Inside PetRescue

This is beautiful…

no furbabies shud evr be on de street wif no home….not everz!

Why is it sometimes a new home is found for a pet instantly, whilst others languish for weeks or months with no interest? Usually I can give the rescue some idea:

The picture they have used doesn’t show his eyes - potential adopters don’t ‘connect’ when looking through the listings.
The pet profile focus’s on the negatives - people don’t want to feel guilted into choosing a pet, they want the one that they fall in love with.
The pet is in the wrong location, try rehoming a kelpie in central Sydney for example.

But today I got an email from a Wish - a cat rescue in NSW, asking for help. More kittens are arriving and things are getting desperate. In particular for a kitten called Sam.

Sam has been at his foster home for some time now and by all accounts is a fantastic little guy. Cute as a button, friendly, happy and well socialised. But although Sam’s PetRescue profile has been viewed 218 times, Wish has not received one single enquiry about Sam, not one.

With new kittens on the way Sam’s chances dwindle even more. He is only a few months old, but kittens who are just weeks old are always more popular. Sam is nowhere near adulthood, so won’t be considered by those looking for a grown up cat.

The only thing wrong with Sam is too much competition.

…And you get home from your ‘paying’ job and have walked the dogs in the dark and rain, and said a brief hello to the family, before sitting in front of the computer to answer the days PetRescue emails, sometimes it’s very nice to get one like this:

> Message: Hi,
> My family and i just recently adopted Ida (black female Labrador). I
> just want to thank you…she is an absolute joy and so loving. We are
> overjoyed to have her become a member of the family…what a lovely
> gentle girl she is. So thank you for keeping her safe for us (we
> adopted one day before she was due to go to the great beyond). lots of
> hugs, Karen and Ida

Our dog, Sandi, passed away this week.

I say our dog, although for the last ten-odd years she’s been my mum & dad’s dog; but, at 15 years and 3 months old when she went to sleep for the last time on Monday, she’d been a big part of all of our lives for a long time.

I remember back when I was an innocent young thing of 13, going to the breeders house with my mum and brother before school one day, and heading home with a wiggly brown fluffball in a cardboard box between us in the back seat. And them we were forced to go to school for the day!! Longest school day on record… all we wanted to do was get home and play with our new friend!

Sandi quickly became a favoured member of the family. Her rapidly-established morning ritual involved waiting impatiently at the back door for someone to finally let her inside, where she’d sprint from room to room, greeting each of us by excitedly yipping and bouncing around on our beds. I still laugh when I think of the morning that I lay in bed, smile on my face, waiting for her to make it to my room (at the end of the hall) - listening to her run through the kitchen, into my brother’s room, then - *THUMP* - and everything went quiet. Turns out my brother had moved his bed from one end of the wall to the other, and Sandi hadn’t factored this into her practised belt-into-the-room-turn-right-and-JUMP! maneuver. We nearly had to surgically remove her from the wall after that one!

We were never totally sure what breed Sandi was - I recall that her mother was supposedly a Poodle, and the father wasn’t 100% identified at the time. Not sure how we ended up with what was tentatively identified as a wire-haired terrier, but hey - we didn’t care, she was an awesome dog! Always happy to play ball - with anything from a tennis ball to a soccer ball, loved the beach more than life itself, and had a hilarious habit of bouncing off dad’s crotch when he was lying on the kitchen floor, ‘resting his eyes’. That one never got tired (at least, not for us kids - not sure how dad felt about it!).

With my incredibly organised mum on the case, Sandi never got sick - she always had her various needles, worming pills and such on time. She did have a few close calls over the years though - I still think of the time that, as an exuberant teenager, I kicked a basketball as hard as I could, straight up in the air in the back yard. Sandi, being an appropriately ball-obsessed dog, ran around in circles, trying to look up into the air to see where her toy had gone; just as the ball came smashing down into the ground, half an inch from her head. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that one…

As a family, we never got bored with our new friend. We’d always had pets, so we were used to having a dog around; but (and I know everyone says this!) Sandi was something special. Always keen to learn new tricks, we suddenly had a dog that could sit, stay (most of time time), lie down, roll over, spin round in a circle, ’speak’, and climb a ladder (I’m still trying to work out how we decided to try that one!). Long before I’d ever heard of positive reinforcement training, we had it perfect with our little dog; each correct effort was rewarded with a Tiny Teddy biscuit, and each failure with a renewed effort.

She was such a clever dog; always knew exactly what was going on around the house, where everybody was, where was the most likely chance of getting a piece of biscuit or scrap of sandwich. Thinking back, I don’t remember ever consciously training her for this particular talent, but you could always walk up to her, look her in the eyes, and say, “Where’s dad?”, or “Where’s mum?”, “Where’s Michael?”, “Where’s Johnny?” - and her eyes would light up, tail would go at a hundred miles an hour, and with a bark she’d lead you straight to the person you were looking for.

As the years passed by, my brother and I moved out of home, but our conversations with the folks often included updates on Sandi’s adventures; with a few acres of land to enjoy, she was always up to something. I remember how chuffed I felt when I heard she’d befriended another dog from the neighbourhood; we never really got the socialisation process right with her, so a friend was a big deal. She was always doing a lap around the property to make sure everything was in it’s right place and accounted for, then wandering off to play with TD for a while before heading home for a nap in the sun on the perfectly-manicured lawn.

There was always something special about heading ‘home’ for the weekend; being a couple of hours from the city, mum & dad’s house is a little island of refuge from the stress and pressures of everyday life. Every time I rounded that last sweeping corner before pulling into the driveway, I’d start grinning stupidly, knowing I’d be soon be seeing Sandi, mum and dad - in that order, the dog was always the first to the car. First was the maniacal barking, then slowly approaching the car, followed by a massive blissed-out wiggle spasm when she realised who it was.

As the years moved on, the pattern was always the same, but subtle changes where there; instead of hooning down the driveway at top speed, I’d slow down, knowing that Sandi’s hearing and eyesight weren’t quite so perfect any more (and because dad didn’t really love smoothing down the gravel driveway after I’d left!). I remember not that long ago when dad rescued a massive steel roller from the rubbish tip - he’d worked on it many years before when it was still used for the local Shire, then it’d been stripped of it’s engine, and placed in a local park for the kids to play on. Why is made it’s way to the tip was unknown, but dad wasn’t having that - he managed to get it home, then cleaned it up and repainted it in it’s original bright yellow colour. He placed it out near the front of the property for all to see, and it was a great landmark for friends dropping by - ‘Just look for the massive yellow steel roller, that’s the place!’

On one of my trips home, we were sitting out on the lawn by the side of the house having our traditional morning tea (nobody does morning tea like my mum!), when suddenly Sandi started barking furiously, seemingly at nothing. We eventually worked out she’d just spotted this massive yellow machine where it ‘wasn’t supposed to be’, and was letting us know in case it suddenly came over and attacked us.

As more time passed, her eyesight got worse, with visible cataracts on both eyes. Her hearing was degrading over time, too - I remember quite a few conversations with dad where he told me he’d have to make a loud noise to let her know he was around, to avoid scaring her. But even with these slowly increasing signs of old age, she was always herself; going nuts whenever she was within a few hundred metres of the beach, constantly patrolling the property to make sure everything was still where it should be, and randomly deciding it was time for a treat, and bringing her tupperware container of Tiny Teddies over to us, barking, and waiting for her reward.

It must have been about six months ago when I first had the conversation with mum about the increasing number of Sandi’s lumps and bumps; she had a number of growths of her back and sides, and while the vet assured us they weren’t causing her any pain, it was becoming obvious that she was slowing down. While she was still doing everything she always had, the ball-chasing sessions were happening only rarely, and the long naps in the sun and in her basket were getting longer. We could tell her time was coming closer, and - as she approached and then passed an impressive 15 years of age - the uncomfortable topic of euthanasia came up occasionally. In discussing this with my animal-savvy peers, the consensus seemed to be, “You’ll know when it’s time”.

Well, it seemed this little dog had one surprise left - she knew better than the lot of us. On Monday, Sandi spent the day following mum around the house, patrolling the property, and enjoying Tiny Teddies - all business as usual. When dad got home from work, he gave her his sandwich scraps from lunch, just like he’d done every day for the last 15 years and three months. She followed him to the shed as he tinkered, making sure everything was in order there.

Then, for the last time, she wandered out onto the immaculate lawn where she’d had so many naps in the sun, and went to sleep for the final time.
As Vickie from PetRescue said to me when I told her this story - that’s not a bad way to go. Spending all day doing the things you love with the people you love, then just drifting off to sleep - if only we could all be so lucky.

While it’s been hard for all of the family to deal with the loss of our beloved family pet (hardest of all for mum and dad; hearing how dad brought his lunch scraps home from work the following day, only to find there was no little dog to give them to was heartbreaking), she had such a perfect life I felt I had to share it with you all. I only hope that some of the hundreds of animals in shelters around the country right now are lucky enough to find such wonderful and loving homes.

Following up to my post looking for a Facebook application developer a few weeks back (thanks for the offers and suggestions, too!), we’re pleased to release…

our very own Facebook application! 

Simply click the link above to add the PetRescue app to your Facebook profile. Comments? Let us know by replying to this blog post

Cheers,

jb :) 

Conversation I had the other day with young child about her dog.

vix: So what sort of dog is he?

girl: He’s a Border Collie plus

vix: A Border Collie what?

girl: A Border Collie plus Staffy!

I almost corrected her to say he’s a Border Collie x, not a Border Collie +, but then I had a think about it and decided she was the one who was right.

Vix

What a little cutie!

Hi gang!

I’m sure most of you would have heard of Facebook - the next-generation social networking site taking the world by storm (No, I’m not employed by them - I just really like the site, it’s heaven compared to some of the more garish and dysfunctional alternatives out there!)

I’ve been wanting to put together a little application for Facebook for some time - something that can be added to your profile and shows thumbnails of animals available for rehoming. As the sole PetRescue web monkey, I’m a little time-poor, and to be honest, the Facebook API is a little intimidating for my already-too-full brain.

So, if you’ve had experience developing apps for Facebook, and you’ve got some spare time you’d like to donate to PetRescue to work with me to make this idea happen - I’d love to hear from you! We don’t pay much, but the positive karma you’ll accumulate is priceless

Drop me an email at jb@petrescue.com.au if you, or someone you know, would like to help out

Cheers,
jb // Web Monkey

Those of you that are hard-core PetRescue followers will have noticed that we’ve been having some problems with the site lately. Random periods where the site is offline for a while, the odd error when trying to use various functions - not good.

Some of these problems are normal when managing a site this big - we average around 7.5 million hits to the site per month now, which is an enormous amount of traffic.

But one problem that came to light this morning is just heartbreaking. Emails from PetRescue haven’t been sent for over a week - they we being queued on the server, and due to an issue where not sent until this morning. One of the emails waiting to be sent was a potential adopter enquiring about an animal which, tragically, was put to sleep yesterday. Had this email gone out when it was supposed to, this little girl may have found her new forever home.

Another puppy that is due to be put to sleep tomorrow looks like it may be saved in the nick of time - another email enquiry that had been delayed due to this problem arrived this morning, thankfully. No doubt there were other situations like these that we haven’t learned about as yet.

These problems all stem from the fact that the server that PetRescue is hosted on (provided at no cost by Alternative IT, my company) is massively overloaded, and simply cannot cope with the amount of traffic that is generated by the site. It seems horribly ironic that our success may ultimately lead to our demise!

I’m working with the other PetRescue directors (Shel & Vickie) to try and work out a way for PetRescue to afford a dedicated, beefy server that will keep the site running and allow us to continue to grow and improve the services that PetRescue offer. But for now, there’s not a lot we can do - so please, accept our apologies for these problems, and please be patient with us while we try and work through these problems.

Cheers,
JB // Web Monkey

Yesterday was my day off from my paying job (for those of you that don’t know PetRescue is not the highly paid lucrative career that you may imagine it may be). Anyway I received a call from the receptionist. “Vix, I’ve done something really stupid and I need your help”.

Lana had been particularly hungover on Sunday morning, walked passed the Pet Shop and done exactly what we all spend our time preaching against, she had bought a spur of the moment Border Collie puppy.

Obviously, you can imagine my thoughts, ‘this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to more unwanted pets, how could you be so stupid, what the hell are we working for if even my close acquaintances don’t know better blah blah blah blah’. But that’s just not helpful; The puppy was already at home with Lana and rather than condemn her (and the pup) we talked about the needs of the puppy and what she had to do to raise a happy healthy dog.

Back at work the next day Lana took me aside and said that she realised that she had made a mistake, that she just couldn’t properly care for a puppy. Now I know what you are thinking, but I was really proud of Lana. Who of us haven’t made a stupid mistake when you were 19yrs? And the fact that she realised this before the this puppy was six months old, living in the back yard undesexed, untrained and miserable (which is the usual way it happens), I think was pretty mature.

Lana rang the pet shop, explained that she couldn’t care for the puppy and that she felt she should return him. And guess what? The caring wonderful staff that had sold a 8 week puppy to a clearly hungover 19 year old girl the day before, suddenly became a lot less caring and wonderful and point blank refused to take the puppy back. This is the same puppy that someone was saying they could not look after, the puppy that had spent one night at a new home, the puppy that they could resell for another $400+. This was now the puppy they could wash their hands of the moment it was taken out the door.

I know I shouldn’t be surprised … but I honestly was.

Vix

PS: Toby is happily living with his new older brother Border Collie and a loving family