The gangs all here

Well, most of them, anyhow. Prairie is being babysat at her honorary grandma's house while this house of crazies settles down. She has a very good application and should be heading for her forever home this coming weekend.

The plane load of New Rattitude critters arrived yesterday and the cargo workers were practically begging us to take them away. Nervous from the novel experience of a plane ride the three of them were barking up a storm. They settled right down once were in the car though.

Getting them on the plane was a bit of an adventure for our IL volunteer. She had one of the boys, Gatsby, with her but the other 2 dogs, Emma and Munch, were being transported from their shelters in Western IL to our volunteer and arrived just an hour before she had to get them on the plane. Imagine her surprise when Emma, who was expected to be 15-18 pounds was 25 pounds! Since she didn't have a crate large enough to fly Emma she had to purchase one from the transporter and then rush all the dogs to O'Hare. In addition to being a big girl, poor Emma had a horrible flea infestation.

Luckily I was forewarned about the fleas and was able to talk a customer at work (also an adopter of one of my dogs) to run down the street for me to the vet's and pick up a Capstar. I was leaving for the airport from work and wouldn't have time to get to a vet. Capstar tablets are used to kill all the fleas on a dog within 30 minutes and then are supposed to be followed up with Frontline. At the cargo facility on our end we gave her the Capstar tablet and then as soon as we arrived home Troy gave her a bath while I fed our dogs along with Munch, Elvis and Gatsby. Emma then ate and with a full belly and flea-free she was feeling MUCH better. Her and Elvis chased each other all over the yard and soon Munch and Gatsby joined in and it was a wild blur of spotted dogs.

As you can see in the photo, Emma is a bit of a mutt. We are calling her an honorary rat terrier. She has a wire coat that will be beautiful now that the fleas are gone and her hair will start thickening where she was chewing on herself. Her ears are floppy and it looks like before she became a "stray" she had recently weaned a litter of puppies. She has quite the underbite and all her bottom teeth show when she is relaxed so it looks a bit like she is making a face at you.

Gatsby is a brindle patterned rat terrier and looks like he might have a little Boston terrier in him. He's incredibly thin so we are feeding him a puppy food three times a day and trying to get some weight put back on him.

Munch was transported over the mountains to his foster home in Yakima. He is a pure-bred rattie and is hilarious. He's all crazy puppy and has much more energy than he does coordination. What a fun, wild little guy.

In the photo you can see Emma, playing in the back yard with Elvis.