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Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!

Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!

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.

What A Pain! The Truth About Dealing With A Potentially Deadly Virus

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

The Heart of Rescue

Giselle as a baby on her way to gaining weight

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.

Giselle Christmas 2019

Cruz the Wonder Chi

Meet Cruz, our newest rescue. His pull request came to my inbox as urgent from a trusted networker. We saw his story and decided we needed to pull him since he is the type of dog we have great success with. In his shelter paperwork he is noted as fearful, hard to handle, possibly feral and an escape artist with a need to flee.

We pulled him Wednesday. Thursday he was socialized with our own personal dogs in one of our training rooms. It was uneventful. He didn’t want to interact with the dogs, he was a tiny bit interested in observing them and their interactions with me, but mostly he was searching for a way to escape.

Today was his first walk on a leash. The shelter notes said he was not able to be leashed so we knew even getting a leash on him was going to be progress. As usual, we decided that since getting the leash on was so easy and he didn’t seem too incredibly uncomfortable outside with us, we would add in some pack members.

We started our walk and most of the pack ignored him. He did not fight walking on the leash (probably because we used the look forward, move forward technique). We like to break our walks up into 2 sections. The first is everyone’s time to go potty and socialize, at about the halfway point, we always stop for pets and play and finally finish with a walk with some sort of purpose. This video was taken during half time. We are so proud of Cruz and his accomplishments in such a short amount of time!

The Rescued Pup’s Grand Reopening

The Rescued Pup’s Grand Reopening

It’s hard to believe it has been 6 years since we opened our first Boutique. Early 2013 we opened the doors of the first Rescued Pup Boutique. Our idea was simple, but new. Open a rescue only pet boutique that let customers come and observe the dogs playing in a play area with toys, each other and comfy blankets and beds. We had a wonderful picture window with a seat for the dogs to showcase themselves on.

Our original Boutique featured a picture window where dogs could showcase themselves.

The inside of the shop featured a comfy couch to sit on while you visited with the dogs as well as adorable pet supplies like beds, leashes, collars, clothes, combs, and more. We worked so hard to create a peaceful place to come and visit rescue animals without the extreme conditions a shelter has. We educated adults and children alike, held training classes and some really fun fund raising days. Dog washes, car washes, cake walks, all times when the community came together and enjoyed our dogs.

Droopy, A Bassett Hound
Droopy the Bassett Hound, came to our rescue with Intermediate Grade Melanoma Cancer.

Unfortunately, we had a couple of dogs in 2015 that needed a lot of medical care. We were saddened to close our doors, but thankful that we were able to save Rosie, a puppy that needed heart surgery. She’s pictured below with her hero, Dom, a young man that saved her life by setting up a lemonade donation stand in his neighborhood.

Rosie the puppy that needed life-saving heart surgery meeting her hero for the first time.

Fast forward 5 1/2 years and as the saying goes, with age and experience come wisdom. We are opening our boutique in the same community but in a different location with more floor space, and foot traffic. We are able to have a larger lounge area for visiting with the dogs in addition to a play room that is much larger.

In an effort to keep the past from repeating we have a few more revenue-generating options for our dog-loving community. We have our Pup Pup Club with 2 levels of membership, daycare, training classes, private training sessions, group classes, and in-home training. Our Peace and Paws Jewelry will be for sale along with other awesome pet supplies perfect for your fur baby.

Join our Pup Pup Club and your pet will receive monthly day care or play dates and training.

We are excited to open our doors and welcome the community back to visit our rescue dogs. See you all very soon!

Click here to donate to our building fund.

Save Or Shave

Save Or Shave

#GivingTuesday

Save The Hair / Shave The Head

For those of you that don’t know, we are a local Ramona-based dog rescue that pulls dogs in danger of being put down from all over Southern California. We take the sick, injured, old, young, and naughty pups that are out of options.

When we pull a dog, they stay with our rescue until they find their forever home.

 

This requires funds!! And since our rescue is volunteer run and survives solely on donations we have fundraisers to help us cover our costs.

– Here’s the deal –

To take part in our fundraiser you can vote by donating to either the Save the Hair or Shave the Head – and our Founder, Michelle, will either shave her head or save her hair.

Then join us Tuesday 11/28/17, at Pamo Valley Winery Tasting Room to watch the shaving, or celebrate the save! Results will be announced at 5 pm.

Kids are welcome to attend, come on out and support Ramona’s local dog rescue, have some fun and enjoy local wines.

If you’d rather donate in person, our donation voting jars can be found at Pamo Valley Winery Tasting Room.

 

Local Businesses Work Together To Help Rescue Dogs

Local Businesses Work Together To Help Rescue Dogs

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, what do an animal hospital, real estate office and propane company have in common. The answer is simple. They all worked together to help our rescue dogs sleep a little more comfortably.img_3320

It all started when Kamps Propane in Ramona sent out a sales letter and accidentally put the wrong phone number. The number belonged to Adobe Animal Hopsital in Ramona. Eddie from Kamps contacted Adobe to apologize and ask how they could make itright. Adobe told them they could make a donation to a local animal non-profit. Adobe Animal Hospital then referred Eddie to Coldwell Banker Country Realty in Ramona due to their dedication to helping local dog rescues. And Coldwell Banker sent Eddie to The Rescued Pup.

Here’s the kicker, just two days before we were at Costco buying supplies and as we walked by the dog beds I mentioned that it hurt my heart that we didn’t have beds for the dogs and that unfortunately they were too expensive for our budget ($0.00 for items like dog beds).

Yesterday we picked up the most wonderful, plush, comfy beds for our rescues, the same ones we saw at Costco. We are extremely thankful and humbled by the support of these local businesses. We are a small rescue and we’ve been going strong for over 4 years now. Our town has shown us such love and kindness and for that we are forever grateful.

 

 

A Home For The Holidays

This phrase is common and conjures up visions of a crackling fire, holiday decorations, a piping hot cup of cocoa and family gathered together. In a word, happiness.

12036985_527133717445026_3128105194777790080_nFor our rescue it has a different meaning. We’ve continuously struggled with the restrictions on the number of dogs we can have on our property. Recently we were able to sell our home and are temporarily on a property that doesn’t have the number limitations.

What we are lacking is a home for the dogs that is their very own. While we are in this transitional time we are in desperate need of large kennel pieces to set up daytime play areas for the dogs to be able to stretch their legs and have a place that smells familiar to them.

We’re raising funds on #GivingTuesday to help kick-start our giving season and to support and grow our “A Home For The Holidays” campaign with the goal to be able to have a home for all of our dogs during this transitional time.

Not only will we benefit from the funds raised on #GivingTuesday, but we will also earn matching funds from our partner, Network for Good, for gifts given online— making your support go even further.

Please consider making your year-end gift on December 1. If you wish to make your gift go further with matching funds, give online at https://www.therescuedpup.com/donate/.

Rosie’s Journey

Rosie’s Journey

It seems like a million years ago when we picked up a Yorkie mix mommie and her babies. That dark January night I had no idea that I would go on such a crazy journey with one of the tiny pups.

Rosie, one of six, was an energetic puppy and we noticed from the first time we held her how hard and fast her heart was beating. When the pups were about 8 weeks old we took them to be fixed and Rosie was adopted out a few days later. Her first vet visit with her new family revealed a heart murmur.Rosie06014

We took Rosie back out to our vet and the heart murmur was confirmed, an EKG was then ordered to determine the cause of the murmur. PDA was the diagnosis. Rosie was given a diagnosis that we had until her 1st birthday to get her surgery before any permanent heart damage would occur.

We promptly started a Go Fund Me page, www.GoFundMe.com/FixRosiesHeart and started beating the drums letting everyone we knew know about this sweet puppies medical needs. Unfortunately donations were slow to come in, and then Rosie had a couple of episodes where she was struggling to catch her breath. We rushed her to her new cardiologist and after an exam and additional EKG it was determined that she had less than a month before permanent damage to her heart would occur.

To say that I was wrecked is an understatement, all of my sharing, the sharing of our supporters and there was no way we were going to raise the funds to cover the surgery costs thinks were looking dismal, and then an 11 yr old boy that lived across the county from our rescue found out about Rosie’s plight. He went straight into action in his own community and started spreading the word about Rosie and her need for surgery. This young man set up a refreshment stand and asked for donations for Rosie as he happily handed out free cookies and lemonade to his neighbors. He also printed out flyers from Rosie’s GoFundMe page and posted them on all of the community mailboxes. Our rescue had no idea this was happening, we just started to see donations coming in on a regular basis. Finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

I had the opportunity to speak via email to the young man’s parents and tell them how amazing it was that he was going to save her life. It was Father’s Day and I had mentioned that I would love to surprise the young man by bringing Rosie over to meet him. I received a message back that said the local news team was on their way to do a piece on the story and his refreshment stand, so I grabbed Rosie, gave her a quick bath, and off we went to meet her HERO!

The interview was great and it seemed like Rosie knew who was working to save her right as soon as she got out of the car. She covered the boy’s face in kisses! The interview aired that evening and within 15 minutes of airing we had met our goal. We ended up going a little bit over our goal which was a blessing because Rosie’s surgery had complications and also went over it’s estimated cost.

domloco

This Monday, July 13, little Rosie has her follow up appointment for her surgery. I’ve invited her new family, her HERO and his family to come to the appointment. This is truly the beginning of an exciting chapter for so many lives and the end of a journey that ended up touching the hearts of thousands of people. Thank you Dom Loco. <3

Meet Mugsy

Meet Mugsy

Little Mugsy is a favorite on the morning news! Check out his debut, he is a little ham and he was happy to share his personality with the news casters.

Mugsy is a funny little guy. He had a pretty big chip on his shoulder when he came into our rescue.  We’ve spent some time helping him understand how he fits into our pack and where his place is. He is coming around nicely and we are hoping to get him into his forever home soon!

Please consider adopting Mugsy if he seems like a good match for your family. View his Pet Profile.