A pretty big scare

Of course, like any other day, it begins with a lot of cleaning, today especially. I began by helping take out the dogs for their morning breaks and once that was done got to scooping poop out of the kennels. Once I got them all cleaned out, food all ready with special diets included, I brought the dogs back up. It might have only taken a few sentences to explain it but in reality it takes over an hour.

After all of the dogs were done I headed over to take care of the rabbitat. Usually around this time there is another staff member that comes over to help out but no such luck today. Luckily though there was a volunteer that helped out by taking the rabbits down to their runs which made the cleaning very easy. After sweeping up and changing out the garbage bags I went back to the office and noticed that there were still a few morning cleaning duties that hadn't been signed off. This of course is when I went for the "trifecta".

I headed over to the cattery and helped out by sweeping and of course my favorite, scooping. Luckily just about everything was done in here and what wasn't just took a few minutes. In any case, it's not every day that I get to clean up after dogs, rabbits, and cats.

After all of the cleaning was done I was talking to our med staff to learn about to larger dogs that were in our barn yard since the normal kennels really weren't big enough. It turns out that one of them had been up at the front desk on one of the days that I was off and seemed to be having some problems. She was foaming at the mouth, had a rock hard stomach, and was in some obvious pain. Thank goodness she wasn't at the barnyard at this time and our vet just happened to be walking by because what she had was very serious. It turns out she had bloat, a life threatening condition, that calls for immediate surgery. Luckily we had the right eyes on her at the right time and we were able to get everything under control. She is back at the shelter now doing just fine. I hate to think what could have happened if no one had been watching her.

Surprisingly the rest of the day was incredibly busy. Along with the busy work of taking out poop buckets, setting up new kennels, and disinfecting yards we had a new group of second chance dogs coming in along with a whole lot of showings. I had almost forgot it was Columbus day when I noticed that all of the showings were with stay at home parents and their children. Similar to yesterday though most of the showings didn't go anywhere but with the new group of dogs there will be definitely more of selection very soon.

To the new group of dogs, talk about a cute group. I am always surprised at the animals that are brought into the shelter. Not because there is a never ending supply, which there is, but because just when you think you have seen it all here comes something totally different. You will have to wait for future blogs to see them all, but here is one of my favorites. We're calling him a sheepdog mix but you never really know. All I know is that is super friendly and very adorable.

Closing out I wanted to talk about my girl Liza again. She is a second chance dog, treeing coonhound, that came to us via Mississippi several months ago. Her fear and timidness caused us to put her on foster away from the stress of the shelter, but there hasn't been much interest in her. Recently though we were able to get her in a local paper and we have finally sparked some phone calls, one in particular seemed promising. I don't want to get my hopes up but as soon as I hear something I will let you know. As always thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.