apparently, the squeaky wheel does get the grease. Advocacy – 1 , Stupidity – 0.



EARLIER IN OCTOBER, I wrote about a dog that I had intended on liberating (ok, stealing) from her current home, but the night before I planned on putting events in motion, the family surrendered her to me.

Zoey is a 9-year-old rat terrier. She is doing great. She had a number of medical issues: she was urinating uncontrollably, and drinking gallons of water. We had the vet run a series of tests to diagnose what was wrong, and it turned out that she had a raging infection from a mouthful of rotten teeth. Valley Save-a-Pet helped us take care of her medical expenses. We scheduled her for a dental, and when everything was said and done, they had to pull every one of her teeth!  

She is a velcro dog…she sticks close by my side  24/7, sleeps in my arms and crams into my chair with me. It didn’t take her long to figure out that I am the Dog Ma. She is deliriously happy here.

IN SEPTEMBER, I wrote about dog rescuers, and what drives them. I told the story of Bert and Ernie, two terriers who had been abandoned in the woods, duct taped inside of a crate. JJ’s Ruff Roads took the boys in, and  I hooked rescuer, Ramona, up with Valley Save-a-Pet, to help with the cost of their medical. By November, the little guys were adopted together! They are happy in their furever home where they have (I think) 3 canine siblings.

 

IN AUGUST, I wrote about my Jack Russell Terrier, Lammy Lamb, and about her end-of-life care. We helped her get to the bridge on August 10. I thought my heart couldn’t hurt more than it did when I lost Dillon in 2007, but I was wrong. I miss her very, very much.

She is the only one of our dogs who was not cremated. We couldn’t afford it at the time (her end of life care was pretty expensive), so we decided to bury her in the yard. We have never done that in the past because we never knew if any given yard would still be ours in the future. This yard is not likely to ever be disturbed, though, whether we are here or not, so we gathered up all the cremains of the pets that had gone before her…cats and dogs. We’d been carrying those cremains around for more than 20 years. We dug a nice grave, and D. lined it with soft branches full of leaves, and we wrapped her in a blanket and laid her on the natural bed. We surrounded her with the cremains of 15 other pets, and laid them all to rest.

It was a weird feeling to me, to know that she was lying out there in the yard, in the dark. I talked to my friend, Bob Tarte, about it, and he said he always felt that way, too when he buried a pet…like his love was buried out in the yard.

Christmas was hard without her, but we hung her Lamb ornament on the tree like always.  My heart still aches for her.

IN APRIL, I wrote about who deserves to have a pet, and it dovetailed into an accounting of the woes of pet maintenance expenses. A number of readers made donations to help us care for Lammy Lamb, and for two months there were cases of the expensive food we were feeding her shipped directly to our door. I can’t adequately express how grateful I am for your (collective) help.

IN  MARCH, I wrote about dogs that are left outside in the winter,  and about how I was willing to give up a relationship with another human if that’s what it took to save a dog. Well, that appears to be exactly what happened. Although the dog was surrendered to me, the former owner (a family member) has seemingly cut off all ties with us. He won’t take our calls or our texts.  C’est la vie.

That post also discussed the group Dogs Deserve Better, and the good work they’d been doing to help chained and penned dogs.

In the past, I have asked you for your support of DDB…now I am asking you to change your focus slightly.

DDB’s CEO and Founder, Tamira Ci Thayne left the organization, and what has happened since then under new management has been baffling. You’ll find nothing about the dogs at the Center on their   Tami has written about some of organization’s bewildering decisions during the past couple of months, the latest of which, dumbfounded me. The HQ has cut loose one of their best reps, Melody Whitworth, who has spearheaded  DDB Missouri for the past 8 years. This was, among other things, a breach of contract. With DDB funding pulled from Melody’s 27 current rescue dogs, she is in need of donations. Every donation helps, no matter what the amount.

I am looking forward to see what 2016 brings Up on the Woof. I hope you’ll stay with me.