Ben, a beautiful 1.5-year-old dog, was born into a world of darkness. From the moment he opened his eyes, he could not see the light, colors, or the faces of his mother and siblings. Despite his disability, Ben had a heart full of curiosity and love.
Ben as a 5 month old baby
But his innocence was shattered when he was taken away from his mother and sold to an abusive owner. For the first few months of his life, he was forced to live in a cramped, filthy cage, with no love or compassion. The only touch he felt was the harsh hands of his cruel owner, who hit him when he cried or barked.
As Ben grew older, his blindness made him even more vulnerable. He couldn’t see the obstacles in his path, the toys he wanted to play with, or the people he longed to be with. He was trapped in a world of darkness, loneliness, and fear.
One day, a kind-hearted person rescued Ben from his misery and brought him to our rescue. But despite the love and care he’s received, he still struggles with the trauma of his past. He flinches at sudden movements, cowers in fear at loud noises, and hesitates to trust anyone.
However, we won’t give up on him. We will continue to shower him with patience, understanding, and love. We are teaching him to navigate the world, using his other senses, and helping him overcome his fears. We will never give up on him, even when he has fits of frustration.
Ben is slowly beginning to trust again. He wags his tail at the sound of our voices, perk his ears up when we approach, and even nuzzles his nose into our hands.
Over time, Ben will blossom into a happy and confident dog. He will learned to run, play, and explore the world, using his nose, ears, and heart. He’ll wag his tail in delight when he feels the warmth of his family’s love, and his once-fearful heart will be filled with trust and joy.
Ben’s story is a testament to the power of resilience and love. It reminds us that, no matter how dark our world may seem, there is always a ray of hope that can lead us to a brighter future.
But we can’t do it without your help. Please sponsor a dog today and help us fulfill our mission to help dogs like Ben.
We’re excited to announce our new monthly birthday puppy party. To get your free invitation to this fun event, simply create an easy profile for your pet.
This video shows you how to set up, or follow our step-by-step guide to set up for your pet’s profile.
We’re having a talent show – and everybody (and their fashionable dogs) are welcome. Come out and show us your talent and you could win money! We’ll have a doggie fashion show for our second act showing off the latest in haute couture, fanciful grooming, or cute outfits.
Event Details
Join us at the Ramona Town Hall
Saturday, November 5, 2022 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Admission includes an entertaining show with Aubrey Leigh as our emcee.
Our Chili Cook Off is shaping up to be an amazing fundraiser! Your ticket gets you into the event, a one-of-a-kind handcrafted bowl AND all the chili you can eat.
Sometimes at our rescue we get to name the dogs, and it’s fun. Marsha was one of those cases. She came to us a sweet. loving playful little girl. While with us we were so happy to see how she got along with every other dog, even tolerated Charlie being mean and barking at her. Nothing seemed to phase this sweet girl As we continued to observe her pack play behavior we realized that she was one of the most well-balanced dogs we had at the rescue.
As many of you know we have a trainer at The Rescued Pup that specializes in helping people with their stressed out, or naughty dogs. One of her clients had a dog that was struggling with separation anxiety. Our trainer decided to foster Marsha to her clients for one week. This would give Marsha a break from the rescue life and give the family dog a chance to see stress free crate behavior. The hope was for Marsha to model the benefits of a crate.
The week came and went and the family took amazing care of Marsha, Marsha made new friends and learned what it felt like to be part of a loving family. The family dog learned the crate was actually an ok place to be and instead of barking and drooling he could enjoy a treat or take a nap when he was in his.
At the end of the week Marsha came back to the rescue, the foster Mom was sad, the family dog seemed stressed and Marsha was so so sad.
The agreement was that we would wait until the weekend to see how the family dog did in the crate. He reverted back to the previous behavior rather quickly. Marsha was flat out depressed for 3 days, but then she started to play with the other dogs again and she even ate a little something.
We met with the family on the phone and it was agreed that Marsha would become a part of their family. Hooray! I had the pleasure of transporting her to her new forever home. As we loaded her into the vehicle she seemed so confused and sad. It was a look we see often, and my heart felt a pang of sadness for what must be going through her mind. What had car rides meant to her in her short life? A trip to the shelter to be dumped as a “stray”. Then a long trip to the rescue, a trip to the vet where unmentionable things happened (hint: she had to wear a plastic cone after) and of course the trip away from what she clearly thought was her new family. I wished I could tell her that she was going back. As we left the rescue I saw the same sad dog, laying flat in the crate, head down, ears down, heartbreakingly sad.
We made pretty good time that day. As we got off the freeway and closer to the area of her foster home, I sew her head pick up, her ears perked a little. And then when we turned at the main light before their house she sat up, nose in the air and started breathing and smelling so hard! It felt like I could hear her thoughts, so I said to her “Yes! We are going to see them!” I rolled down all the windows so she could know where we were and as we pulled onto their street I could see in her face that she knew where we were.
The family had gathered everyone together for the reintroduction and filmed it. It was so touching to see her run person to person and back to the dog to tell everyone how much she had missed them and give them hugs.
I’ve transported many dogs to their forever homes or to rescue from the shelter, but that day will stick with me forever.
Congratulations to Marsha! Now Wanda McPickle on finding the most wonderful forever family.
Having a dog rescue means we’ve been dealing with deadly viruses for over 8 years. Parvovirus has many issues in common with our current virus. This understanding of viruses is why we chose to close our shop to visitors. This is also why we sanitize our rescue shop regularly (at least once a day).
While we can’t tell you what to do in your personal lives, we wanted to share how we handle quarantines.
As much as we love our dogs, you (hopefully) love your human family even more. Protecting the vulnerable in our lives is what is most important. Hopefully sharing this information will offer some insight as to what the authorities are trying to achieve with the quarantine requests and orders.
Education – About the parvo virus: it is invisible, just like COVID-19, you can’t see the shedded cells. The virus is spread through shedded cells. For Parvo once a dog has the virus they undergo treatment for at least 10 days, but up to 21 days. During this time they are contagious and are kept in a medical quarantined area. Once the dog is no longer showing symptoms of the virus, they remain in quarantine for an additional 2 weeks. This is because they are shedding the cells for 2 weeks even after they are done with the sickness. Because the now recovered dog is still contagious, they are kept from the general population and any dog at risk is kept in a separate healthy quarantined area until they are no longer vulnerable, or until they have their shots.
Quarantine – Many times when you come to our shop you will see new puppies in their own pack and play yard, inside of another play yard. That’s because puppies are our most vulnerable dogs. Parvo is in many places and many dogs come into contact with shedded cells. These dogs are not at risk of contracting the virus because they have been immunized for it. However, these dogs can be carriers and if allowed to interact with vulnerable dogs, they could infect them. Likewise, if a human has been to a different shelter, a dog park, a breeder, or any other place where there are other dogs, they could have the virus on them. This is why our puppies can’t be held and aren’t allowed to touch any area that hasn’t been sanitized. This requires a lot of extra effort, and some say that we are over the top, but since instilling these simple measures in 2014, we have lost zero dogs to Parvo.
Protective Equipment – We have a medical quarantine area at our rescue. This is typically in a separate room. There is a disinfectant solution that we step in before we enter and leave. We use bleach and water. We have gowns we put on before we enter and remove to be washed once we leave the room (at the door). We wear gloves and dispose of them in a covered container before we walk out. If there is any concern that a puppy came into contact with a person, an item or an area we use a virucidal cleaning agent (not on the people).
Again, as much as we love our dogs we know you probably (hopefully) love your family more. We hope this extremely simple explanation of how seriously a deadly virus is handled by our rescue can help explain the measures being taken by the authorities.
This post is not meant as a medical reference article. And in an effort to keep it readable and not a tool to deal with insomnia, we left out the nitty gritty details.
People say it takes a big heart to do rescue. We agree and think it also takes a big heart for some of our rescues to pull through. Giselle is a perfect example of a dog with a big heart and a strong will to live.
I remember the day Giselle was brought to the shelter like it happened yesterday. Two nicely dressed women brought her in and said they had found her in an abandoned lot while our for their lunch walk. At first glance, she seemed like a little old lady, her frail body hunched over, fur missing, eyes dull showing signs of cataracts and she smelled of skin infections. I was on my way out the door with my newest load of dogs and remembered feeling so frustrated because for every 5 we pulled it seemed like 7 more came in.
Giselle after her first vet visit.
The next trip out to the shelter was just 4 days later, and the tiny old lady dog was still there – she was still on the legal timeline to be held as a stray. I asked about her and almost fell over when the Director at the shelter told me the dog was roughly 8 weeks old. 8 weeks?! I asked if I could pull her as a foster and get her to the vet that day. Within 20 minutes we were at the local vet getting this little baby dewormed, some bloodwork run and ordering special nutrient-dense food. We named her Giselle because she was long and lanky like a Gazelle and when she was wrapped up in my arms and her body finally relaxed, I could see how beautiful she was. I felt lucky to be able to foster her until her time at the shelter was up.
No big surprise, no one ever came to claim her. 4 days later we were back at the vet with Giselle, and she had lost weight. I also noted to the vet how much she was urinating and how the medicated shampoo wasn’t helping, her skin was sloughing off, and the smell was getting worse. He checked her blood sugar level, a couple of times, it was 1100! Now we knew what her issue was, she was a diabetic little baby. She was so tiny none of the insulin would work for Giselle. We were sent home with a plan to try and get just a little more weight on her, check her blood sugar once a day and come back as soon as she weighed enough for insulin shots.
Thankfully Giselle loved baby food chicken and she put on the weight easily once we cut out the sugar-infused diet we’d been feeding her! Being relatively new to rescue, having a dog with an ongoing medical issue was something that was so frightening and overwhelming, but this little girl needed me so I stepped up. Giselle had to have her blood sugar levels checked hourly to start, and had insulin shots 2 times a day. She was a brittle diabetic which meant that she could crash out with no warning. So Giselle went *everywhere* with me. She went to my son’s Cross Country meets, she went to shelters to pull dogs, she went to the grocery store, she sat on a pillow outside my shower. She loved everyone that she met and always seemed to know that people were trying to help her.
Giselle and her furever family
In rescue, it’s common to get a dog that you figure is just going to stay with you for their whole life. I used to joke that we didn’t have a lot of people coming in asking if we had any juvenile diabetic dogs with missing fur, bad eyes and messed up teeth – but then one day an angel named Tony came to our little shop. He met Giselle and it was love at first sight. He didn’t care that she needed shots, or that she’d have to have her blood sugar tested constantly, he didn’t seem to notice that her fur was missing in some spots, he just saw her heart and her will to live and he adopted her.
Giselle was his princess and he took such amazing care of her. He got her skin problems figured out, her tiny little body had many infections both fungal and bacterial and while we had been treating them, they ran deeper than we knew. Giselle’s family spared no expense in getting her the absolute best care. It’s hard to believe but she even balanced out her sugar crashes and was living a pretty normal life as the princess of the house.
Giselle in her own play yard
Unfortunately, even with the best care, her body had been through a lot of stress, her organs especially. Last week Giselle’s owner had to make the difficult decision to let her go. She was in renal failure and the prognosis was not good. She was surrounded by those that loved her when she passed and for that, we are so thankful.
The heart of rescue is a strong, big, beautiful thing. Tony needed some advice and help with what to do with Giselle’s care in her last days. Tony reached out to the founder, Kelly Smisek at Frosted Faces Foundation. Even though Giselle wasn’t from her rescue, she graciously agreed to help Tony. For those that aren’t familiar, Frosted Faces Foundation helps mainly senior dogs and is familiar with medical issues affecting the aged dog. Their help was so appreciated.
I know Giselle is running around somewhere having the time of her life, finally strong enough to play. And I know the heart of that little rescue dog touched my spirit from the moment I met her. I hope you get to truly experience the heart of a rescue in your life too.
We are a 501(c)3 NonProfit Organization which means your donations may be tax deductible!
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