Friend or Foe ..... who on earth knows.

I was sent a photo yesterday morning of supposed starving, neglected puppies via facebook (you know the one where everyone is "friends") and despite the hatred that was being spat at the owner of the pups I decided to find out the facts before joining in what eventually became nothing more than a witch hunt. The short version is that in speaking to the owner it appeared that her version of events was ever so slightly different - but to be sure and in an effort to appease the witch hunters I made the five hour round trip to check on the pups. I found a litter of three small pups that resembled typical hand reared pups that had been very ill during the first 2 weeks of their lives. However, not happy with these findings I then became the victim of the witch hunt which not only became very hurtful and very personal has made me think if rescue is really what I want to do after all. Having been told I must be blind and that I must be stupid by people that have not seen the pups or spoken to the owner my take on the human being right now is darn near zero. Especially as throughout the drive up there I was having to deal with the heartbreak from an owner who's old dog had reached the end and having called me from the vets had to say goodbye to their beautiful old man. He'd come from rescue after suffering a terrible life of numerous homes and he had had a life of neglect which in the end proved too much for his old body to cope with.
To put the record straight once and for all, the litter was not starved, nor were they neglected. They were taken 5/6 days early because the bitch was fitting. There were water pups that didn't survive (not drown in their food as someone said this morning) and the bitch had feaces in the uterus, the pups were all born full of infection and were subsequently rejected by the mother. The vet gave them only a few hours to live but the owner battled through thick and thin to save them and she did by hand rearing them on her own despite suffering MS. I have been appalled by the behaviour and the language of people who've been in the breed five minutes and assume they know it all. These same people are the future of this breed - gawd help us!
So on that note I'd better do some of the studying I should have been doing last night before I leave for my course tomorrow.

Kaboooooooooom !

I can't believe how busy rescue has suddenly got, I've said before that as soon as the kids go back to school after the Summer hols things go mad, but Monday alone was manic and I've actually lost track of who's been asked to do what - thank goodness for Georgia who is quite possible the most amazing thing that's happened in rescue for a long time. She takes so much pressure off of me organising home checks and pick ups and home visits but Monday was a particularly crazy day and it left me a little out of it come Tuesday. A lot of people I know with CFS/ME say that there's more bad days than good days, but yesterday was a particularly bad day to the point that I had to give in and take the day off - I've not been that bad in a very long time but Sunday's early start and Monday's rescue flurry certainly didn't help, on top of all of that the studying is really difficult. I have no idea how I am going to remember all of this stuff but did get alot of studying done yesterday much to Hilda's disgust as she had no idea that "PJ day" meant that I got the sofa! If nothing else I can now tell you the difference between a Viral infection and a bacterial infection - no idea why I need to know that in order to prescribe wormers but there you go.

Back to School

What a lovely weekend, there are so many bulldogs here and they are all so wonderful it's a real pleasure to spend time with them, shame really that we had to be away from the kennel all day Sunday but we had a fabulous day at the South of England Bulldog Club Champ show with the stall. We received some fantastic feed back on the Picnic too, so many who had been for the first time this year were eager to tell us just what a great time they'd had - makes it all worth while. The early start wasn't easy on a Sunday morning I can tell you, and creeping out without waking the kennel so they didn't bark the place down before Peter, Bev and Dawn arrived to see to them was fun - especially with a deisel engine - which incidentally is working fine following the enormous cock up in the week.


So now the countdown to my SQP exam begins. I have a one day course at MYF Vet Nurse Training on Friday and then next Friday is both the Base and the Companion Animal exam so the cramming has begun, despite the past 2 years of trying to learn this stuff I'm shocked at just how little has gone in! Wish me luck

Now it's a Hurricane!

In hindsight Wednesday evening was quite funny but at the time it was really scary - I've always said that the down side of owning a petrol car and a diesel van is that at some point the wrong fuel would go into one of them - and guess what!!! On our way up to London to collect a dog from the PDSA and a gift in we stopped for fuel - guess who started putting petrol in the diesel engine??? Thank fully I realised what I was doing at 99p and the garage assured me that as I had filled the tank to the brim with diesel all would be well. Well we made it to London and back without even a hiccup so I guess we got away with it, but didn't you just know that sooner or later that would be the inevitable cock up.
We had a lovely little girl come in via the RSPCA earlier on Wednesday and the 2 arrivals that night have brought us up to 6 at the kennel, there's 2 more coming tomorrow morning and the Battersea dog is due to land early next week and that's us full again, hard to imagine that this time last week we were scratching around for something to do!

The storm has hit

The weekend just gone we had just 2 bulldogs at our kennels in Midhurst and I joked about it being the Lull before the Storm. Well the storm has hit - with a new arrival Monday night and we have one due in at lunch time today and another due in tonight. Friday will also see the girls in Southampton come to the kennel as they have both come into season and the owners house move means we've run out of time. There is a probable home for one of them but we need to wait until the season is over before we move them now. A call from Battersea this morning also means another is pencilled in pending veterinary treatment. This is such a familiar pattern, as soon as the kids go back to school after the Summer hols the dogs literally land in their droves. The new kennel floor is fabulous though and I keep finding myself reasons to be out there LOL.
One of the dogs in our Oxford foster home was attacked by an off lead SBT at the end of last week, poor Paddy was due to go to his new home today but the vet has requested that we keep him in care until the treatment has finished - you can read the story in the Oxford Mail.

Lull Before the Storm

This weekend was certainly the perfect time to have the kennel floor done, already this morning I have had 5 new enquiries for dogs to be rehomed and 2 or 3 of them are going to need to come to the kennel. But the floor looks amazing and I thoroughly recommend this to anyone with a kennel - I never realised how much urine that concrete floor had absorbed over the past 12 years until he put the blow torch over it to make sure it was fully dry!!! and now everything is back in I am thrilled to bits with the outcome. What amazed me was how big the grooming/treatment room is without anything in it, and I did comment that he wasn't to let Diz see the floor without the pens, just in case he asked for his garage back! Sadly, now everything is back in place it doesn't look quite so massive any more but it was very theraputic to have a real good clear out. For more information about the company that laid this floor go to http://kennelflooring.co.uk/

FIVE MORE MINUTES .....

The picnic is a lot of fun but boy does it wipe me out! I noticed at the beginning of the week that ME/CFS has received some media coverage in so far as there's been a little more research to suggest that it's actually not all in the mind - wow, tell me something I don't know because I really could do with an energy boost right now but as the old saying goes there's no rest for the wicked. The kennels are thankfully very quiet and it looks like both Meghan and Tank are away soon which will just leave us with lovable - but very naughty Alfie. The new kennel maid, Annie has been doing a lot of work with Alfie and he's calming down a little on his walks, since the recent incident he's having to be walked on a double lead and a muzzle which he's not at all happy about but it allows us to actually work with the behaviour as opposed to worrying about him eating a passing poodle for breakfast. Being a young dog, he is very eager to please but bear in mind this wee chap has already had 4 homes and his dog aggression is almost definitely the result of being attacked by a PitBull as a pup and by all account it took 20 minutes to free him, so when you look at life from Alfies perspective hating male dogs is a justifiable reaction but it really doesn't do our rescue's (or the breeds) reputation much kudos !!!
At the beginning of the year we were giving a lovely donation in memory of Mrs Shirley Yap from her daughter, it was requested that some of the money be spent on improving the kennels and as we are currently unusually very quiet we're taking the opportunity to have the indoor kennel floor done. We tend to use the 3 pens inside as hospital pens so on Sunday the floor of all three pens and the grooming/treatment room will be laid with a purpose made resin via a company in Essex (Specialised Flooring Solutions Ltd). However, the down side is that the kennel has to be emptied and the grooming/treatment room contains a grooming table/scales, a fridge/freezer, kitchen units, feed station and quite possibly something horrendously yuk behind each one! Thankfully Dawn, Peter and Bev have kindly agreed to help out on Saturday so if you hear any of us squealing you know we've found something very unsavoury and hopefully very dead!
As the countdown begins for my SQP exam next month so do the preparations for the conference I've been asked to speak at. Under the Heading "RESCUE & REHOMING: The challenge to find a loving home for every dog" sees 5 speakers from different aspects of Rescue and Rehoming and you can read all about it via the face book page. There are 10 tickets reserved for bulldog people and a couple of them have already gone so if you want to witness my first ever attempt at public speaking feel free to come along for the laugh.

ARE WE THERE YET?

Well, what can I say, the 13th Annual Bulldog Picnic was quite possibly the best bulldog picnic EVER!!! Yes, I know I say that every year but OMG we lost count after 500 people had come through the gate! The additional parking this year was a godsend and my dad and one of our volunteers; Joanne coped admirably with the 100s of cars that needed to be placed in a way that didn't upset the residents of Pook Lane. Thanks also to everyone that followed directions and parked where they were supposed to.

The afternoon raised £3,000 for Bulldog Rescue and for the first time we started 2 hours earlier and asked a couple of speakers to talk. I wasn't sure how well this would be received, but Sue Phillips' Grooming demonstration and Steve Battens Behaviour talk were both very well attended and both received really good feedback with most people reporting that the talks were very helpful.

The entire event was this year filmed by Sky TV as part of a forthcoming documentary ("Dogumentary") due to be aired in November. They were there mainly to film the fancy dress competition as the documentary is following the 2 judges around different canine events, I did undertake an very awkward interview which I hope isn't used as I felt very uncomfortable talking to a camera in the middle of a field, but they have assured me that none of the footage will be used in a way that brings any more bad press to the breed and the director actually commented on what a fantastic breed the bulldog is. "Rambo" won this year and I must admit he looked absolutely fantastic - bearing in mind part of the documentary will be putting voices to some of the dogs it's going to be hillarious to hear what he has to say about his afternoon.

As usual the Rescue Parade bought in the crowd and as this is the highlight of my day too it was just so wonderful to see some of the dogs come back to see us, all looking so well and happy. After which we showed off 2 dogs from the Kennel that were looking for homes, Mo and Meghan had a fantastic afternoon, and both were absolutely shattered when they got back to the kennel.

Sadly, Mo didn't wake up the next morning, but I'd like to think that she died in the middle of a lovely dream remembering her day out as she really did seem to enjoy her afternoon out. Ironically, Mo arrived in rescue at last year's picnic so exactly a year to the day she decided it was time to leave, a big shock for me I can tell you, but she looked so peaceful in her bed fast asleep that I just hope she had fun on her last day and that she has fond memories of me and the rest of kennel crew that have helped to care for her this last year. Run free Mo, thank you for chosing us to wait for.

So, now that everything is finally put away for another year and we go back to the usual day to day stuff we are already looking forward to next years picnic - the 14th Annual Bulldog Picnic takes place on Saturday 3rd September - put it in your diary NOW