Dibbs on Dibbs!

Meet our youngest foster parent, Lexi!    At only 13, Lexi is extremely dedicated to our mission.  Her first foster dog was Dibbs, a humble Boston Terrier/Pug mix.   Lexi is very active with social media, and even created a video on Facebook showing her teaching Dibbs to sit!  She also helps with fundraisers and awareness at her school, and she is a frequent assistant at our spay/neuter clinics.

When the Kiley's of Huntington, West Virginia, inquired about Dibbs, Lexi arranged a meet and greet.  It turns out that they Kiley's were the perfect match for Dibbs, and he's a perfect fit for their family.   Dibbs will be an inside dog,  but he will be considered a full member of the family (with all the toys, supplies and personal items he needs!).  He now has a feline sibling named Dump Truck.

Lexie was sad to see her first foster pup go, but she knows that he's got a great home.   And now her kennel is open to foster another homeless pet!   We appreciate all of our foster parents, and are very thankful to have such an awesome group of people (of all ages) helping with our mission. 

Kittens!

This is Fuzzy.   Ain't he cute?   He's going on transport to find a new home in Bloomingdale, NJ this weekend with 9 other kittens.  We are so lucky to be able to network with other rescues, in places where animal over-population is not an issue.   That's where he's going.   And he'll probably be adopted in no time.   He's a lucky fellow.   Not many kittens make it out of the pound during kitten season.      

Kitten season is the time of year when cats give birth, flooding animal shelters and rescue groups across the nation with homeless litters.  Why does kitten season occur? Because too many kittens are born when cats who are not spayed and neutered mate.

The easiest way to help reduce the overwhelming numbers of unwanted cats is to spay and nueter you cat and encourage others to do the same. Unaltered cats are driven by their hormones and tend to sneak outdoors primarily in search of a mate. Mating just once can start a domino effect that can result in dozens, even hundreds or thousands of unwanted animals.

Rocky's Road to Happiness

Rocky is a survivor.  He was the only surviving sibling from parvo outbreak, and is lucky to be alive.   The Canine Parvovirus is the number 1 killer of small puppies.  It is highly contagious, and 80% of dogs that are infected by Canine Parvovirus that are not treated die in four or five days.  Vet costs to treat the Parvo virus are very expensive - you could easily pay $500 to over $6,000 per dog.  And sadly, the survival rate of puppies with vet care is usually 50% - 80%.  

The surest way to avoid parvo infection in your dog is to adhere to the recommended vaccination schedule which begins when puppies are 6-8 weeks of age. Puppies should not be allowed to socialize with other dogs or frequent areas where other dogs have been until 2 weeks after they have had their last vaccination. Immunization for parvo is usually included in your dog's distemper vaccine. This shot gives protection against several potentially fatal canine diseases all at the same time.

Rocky had a rocky start, but he's doing great now.   He happy and healthy, and he found a forever home!  If you adopt a new puppy, please make sure that he is up to date with his vaccinations, including the one for Canine Parvovirus.      

PetSmart Event

PetSmart in Richmond is awesome!  They invited us to bring our fosters for their weekly adoption events, and we really appreciate their support.   At the last adoption event, we brought a family of Mountain Cur pups, and one found his new forever home!   We will miss Ace, but we know he is going to be very happy with his new family.    

PetSmart has been a wonderful support for FOPCP, with adoption events and grants.   We are so grateful to have an ally such as them to help us find homes for all these furbabies.   Look for us at their upcoming events in Richmond!   You might find your next best friend!

ACE Hardware Event

They say Ace is the place with the helpful hardware folks.   And we learned how true that slogan is!    We'd like to thank Delbert Brown for allowing us the opportunity to connect with the community during the Grand Opening of the new Ace Hardware store in Stanton.  

We had all of our fosters in tow, hoping to find that perfect new forever home.   We also had yummy chilidogs and plenty of baked goodies.  By the end of the day, we raised over $1000 in donations!   A big thanks goes out to everyone who donated and volunteered to make this event a success!  We could not do what we do for the animals without your help!

How to do a transport

If you've seen our Facebook page, you know that we've been really busy with transports recently.  Transports are how we move dogs from the pound to their rescues, which are usually in the northeast.  We've had some passengers go to Ohio and Canada, too.

Transports are exciting, and we love to see abandoned dogs and cats on their way to healthy, safe, loving futures, but every passenger represents a lot of work.  We have a previous blog entry about transport from the driver's perspective, but transport takes a whole slew of people to pull off.  How it happens:

Rescues identify animals that they are interested in, either from our Petfinder site or emails that they receive from us.  This leads to a series of emails or phone calls to find out more about the animal's characteristics.  Once a rescue commits to an animal, a Powell County volunteer pulls it from the pound.  Then, the foster provides the animal with a temporary home and arranges for whatever vetting the rescue requires.  Often, the foster must deal with malnutrition, parasites, or skin conditions.  Then, within 10 days of transport, the fosters must take their animals to the vet for health certificates.  Health certificates are required by law for animals to cross state lines for rescue.

In the meantime, our rescue coordinator works with the rescue to determine how to transport the pet several states away.  There are some options.  One is paid transport.  There are some transport coordinators who take a large van (or fancy truck, in the case of Bowling Green Warren County Humane Society) on set routes.  Rescues pay a crate fee for the animals' fare.  Another way is leg-to-leg volunteer transports.  A coordinator determines where the animals need to go and sends out emails asking for drivers to do 1-2 hour drives between locations.  The volunteer drivers do a relay from city to city until their passengers reach their rescues.  This, incidentally, is how our Lobo made it all the way to Canada.  A third option is that we rent a cargo van and send it to a distant meeting place where our passengers then ride on a leg-to-leg volunteer transport.  That is what we did today.

Preparation for sending a cargo van is time-intensive.  The van must be picked up in Lexington and driven to Powell County.  There, it must be loaded with crates, which must first be assembled.  There are lists of passengers and weights in order to make sure the right sizes and numbers of crates go in the van.  If other shelters send hitchers, many emails are exchanged to coordinate meeting places, times, and driver information.

Sending our own cargo van is difficult.  It is costly (van rental plus gas).  It is often difficult to find a driver, too.  The meeting place is 7.5 hours from Powell County, which often means the driver is doing a 15-hour road trip.  Departure from Powell County is in the wee hours of the night.  Today, the van left at 3:30 in the morning!  All the fosters bring their animals (and all their paperwork showing vetting and health certificates) to a meeting place.  Our fosters are wonderful -- they show up when most of us are sleeping with smiles and tears.  They are happy to see the van full of promise leave, but they will miss their temporary family members.  However, we all know that this is the Big Day for our passengers going to their new lives.

The drivers travel with the van full of animals for hours.  They might have to stop along the way to clean up messes.  That is why they travel with a kit full of cleaning supplies and fresh towels for the crates.  They arrive at destination and must transfer each passenger to its next driver.  All the drivers have spreadsheets to consult to help them make their connections, and they all know the procedures to follow to keep all the passengers safe.  Then, our drivers turn around for a quiet drive home in a van filled with empty crates.

When the drivers return, there is still work to be done.  Crates must be broken down, cleaned, and put back into storage.  Returning the van has to be coordinated.  Does it sound like we are complaining?  We aren't!  We're very grateful for the volunteers and resources that we have that enable us to transport.  We appreciate our rescues and transport coordinators who we work with more than we know how to express to them.  We want to recognize everyone whose hard work makes transports possible.  Rescues, fosters, drivers, transport coordinators -- thank you all!  We're ready to start working on the next ones!

UPDATE!  Picture of some of today's passengers with their northeast fosters:

Bonnie's Happy Tail!

Every now and then, we think it's important to share our happy tail stories.  One of our favorites is Bonnie.  She was abandoned at the pound.  Her forever mom Barbara tells Bonnie's story better than we can:

After losing the love of our lives, Trixie rescued back in 1998 from a New Jersey shelter, we knew we would rescue again. Although, Allie our sato rescue was a comfort to us, I needed another black and white border collie mix in the house. Nick didn’t think that he was ready yet; but I was compelled to put out the feelers. I emailed and filled-out forms to every border collie rescue that I could find. Then on one Saturday, I just sat with my laptop on petfinder and went page by page determined that the right one was out there waiting for us. There were more than 57 pages with the criteria I had entered. Half way thru, I happened upon Bonnie. The big problem was that Bonnie was over 1000 miles away in a pound. There were just 3 photos and a brief description. But from my experience with dogs, I could see a happy, fairly confident little dog in those photos. Allie came from a fearful background; and although has overcome most of her fears after 2 years of positive training and patience, we knew that we should not have 2 fear based dogs living together as they would feed off of each other. We emailed Emily to inquire on Bonnie and with God’s help we were led on a path to a successful adoption against all odds.

Nick and Barbara have provided Bonnie -- now Sadie --  with a wonderful home on the beach!  Sadie even has a private beach in her backyard where she plays in the sand.

Sadie also goes on boat rides with Nick, Barbara, and Allie!  Allie had to show her the ropes at first, but Sadie does just fine now.  We miss Sadie, but we are so happy for her!  Thank you, Nick & Barbara!