Tyson’s Transport

Nick and I got to be part of getting this cute little guy to his forever home last weekend. Tyson is a bull terrier, and the first one we’d ever met, so it was a lot of fun to be part of his transport.

Tyson was traveling from his foster home near Columbia, SC to his forever home in Minnesota. He was rescued through Recycla-Bull Terrier Rescue. He was a fun little guy, and very well behaved during our trip to Morristown, TN.

It was a good transport day. The weather was beautiful, and everything went smoothly. There were also at least two other transports going through our area, so it was a good day for rescue animals.

Tator’s Transport

As promised, here’s a much happier post. Nothing helps the loss of a beloved pet hurt a little less than helping another animal in need.

If you’ve been around for a while, you may remember that I used to be involved in rescue transports. We have a much higher euthanasia rate here in the south than in other parts of the country, particularly in more rural areas. To help combat that, many shelters and rescues in other areas partner with shelters and rescues in the south. The animals are pulled from the southern shelters and rescues and then transported to other parts of the country, to shelters and rescues that aren’t faced with as much overcrowding. In some cases they even go straight to their new homes.

The transports are how they get there. Usually the trip is broken down into legs of about an hour or so, and people sign up to drive a certain leg. You meet someone, usually right off the Interstate, and get the animal(s), drive your leg, meet someone else and deliver the animal(s) to them to continue the trip. There’s a coordinator who sets times, makes sure all the slots are filled, monitors the trip, and basically makes sure everything runs smoothly.

The transports are pretty amazing. Because it’s all volunteer, it doesn’t cost the rescue or shelter anything, and sometimes dozens of people (depending on how far the trip is), most of whom will never meet, work together to get animals to safety. It’s a pretty incredible thing to be part of.
We took a long break from driving the transports while Emma’s health was so bad. We felt like we needed to be with her, to give her the best quality of life possible. But within two weeks of losing Emma we both really wanted to help with a transport. I emailed some of the coordinators and asked to be put back on the lists for volunteering. One responded almost immediately to ask more about availability. We live kind of between two of the usual legs, so can easily drive either of them. If it’s a hard one to fill, we’ve driven both. 

This particular transport was for a boxer named Tator (no, that’s not a misspelling on my part; it’s how his name is listed on the rescue’s website). Tator was in the Greenwood County Shelter, and was heart worm positive. Across America Boxer Rescue was willing and able to take him. They had a foster family lined up, ready to get him through his heart worm treatment. He just needed a ride, and he needed it in a hurry because the shelter was full.

 Because Tator’s circumstances were pretty dire, Nick and I decided to volunteer to pick him up from the shelter and drive him to meet his foster dad. It was about a five hour round trip for us, but we reasoned that it all balanced out after taking such a long break from transports, and we knew it would make us feel better. Nick was off, and I’m allowed a certain amount of paid time off every year for community service work, so it worked out well.

Tator was incredibly sweet. He was scared and nervous, but still sweet, and clearly wanted to trust people. He was a great passenger; very well-mannered in the car.

It felt so good to do a transport again and have a small part in getting Tator on his way to a better life.

It’s National Dog Day

Today is National Dog Day. It’s the first time I’ve heard of it, but I love it. The purpose of National Dog Day is "to honor dogs, and to rescue dogs from homelessness and abuse. It’s an opportunity for us to appreciate the value and importance of dogs in our lives." There’s also a goal of saving 10,000 dogs today. Isn’t that a great day? You can also read a little more about it here if you’re so inclined.

In honor of National Dog Day I thought I'd share some adorable dog pictures with you. Some are of our babies, Emma and Duke, and the rest are dogs from transports or that have been fosters. And since the goal of National Dog Day isn’t just to look at adorable dog pictures, but to help save dogs, here are five quick ways you can help save dogs in need:

1. Opt to adopt instead of buying. Shelters and rescues are full of great puppies and dogs in need of loving homes. Even if you’re looking for a purebred, there’s a huge chance that a rescue or shelter can help you find one.

2. If you’re able to, consider fostering a puppy or dog from your local shelter or rescue. It frees up more space, and can help them learn the people skills they need to be adopted.

3. Make a donation to your local shelter or rescue. It can be monetary, or something as simple as a blanket or a bag of dog food. Everything helps.

4. Drive a leg of a transport. Sometimes all a dog needs to make it to a better life is a ride.

5. Spay and neuter your pets. Also, consider supporting an organization that makes spay and neuter surgeries readily accessible.

And now, enjoy some pictures of some adorable dogs. And feel free to tell us about your dog(s) in the comments. It’s okay to brag about your dog on National Dog Day.

Enough Wallowing

Lately I have found myself sort of wallowing.  There have been some things happening that have made me unhappy:

My grandparents were evaluated for home health care and we learned they are in much worse shape than any of us realized.  They think it’s 2010.  They also think it’s late September.  The fact that it’s 100 degrees and they’ve been watching tryouts for the 2012 Summer Olympics just doesn’t compute with them.   There are others things, too, but mostly along the same lines.

We are being told by their healthcare providers not to correct them because it can scare, upset, or somehow agitate them.  Home health care has been started, and my aunt is coming in from out of town.  Hard decisions are going to be made in the next few weeks.

I realize there is nothing I can do to change my grandparents’ dementia.   I don’t have a magic wand.  We can’t turn back time and we’re told it’s not going to get any better at this point.  I am resigned to the fact that there will likely come a time when they don’t know who I am. 

That being said, I am in a position to help the Alzheimer’s Association.  The semi-local Walk to End Alzheimer’s is being held on October 20 this year.  It’s between where I live and where my parents live.  I talked to my mom about it yesterday, and we are going to walk.  I also asked my friend Lorie about joining us and she said yes.  I was feeling optimistic and ambitious, so I created a friends/family team for us.  Right now we’re a team of three and they suggest at least ten for a team, but my mom and I are both planning to ask other friends to join us.

I chose Making Memories as our team name.  I think we’ll have a good time and make some lasting memories during the walk, and I’m hopeful that it will contribute toward making memories last for people who benefit from the Alzheimer’s Association’s work.  I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’m nervous and excited at the same time. 

It hit me (again) recently how devastating cancer is.  This has come from a few different directions.  There are some people on my husband’s job battling cancer and there have been some fund-raising efforts to assist them with the expenses insurance doesn’t cover.  We’re not especially close to any of these people, but it’s terrible to hear about, and it has brought back some bad memories. 

One of my husband’s co-workers, a man he very much respected and admired died of cancer a few years ago.  I think the fact that other people on his job are now dealing with cancer has brought that loss back to their minds.

My best friend’s mom also died of cancer almost six years ago.  She was young, only 47.  I think about the things she has missed and will miss in Crystal and her brothers’ lives, and it seems so unfair.  I also realized recently that it seems to have made Crystal very afraid of losing other family members.  One of her brothers is in the military and he’s currently on a base on the other side of the country.  Crystal worries so much about him that it makes me really sad for her.   I think it’s compounded by the fact that after her mom, this brother is the closest family member to her.

Once again, I don’t have a cure.  I can’t make cancer and its devastating effect on people’s lives go away.  I can, however, do what I can to support the American Cancer Society, and I can give blood.  Many of the donor stories on theRed Cross website involve donating blood because the donor has a family member who is alive due to donated blood, or was given extra time because a family member was able to be treated with donated blood.  The stories are very touching. 

I’m O Positive, so I’m told I should give blood as often as I’m able.  I’m sorry to say it has been a while since I’ve given blood.  There’s apparently a real shortage right now, so I’ve made an appointment.  There’s a blood drive right across the street from my office building on Monday, so I have an appointment to give blood during lunch.  My hemoglobin isn’t always high enough to donate, so I’m trying to eat iron rich foods now so I won’t get deferred on Monday.  There’s also a local blood drive on Wednesday, so that’s my back-up plan if my hemoglobin isn’t high enough on Monday.

It seems that animal rescue efforts have been failing lately.  Lennox was euthanized and there have been some dogs and cats networked lately that weren’t able to be saved.  There have also been some that were in really bad shape and just didn’t make it.  It felt like we’ve failed them.

But then there was an email from Gino’s foster mom.  He has been re-named Journey, which seems very appropriate.  He is doing very well; the sores on his body have healed, he’s no longer covered in fleas and ticks, and he gets along extremely well with children and other dogs.  She said he’s very affectionate, and extremely well-behaved.  She also says there are multiple qualified adopters applying to adopt him, so he will be in his forever home soon. 

As transport drivers we very rarely hear much about the dogs we drive after the transport ends.  We just make sure to work with reputable rescues and coordinators.  And the efforts are very quickly moved on to the next one, so it was doubly wonderful to hear how Journey’s journey is going.

I also received a belated birthday check for the local no-kill shelter from a friend.  I had asked for donations for them for my 30th birthday.  This friend wasn’t able to attend the cookout we had, but still wanted to donate to the shelter.  That donation brought the total to over $300.00. 

So, while not all of the adoptable animals are being saved, many are.  I can’t save them all, but I can keep transporting, donating, and anything else that may come along that I’m able to do. 

As I said, enough wallowing.  

Driving Gino

Gino - such a great little passenger.

Saturday was another transport day for me.  I have a special place in my heart for the dogs classified as “bully breeds”, so I was very happy to be able to participate in Gino’s transport.  He was pulled from a shelter in the lower part of South Carolina, where his prospects were very dismal, by a rescue group and is now in a foster home in Wisconsin.

A lot of people worked extremely hard to make Gino’s transport come together successfully.  There was a lot of networking going on to get all of the legs filled, and someone kind enough to let him stay at their house overnight.  This was one of those transports that really restored my faith in humanity; dozens of people, most of whom will never meet, working together to save a dog who’d been dealt a very bad hand.    It was a great feeling to be a very small part of that, even if only for an hour “leg”. 

Gino was an excellent passenger and one of the most loving dogs I’ve driven.  He isn’t in the best shape physically, but he has a wonderful personality, and seems to crave human affection.  He just wanted to constantly be petted and touched, and by all reports was always happy to meet his next chauffer.

This was also the first time my mom has ever come with me on a transport.  She came along for the transport, and then we had an afternoon together at the local tearoom and did some shopping.  It was nice for us to have a mother and daughter afternoon, and I think it was a good experience for my mom to see how the volunteer transports work.  I think now she understands why it’s something that is so important to me.

Driving Miss Sheila

I think she's happy to be on her way home!

Today’s post is a little later than usual because today I was able to be a small part of getting this sweet girl to her forever home.  This is Sheila; she was in a shelter with a very high euthanasia rate in a rural county.  She appears to have had multiple litters of puppies and is also heartworm positive.  Sheila’s outlook was very bleak until a rescue got involved and a very kind person stepped in to adopt her and take care of her heartworm treatment.  Sheila’s new family is about nine hours away from the shelter she was in, so that’s where the volunteer transport came in. 

I was able to drive Sheila for one of the hour “legs” of her journey.  There are about seven people driving Sheila on legs of about an hour each, and her new dad is driving the rest of the way to meet her, so by this evening this sweet little girl will be settling into her new home.

 It was a great way to spend part of the weekend; I got to hang out with an adorable, sweet dog, and meet some really nice people.  It’s always a good feeling to drive on a transport, but today was especially good because Sheila’s new dad is SO excited to have her; he has been calling to check on her and personally thank the drivers.  It feels good to help, even if only a little, to get her to a home like that.

Finding My Volunteer Niche

My husband volunteers at a fire department, and has for years.  Many of my friends volunteer for various organizations, and one of my friends has been a foster parent for years, so I was constantly around people who give of their time for some greater good.  I waned to volunteer for something too.  I believe it’s the right thing to do; if everyone volunteered for something a lot of things would get done, and I truly believe the world would be a better place. 

My problem was in deciding what to volunteer for; I’m not the most outgoing person, I’m not at all physically strong,  I’m sort of prissy and don’t like to get dirty, I don’t care for large crowds, I love quiet, and I didn’t want a huge time commitment .  But I thought surely there was something out there that I could do to make a small difference without wrecking my little world as I know it.  So began my saga of failed volunteer attempts.

I tried volunteering with a rape crisis center, but the training program, which had to be completed in order to volunteer, was essentially full time, which didn’t work with my full time job and long commute.  I considered (for about five minutes) a children’s shelter, but I’m not good with kids, so I abandoned that idea very quickly. 

Next came my quest to find some sort of office work to do on a volunteer basis.  It’s what I do for a living, so why not just add a few more hours a week for a good cause?  That didn’t go so well either; many of the places that I tried had paid office positions, and didn’t need volunteers for them.  Some places didn’t have enough office work to need a volunteer.  I finally found a legal aid type place that I was very excited about, but I quickly learned that the person in charge had a definite political agenda that was very different from mine.  So I stopped volunteering there before I even made it out of training.

After my disappointing, and brief, stint as an office worker volunteer I decided to try something more hands- on.  I spent one Saturday morning freezing outside the mall with a pet welfare group attempting to promote spaying and neutering, definitely something I feel strongly about.  The methods, however, were not so much to my style and liking; the posters and signs made many people (including myself) cry, and some of the people were a little, let’s say, intense, for me.  A good group to be sure, but definitely not my niche.

Still going with the hands-on approach I next attempted an animal shelter.  I love animals, and had heard great things about this one.  I went, and the experience wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t entirely what I was looking for.  The noise level in the shelter was very intense (for a person who rarely even plays the car radio this is a BIG deal) and the shelter is about 45 minutes from my house, so if I had two hours to spare, only about 30 minutes would actually be spent volunteering.  I kept meaning to go back there, but never found the time, or if I’m honest, the wherewithal to endure the noise.

I began to wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me that made it impossible for me to volunteer, some basic human kindness gene that I was missing.  Plenty of other people manage to find the time to do something good, without complaining about the noise, the commute, the time, or anything else.

Then a co-worker talked to me about animal transports.  I had never heard of them before, but basically a rescue group pulls animals from a high kill shelter and volunteer coordinators arrange for volunteers to drive the animals wherever they need to go.  Many transports are on the weekend, and are usually broken into one to two hour segments, or “legs”.  This sounded promising! 

I was a little hesitant to sign up at first; many of the legs in my area involved driving to places I’d never been before, and I have a terrible sense of direction.  I have literally gotten lost in revolving doors.  I wanted to help, but I wasn’t sure driving around lost with some poor dog qualified as “helping”.  Then there was a leg that involved picking animals up from a shelter near one of my teenage hang-outs and driving them just a little past where I live now.  This I could do!

I signed up for that transport on a Monday and anxiously awaited my Saturday morning leg.  The transport coordinator was great about answering my questions.

In the meantime, I received another email about another transport that needed just one leg filled, to Tennessee.  It was only about an hour and a half drive, only an hour from where I would be dropping off the animals from the first transport.  My best friend, who has a sense of direction that is like having GPS, agreed to go with me if I signed up for the transport to Tennessee, and so I did.

The Friday afternoon and evening before the transports I made contact with everyone I needed to; drivers on other end of both legs, the transport coordinators, and one of the rescue groups.  Everyone was very pleasant, and as the communication was largely by email, it didn’t even disrupt our Friday night plans.

Saturday was one of those beautiful, blue skies and puffy clouds days where everything seems right in the world.  The drive to the shelter was easy; it was a drive I’d made literally hundreds of times, and all went well in picking up the animals from the shelter.  My friend and I delivered all six animals (two dogs and four cats) to the next driver, and were able to try a new restaurant while waiting for the next transport.  The drive to Tennessee was absolutely beautiful, and the two dogs from that trip were a lot of fun. 

When my husband asked how it went, I knew I’d finally found my niche.  The trips were easy, the people were all kind and pleasant to deal with, and the animals were precious; driving them part of the way to a second chance at life was an amazing feeling. 

I have since signed up for more transports, usually the same trip to Tennessee.  I know how to get there now, and am not so worried about directions.  There are transports most weekends, so I seem to be able to sign up as often as I’d like, and there’s no guilt tripping or explanations needed on weekends when I’m not able to sign up for one.  I've met some really amazing people and made some new friends.  It’s not glamorous, and it’s not making a huge impact (except, I like to hope, to the animals we drive and the families who adopt them) on the world, but I have finally found my volunteer niche.