The "other" news of the week
Here’s the regular weekly update (on top of the 179 dogs we’re looking after from the big rescue).
By Kerry Clair, Best Friends manager at Pets Alive.Well, by now you know that the sanctuary here was the recipient of 200 dogs this past Saturday night from the big Best Friends puppy mill rescue. First question here was: Where will we put so many dogs? Luckily, we’d just finished revamping the old kennel for the winter months, so we have some extra space temporarily.
We met the truck at 2 in the morning and got all the dogs settled, and we’ve had more than 1,000 adoption applications in three days. Of course, when people think of a “puppy mill”, they think of puppies. But most of the dogs are adults who were used for breeding. They’re all starved for attention and affection, and they all need really good homes! But please do not call us here at the shelter. We’ve had so many calls our phone system has been shutting down. If you are interested in adopting a dog fill out an application (click on the Adopt tab at the top of this page). And bear with us; it may take a couple of weeks before we can get back to you.
By the way, there’s full news of the puppy mill rescue at
http://network.bestfriends.org/puppymillrescue/Also, if you are a New York state vet and can help us with this, please contact me at info@petsalive.com
Other dog news: Additional good news is that ALL OF OUR GERIATRICS (except for one) have been adopted. This week we found homes for Mama Mia, Kita, Ginger, and Shaggy. That left only Hobbs and Mooch and we have a home for one (or the other) of them as well! The remaining geriatric dog will be going back to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary to be spoiled their geriatric rooms! Such lucky dogs. Thank you, adopters, for seeing the worth in these wonderful dogs!
Cats: M&M, our resident office cat (since Joey Bingers got adopted) has been a little put out since we moved our office upstairs. She simply does not like it and is demanding we move back DOWNSTAIRS. Every chance she gets she darts out and down the stairs and meows at our old office door. Sigh. Finally the cat staff set her up in that room with toys and litter and food and now she can come upstairs part of the day when she is feeling in need of our company and can go back down to her own room when she needs privacy or gets sick of us. She is very spoiled! When she is up here though it is very cute to see her playing with my dog Jasper (who often comes to work with me). M&M will hide on top of a box under a table and as Jasper goes by she reaches out a poor and THWAPS him. He spins around but sees nothing! It is a wonder we get ANYTHING done at all around here as the animal entertainment is so fascinating.
Birds: This week, Linda B came and took home Elliot and Turk, two of the last four birds here. We have been concerned to see if these two would be happy in a new environment as birds stress very easily. But Linda and already took two other birds from here as well and the latest is that all the birds were THRILLED to see each other and everyone is doing well.
Donations: This week I just MUST mention some really helpful donations we received.
Beth and Joanne donated all their mowing equipment. A gorgeous ride-on mower, a push mower, a weed whacker, a dumpster for the mower, some gas cans and more. We so appreciated this as we were weed whacking one of our lawns since our push mower died.
John S donated a dozen brand new walkie-talkies, battery chargers and rechargeable batteries for them. This was heaven sent as our old ones were barely functional.
Toni brought us a much needed computer monitor and some other computer equipment, as well as some cat towers!
Becky and George bring things every week and this week they helped us with a lot of puppy items. Thank you guys!
Lisa brought a Littman stethoscope – a handy item to have right now with all the newborns!
Rose T donated some much needed x-pens. The mamas and their brood have been living in ISO units and we really wanted to get them out of there. These x-pens will allow us to set up some spacious new “hotel” quarters for them.
We also had people donate washer and dryers, couches, stoves and other items we put on the wish list. Thank you all so much. We could not do this without you.
And special thanks to all the volunteers who have been down here every single day to help us out in our time of need. You are all so wonderful!