Easy ways you can help us save little dogs!!!

I've talked before about using the goodsearch.com search engine as an easy way to raise money for Ratbone Rescues (1 penny per search), but here are two more ways you can help even more while you shop for groceries or gifts.

Ratbone Rescues has been registered as a charitable organization within the "Kroger Cares" program which means that you can earn 5% of everything you spend at a Kroger affiliated grocery or jewelry stores for Ratbone Rescues. Some of the many grocery store chains owned by Kroger are Fred Meyer, Fry's Food and Drug, Fry's Marketplace, King Soopers, Smith's Food and Drug, Smith's Marketplace, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, City Market, Hilander, Jay-C, Pay-less Supermarket, Owen's, Dilons, QFC, Gerbes, Foods Co., Baker's, Fred Meyer Jewelers, Littman Jewelers, and Barclay Jewelers.

Money raised goes into Ratbone's general fund and pays for the vetting costs of the hundreds of rat terriers that we rescue each year. All you have to do is order a $5 Kroger gift card from us (pre-loaded with $5), then refill that card and use the card for purchasing items at Kroger affiliated stores. For every dollar loaded onto the card, Ratbone Rescues will be paid 5%. For a household that spends $100 a week on groceries, that would be $240 a year being donated to Ratbone. If you buy your gas at a Kroger gas station it's even more. Or do you buy people gift cards for places like itunes, restaurants, the Gap, etc.? Well, consider using your Kroger card to purchase the gift cards at the gift card center within the store. They have a ton to choose from. It's SO easy! If you are interested in taking part in this program, email me at adoptapup@earthlink.net for more info.

The other way you can earn money while you shop is through goodshop.com . Just designate Ratbone Rescues as the organization that you goodshop for and then link from the goodshop.com Website to the store that you want to shop at. Just about anywhere that you would think to spend money online is part of this program: itunes, Target, expedia.com, Amazon.com, Toys 'r' Us, Walmart, various computer companies and even ebay! If you use the link above it will take you to the goodshop.com home page which shows the most popular online stores. To the left of this page the shops can be browsed by categories: clothing, pets, food, jewelry, you name it. If you link to the store through the goodshop.com site (with Ratbone Rescues designated as the charity on the drop-down list) then a percentage of what you spend will be donated to Ratbones. Sometimes up to 10% or more, but mostly around the 4-5% range. It's easy to do and costs you nothing.

The more people who are willing to help us out and shop this way, the more dogs we can save! Even if you just spend a little at these stores, every penny adds up and your time and effort expended on these fundraising programs are next to nothing. Thanks in advance for joining in and helping raise money for dogs who deserve a chance for a happy, healthy life.

Luci has an application!

Wow! After less than a week with us, someone has decided that little Miss Luci would be a perfect fit for their family. The home visit and paperwork still needs to happen, but I have a good feeling about it. She would have a fur-brother about her same age and size, which would be perfect. Luci LOVES to run and wrestle and play with other dogs and I was hoping we would find her a family with another small, young dog for her to play with.

As usual, it will be sad to say goodbye to such a sweet little girl, but it will be the happy ending that she deserves.

I took Luci to the Pet Market here in town to buy her a snazzy new Silverfoot collar and while we were there the owner gave her this pink tie-dye t-shirt. This photo was snapped soon after that in the back yard.

Suki getting spayed - finally!

Well, after 3 1/2 months of battling the mange, Suki went to the vet yesterday for a skin scrape and it turned up negative. They would have kept her and spayed her then, but I had already fed her breakfast. So first thing this morning I drove her out to the vet and dropped her off. The surgery will happen sometime this morning and I will find out how things went this afternoon. Then tomorrow morning I'll be able to go pick her back up. Along with the spay surgery, she'll also be having her baby canines pulled since her adult canines have fully come in and the baby ones show no sign of budging.

It was tough leaving her there because she looked so scared, even though I know how kind they are at the vets and how much attention they give the animals. I left her blankie with her and a favorite toy in hopes that having familiar things around her will calm her down a bit. It won't be long now and she'll be heading to her forever home. We will all miss her horribly, as she's been here long enough to feel like one of the family. Luckily we know her new family, and although they are all the way in Denver, they will keep us updated on her adventures and send lots of photos. She will be a spoiled little girl and should transition into her new life fairly quickly.

The photo above was taken yesterday afternoon in the back yard during a short-lived break in the rain showers. The dogs had a blast chasing each other and soaking up the sun, and came inside just in time to avoid the rain when it started back up.

Our newest foster: Lucy

Last night we picked up our newest foster dog from the airport. At this point I don't know much about her other than her name is Lucy, and that she's around 4-5 months old.

The Ratbone Rescues Team extraordinaire transported Lucy from the Midwest (I believe) down to the Rat Terrier Jamboree that took place in Sweetwater, Tennessee last weekend, and from there one of our local Ratbone gals here in Washington, Levecke, carried her on the plane and brought her back to Washington. We met them at the airport last night around 10:30pm and did the puppy hand off.

She wasn't very happy about having to sleep in the crate last night, away from people, but we turned on the radio for her and she quieted down after about 5 minutes of whining. This morning all of last nights timidity was gone and she had a long romp with Suki and Frodo, giving both of them a run for the money, thanks to her puppy exuberance.

She's absolutely darling and extremely well behaved. We look forward to telling you more as we learn the details of her story.

In the photo above, Lucy(R) and Suki(L) strike a pose in the middle of a wrestling match on the couch.

Suki gets a bit of culture

We took both of the dogs with us on a day trip to Olympia, Washington this weekend and Suki did wonderfully. She was quiet in the car, even while Frodo whined and cried for most of the drive, and when we stopped at the sculpture park and walked around she was her curious little self. She stopped and sniffed everything, while we were busy keeping Frodo from peeing on the art.

Her favorite section (and Frodo's least favorite) of the large sculpture park was the "Sound Garden" which featured about 10 different pieces of sculpture that emitted sounds when you hit them with a mallet. The photo shown is of Suki trying to figure out what the heck Troy is doing to make the sound she is hearing. Other photos show Frodo straining at his leash to get away from the noisemakers.

Although Suki is still bleeding, we are moving into week three and I'm guessing that by the end of the week she'll finish up her season. Her vet visit that was scheduled for today (to do a skin scrape to check on the mange) is postponed until next Monday. I want to wait for the scrape until she's done with her season and ready for the spay. Although the mange is still present, it seems to be a bit better and when the heat is over I'm guessing there will be a big improvement as her hormones settle down.

So here's the schedule that I'm pretty sure will work out:

1. Skin scrape on the 28th
2. Spay surgery sometime the week of the 28th
3. 5-7 days of recovery
4. Fly home to her new family

Since we likely will have a new foster dog flying here this coming Sunday from the Rat Terrier Jamboree, things are going to be busy here. I just don't know how those wonderful, crazy, Ratbone foster parents with 5 plus fosters do it. They have much more patience than I do, that's for sure.

Battle for the Blankie

Well last night we had a knock-down estrogen induced fight and Suki of course was the winner. (Poor Frodo is just such an absolute wuss.)

You see, as a puppy Frodo had his own polar fleece blankie that he dragged around like he was Linus in a Charlie Brown cartoon. At bedtime he'd run and find the blanket and drag it up the stairs to the bed. This was all very sweet and cute when he was 10 weeks old and struggling to pull a blanket much bigger than him. However he hit doggy puberty and "blankie" turned into "girlfriend." After that he took to wadding the polar fleece into a ball and humping away on it endlessly. Every evening around 8 pm out would come the blanket and Frodo would get jiggy. It ended up that we finally had to ban polar fleece blankets from him - he was a total sex addict, even after being neutered.

So now, almost 2 years later Suki enters the picture. In her crate she has a sweet pink flowered fleece throw that she likes to pull out of the crate and drag around. Now Suki too has reached puberty and since she's gone into heat she's taken to compulsively scraping and wadding up the blanket into a "nest". Unfortunately when Frodo sees her perfect little nest it's like a little light bulb flashes on over his head and all of a sudden he's grabs the blanket and gets busy bustin' a move.

So last night after two rounds of Suki making a nest and Frodo grabbing said nest and humping it, Miss Thing had had enough. She sat next to it and when Frodo slunk in and tried to grab it from the PMS Queen suddenly there was a blur of fur as Suki went all "Charlie's Angels" on his ass. The result is the sweet pink flowered blanket now sits atop the bookshelf and is only brought down at night to put in her crate when it's bedtime.

The photo above was taken awhile back, however, I felt the blur that is Suki perfectly represented last night's situation.

Suki: The Latest

Well, the package arrived with the goodies and Advantage Multi so I applied a dose on the 13th and stopped the Ivermectin. Now we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I figure that she must be at about the halfway point of her season now because even our gonad-challenged Frodo has decided she's pretty dang attractive and spends most of his time following her around, sniffing her butt and trying to hump her.

On Saturday it will be two weeks since the bleeding began, and I'm hoping that the worst of it will be over. Especially since we are going to take the dogs and head up to Whidbey Island for the weekend. Of course we'll keep her on a leash at all times and she'll still have to wear her puppy chastity belt aka doggy diaper, but I'm hoping that we won't have a pack of horny dogs following us everywhere.

She has a vet appointment scheduled for the 21st, but I will have to push it back again if she's still bleeding. Hopefully things will start moving along since we have another foster dog arriving on the 27th or 28th. Not that I'm ready to say goodbye to her - she is one of the sweetest dogs that I've ever had the privelege to spend time with - but her new family is ready for her and the sooner she can reach them the easier the transition will be.

In the photo above you can see that Frodo has decided that Suki isn't all that horrid. In the past he would never have let her join him for a snooze on his dad's lap. Now he's fine with it as long as she doesn't touch him.