This is the older boy of the two. He has very poorly cropped ears that are full of fly bites.
His skin is in bad shape, he is very itchy and has patches of infected skin.
Won't you give me a home?
This is the younger boy, he follows his buddy everywhere! What a sweetheart.
His ears are all eaten up by flies.
How can he be so sweet after such poor care.
Well, it is bitter sweet news. First of all Mabeline was adopted on Saturday. Holy cow! I could not believe it. Not that I did not think she would ever be adopted, I just really did not think it would be that quickly. Christa, Mabeline's new mom emailed on Friday. She just fell in love with her picture. I told her about all of Mabeline's little idiosyncracies, and after I was done with my dissertation, Christa said, "she sounds perfect!" When she came over to meet her that night, Mabeline hid upstairs the entire time. Christa just sat patiently and said that she would work with her and have her as her best friend in no time. I knew there was someone out there for Mabeline. There is always someone for every dog. They are doing quite well already. She has had her out walking all weekend and she runs to the door when she gets the leash out. Already progress leaps and bounds beyond what we were able to accomplish here. I am so happy for Mabeline! The pictures above and below were taken by my husband. Mabeline did not sit still, ever, unless she was in her kennel. So, Steve decided to move the camera to try to get a focused shot of her. There are several blurry messes of pictures of her before he captured this one. Just so you understand, Hooper is laying still in this picture and Mabeline is dashing across the floor nervously, saying, "stop looking at me people."
Next, the bitter sweet. Hooper, our foster for many months is going to his forever home today. I have not talked about him much because he was adopted very shortly after I took him from PJ. The nice lady who is adopting him was moving and unable to take him right away, so I said I would hold onto him for her. He is one of the best dogs I have ever had in my house. He is what I would say is close to a perfect dog. I have already cried once and I have not even left the house to take him to his new home. It is a great home though and he is going to get so much one-on-one attention there. He is going to be so happy. I just have a lump in my throat talking about it. But, I am sure it will go away.
I'm traveling and Dan is in charge of all 6 dogs at home. Today they all wanted to eat (around 6:30am) but Dan was still sleeping. They tried to wake him very forcefully by barking, jumping on the bed (not Bomber - he can't get up on the bed with those legs) and poking their faces into Dan' face to wake him. He got mad, yelled, pulled the covers over his head and retreated back under the covers. Then Bomber grabbed all the bedding and dragged if off the bed and across the room! Dan said it was a mad house with all 6 dogs carrying on very loudly. He got up and fed them......they all celebrated their success. I hope Bomber's new family find his resourcefulness as funny as we do!
Why are you crowding the door way? There is no way I am coming near you.
Ok, I really want to come inside, please step aside, because I cannot AND WILL NOT walk past you.
I am serious about this. I need you to put the camera down, go inside and hide somewhere so that I cannot see you and so that I can scaddadle to my kennel as quickly as possible . (Can you see the little colic on top of her head? I think that is soooo cute.)
Forget it! I am not coming inside until you go away. Now GO AWAY!
We pulled Maurice today. He is safe and at the vet being checked out. Thanks to Cathy Enlow for offering to foster Maurice and allowing us to rescue him! The rescue went fairly smoothly. If he is around when PJ pulls up, he runs up to her, takes two bones and runs off to avoid any conflict with the other dogs. This time we did not give him his bones so he would not run off. PJ easily slipped the collar around him. At that point he got a little nervous and tried to pull back. He was not the easiest to get into the car and he is a heavy boy for being so underweight. He is going to be so beautiful and happy once he realizes what life is supposed to be like for a dog. What a good looking boy! Thank you Cathy! Anyone have any guesses on his breed? We were thinking Boxer/American Bulldog mix. What do you think?
Although we predominately rescue dogs, we still love those kitties. PJ carries cat food with her too when she goes to the streets. If there is anyone out there who is unable to foster dogs, but would like to foster a cat, notify us and when we find a sweet baby like this one who we could catch, we would pick her up for you. In order to pull we need foster homes lined up. Rarely do we see the same cats over and over, with the exception of this group below. The one on the right is the infamous Lou Lou Modelo. Infamous because of this incident. The kitty on the left is still out there. Always in the middle of the road waiting for PJ to pull up. She leads us in front of the car to her spot where she likes to be fed. She just had a litter of kittens. We have not seen them yet.
As you may have read in the last entry, rescuing dogs out of East St. Louis is a tricky business. There is always one person with each pack of dogs who claims that ALL of those dogs are his. Sometimes they will tell us that we can take a particular dog. Sometimes they forget that they told us we could take a dog and come out yelling at us the next day. That is precisely what happened when we rescued Nancy. The next day that PJ showed up to feed the dogs, the guy came out yelling at her. "How come ever since you started coming 'round here, my dogs have started disappearing?" PJ responded by saying that she never takes someone's dog without permission, which he did give to her and one other person. So, there are at least 4 dogs that still hang out around this guys house, not to mention the one that is tied to a dog house in the fenced in back yard. I am pretty sure that one is Sherlock's relative. We call these guys Martin's pack. They all have eye issues, which is really strange considering what happened to Martin. It is unfortunate because it seems that this guy is not going to let us save any of these poor dogs anymore. We have to consider PJ's safety first.
And then there is the guy at the house where we rescued Snuffy yesterday. There are about four dogs who hang out around his house. He claims them all to be his. He came out and talked with us yesterday before we set up to rescue Snuffy and was incohesively telling us about how much he loves these dogs, but he doesn't love them as much as he loved the one he used to keep chained in the back yard. "But someone poisoned the one in the back yard and it died". He continued to say, "You know, I love them, but not that much." PJ asked him about a bunch of puppies he put collars on a while back. She told him that she removed one of the collars from one of the pups because she was growing and the collar was choking her. He proceeded to tell PJ that all of the other puppies from that litter died because "he could not catch them to get those collars off." Yet he really wants to get at least one more litter out of his girl (the one facing sideways in the picture above) before he lets us spay her.
I am not one to mince words. I feel like what we see over there should be known. I would love to come up with a solution to this. I just don't know where to start. I understand that possession of these poor, neglected and suffering creatures is a power struggle for some of these people. Unfortunately, people treat those below them the same way they are treated by those above them. I don't think many people know what the living conditions are like in East St. Louis. I don't think too many people know of the corruptions the government has allowed and that businesses have created their own zip codes so as to not have to give their taxes to the East St. Louis community. I have said it before, but so many things need to change before the stray dog problem is solved.
We have been tracking Snuffy for almost a month now. The problem is that he would hide under this house every time we tried to get near him. PJ spoke to the person who lives there and he gave us permission to stake out his house and set up a trap for the pup. It was a little scary to say the least. We waited for about 3.5 hours for Snuffy to show up. Meanwhile, a lot of sketchy cars were coming in and out of this house. It was a dead end street which made the situation a little scarier. I am pretty sure there was some sort of drug situation going on with these people. It did make me feel better that we had the guy's permission, but who knows what people are capable of when they are on drugs. After waiting for what seemed like forever, and seeing so many shady characters go in and out of the house, PJ and I decided it was time to pack up and leave. I stayed in the car with a phone for emergencies, while PJ went between the houses to get the cages. Lo and behold, here comes Snuffy limping down the street. I tried to "whisper hollar" PJ's name, but she did not hear me. As she walked out with the cages in her hands I stuck my body out of the window and pointed behind me. She is amazing! She ran back to the area, set up the cages and snuck out of the way, all in about 1 minute. Snuffy tried to go back to his crawl spot and we were able to trap him between the cage and ourselves. He was scared, but, hey so were we. We could hear the guys inside of the house cussing and being belligerent. We closed Snuffy into the cage and got out of there. Snuffy is at the vet right now. Dr. Diesel is going to call me after his lunch break to let me know the laundry list of things that are wrong with him. We need a foster for Snuffy. He will need to be kept in a quiet area to heal, away from other pets for a while. Watching this boy transition from where he is now to the beautiful dog I am sure he is going to end up being is going to be an amazing experience. I am sure he will be forever grateful to whomever gives him the love he has never had. Please help Snuffy Cletus Hightower!
With all of the heavy posts, I thought a little pick-me-up was in order. Enjoy the article :)
You may remember Maurice from this post. My heart is heavy seeing him so sad. He was much skinnier this time and seemed depressed. I think he used to have hopes that he would get to come home with us, but seems to have lost hope. He is such a sweetie and gets picked on by the other dogs. I wish so badly that we had a foster for this one. I would pull him in a heartbeat. As soon as we have the money to pay for another dog, as well as a foster home for him, we can pull him. If you would like to foster Maurice, please contact us. If you are able to contribute financially to his rescue, please donate below.
