Changing fates

One of the hardest things about dog rescue is learning the difficult word "no."  Rescue is hard.  Sometimes it is so hard that you want to give up.  But then, it happens - the dog that is saved because of something you did.  That moment makes all the difficult ones bearable.  When we went to the animal shelter last Tuesday, Amber fell in love with a little pit bull mom named Ellie May.  Ellie is the sweetest little thing and freely gave kisses to anyone who leaned close enough to take them.  We did not truly appreciate Ellie's story until later.  Ellie clearly had recently had puppies, but there were not any puppies in the kennel with her.  The day we first saw Ellie, we could not take her because we did not have any room for her.  So, we took the two that we could.  And we had to say "no" to her.

Three days later, I was on my lunch break from work.  An overwhelming bad feeling came over me.  I hate that feeling because it usually means death is in the air.  I went to animal control.  Two had already lost their lives due to lack of space.  As I turned the corner to the row where Ellie May was at a few days before, my heart sank.  I did not see her.  Was she already gone?  By a small miracle, she came running to the front of the kennel, tail wagging, ready to give kisses.  My happiness quickly changed to sadness as I saw she was "marked."  In fact, she was next to be killed. I use the word "killed," not euthanized.  Euthanasia implies that a dog needs a mercy death due to pain.  Ellie May was not in pain.  She was happy and had no idea what was getting ready to happen to her.  Her death was coming because of ignorant, neglectful owners.  Ellie May did have puppies when she came in, but they died because of parvo.  Ellie May bore the pain of being dumped at a shelter, losing three of her babies and then facing her own death.  This was a fate I had to change.

After a quick photo and a promise by the animal control officer to give me some time, I turned to social media.  The community rallied around her photo by sharing it until someone stepped up to foster her.  A few hours later, I was headed back to the shelter to change a dog's fate.  The joy that rescued dogs have on the "freedom ride" from the shelter tells us that they know.  Some part of them knows how important this ride is to them.  In just a few hours, Ellie May had gone from sure death to sleeping in a foster home.  Rescuers will tell you that is what keeps them going.

We received bad news this week.  Our minivan needs a new motor.  It is going to cost $1500 to fix it.  It was a hard decision for us to make because that is a lot of money and every dollar is strictly controlled in the rescue world.  We use the minivan so much, however, that we did not really have a choice but to proceed with fixing the minivan.

The same day we received the news about the minivan, animal control contacted us about two pit bull puppies.  One was surrendered to the shelter and the other one was picked up as a stray.  It is beyond comprehension how someone could ever walk into a shelter with a three month old puppy and just leave him there.  Or how a three month old puppy can go missing and no one ever come looking for him.  It happens all the time though. It is the reason why there will probably always be animals who need rescue.

"Dying" for dogs!

The leaders of It Takes A Village Canine Rescue in Evansville, IN wanted to give our supporters some insight as to the daily operations of our rescue.  So, we begin this blogging journey so people will have a glimpse of what is it like to run a no-kill, mostly volunteer rescue.  The blog will be mostly be written by ITV President Susan Odoyo with the assistance of ITV Executive Director, Amber Boyd. We hope you enjoy it!

Our first blog shall begin with our near death experience! Our donated mini-van is having mechanical problems so we came up with a plan to get it to a mechanic.  Amber and I started the innocent journey across town in old Bessy.  About half way there, Amber lost all steering on the van and it started to die in the middle of a busy street.  She was able to pull into a side street.  The two non-mechanics had to make a decision - call a tow truck or risk life and limb and continue the remaining 2 miles.  As a non-profit, all our decisions are governed by money and we did not want to pay for a tow truck.  We called Amber's husband and he said try putting more oil in it.  So, off to the convenience store we went.  A quart of oil later, we headed back to the van.  Drink Bessy, drink your oil! We fired her up and she yawned and complained.  I thought, as President, I should be the one to go down with the ship so I took the helm on old Bessy.  We made it the rest of the way and our friend mechanic actually laughed at us as we hobbled our way to the garage.  We await a decision from him on whether Bessy can be salvaged.

Rescue work involves daily messages from various shelters asking for help.  Today was no different. One shelter had an owner surrender 11 lab puppies covered in fleas.  They are only 6 weeks old! A trip to the local animal control resulted in more sadness.  A 4-month-old pit puppy with hair loss from fleas or mange.  Only 4 months old and he already knows pain.  Another kennel had 3 dogs who the owner surrendered together.  One was 21 years old and another 18 years old.  Imagine living your entire life and reaching an old age only to be dumped at an animal control to be killed.  State law requires stray dogs to be held 7 days so the pit puppy was not beyond his "stray hold" and had to be left there.  Another rescue is working on trying to help the senior dogs.  We were able to take 2 dogs, but many more are still there.  We took the shivering dog named Alley and a cutie pie named Casanova.  Casanova went to a local vet tech school whom we partner with to vet dogs.  Alley does not have a foster yet, but how could we leave a dog who is shivering behind on a concrete floor?  Owner surrenders and dogs past their stray hold are the first to be killed if the kennels are full.  We do what we can, knowing that we do not have the resources or capacity to save them all.  So, you look each one in the eyes and hope they know how sorry you are that you cannot help them.  You also touch them just so they know that some kindness does exist. We left with the two we were able to help (one owner surrender and one past his stray hold), but we will be back.