Category: Photography

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Eighty-Two

Yet more photos from Unsplash.

And just another six dogs.

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Gorgeous dogs!

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Eighty-One

This time, pictures of Labradors; again from Unsplash.

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Another wonderful set of pictures! Thank you, Unsplash.

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Eighty.

More dogs from Unsplash.

This time Siberian Husky Dogs!

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What a fantastic group of photographs; apologies if I have shown these before.

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Seventy-Nine

Back to Unsplash and Sleeping Dogs!

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Perfect photographs! Thanks to Unsplash; it is a great site!

A treasure of a dog story

A guest post from Connie Hart.

This is a most amazing story about Connie’s dogs and was sent to me as a guest post.

You will love it!

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A Dog Story

by Connie Hart, March 14th., 2023

Having been raised by my father from the age of three, I spent many hours sitting on his lap as he read to me. Often, as he read, I looked up at his face, and into his eyes. It was always a marvel to me. As an adult, I know it as heterochromia, or different colored eyes. He had one brown eye, and one blue.

This is a condition that is very rare in humans; only 1% have this. But it was something that I, as a child, loved about my father.

In dogs, heterochromia is more common, but still rare. It occurs 3.5% of the time in dogs. That being said, here is my story;

This is Bernie:

Bernie is 145 lbs. of pure love. He was a gift from a friend, after a tragic loss of two of my sweet dogs. I still had one old dog, Bo. But even he passed when Bernie was about a year old. So we took Bernie to the County Shelter, and let him pick out a new friend. Hence, Rosie came into our lives.

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But two years later, unfortunately, we lost Rosie.

We moved after that, but Bernie was not to be alone. Believe it or not, the people who moved out of the house we bought, moved from Oregon to Arizona and left behind their dog, Endy. Endy was a sweet, old dog. When I inquired about him, the owners simply said, ‘Oh, he can fend for himself.”

I was horrified. I couldn’t believe it as I watched those people drive out, leaving Endy crying on the porch.

But we made it up to him. We loved him and played with him. He and Bernie became inseparable. But, alas, time and age forced a sad good-bye.

Again, we took Bernie to the County Shelter to pick out a new friend. With Bernie in the ‘meet and greet’ yard, I went through and picked out a handful of dogs I liked, first. One in particular, struck me. A Shepard/Pyrenees mix, with one blue eye and one brown.

One at a time, each dog was taken out to the yard to meet Bernie. Some, he barely even sniffed, some, he totally ignored. But when the heterochromatic dog was put in the yard, there was instant frolic!

Bernie had lost three of his besties and we didn’t want him to have to go through that again. This dog, Cassie, was young and vibrant, in so many ways. They romped and played while I went in to do the paperwork. While looking through the paperwork, I noticed her birthdate. November 23….

She and my beloved father have the same birthday!

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This is a lovely story.

For those that want more information on Heterochromia, I took from the Mount Sinai website the following:

Heterochromia is the presence of different colored eyes in the same person. Heterochromia in humans appears either as a hereditary trait unassociated with other disease, as a symptom of various syndromes or as the result of a trauma.

What an unusual, but pretty, condition in her face.

Thank you, Connie.

This is just a beautiful Picture Parade

In other words, Picture Parade Four Hundred and Seventy-Eight.

Introducing A guest post (sort of) by Cara Sue Achterberg.

Read this! It tells the story of the volunteers who spend their time at the Animal Control centre in Bernie County.

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Animal Control And/Or Care

By Cara Sue Achterberg

Bertie County is a small county most people pass through on their way to vacation on the Outer Banks. The county’s tiny shelter is the next to last stop on a road that ends at the regional jail. The shelter sits on a property prone to flooding, and although the county has had plans to move it, the folks we talked to were skeptical that the collection of sheds, trailers, and kennels would leave the spot it has occupied as long as anyone can remember.

Bertie County Animal Control in Windsor is a municipal, open-intake shelter comprised of ten kennels on a concrete pad with a roof, plus two quarantine kennels, and three puppy runs.

There is no heat or AC or walls, for that matter. The day we arrived, county maintenance workers were busy wrapping plastic around the kennels to try to give the dogs some protection from the cold.

The county has two full-time Animal Control officers and one part-time ACO, but the care of the dogs is done by Josh, a full-time kennel tech. The county pays for Josh (and a part-time person who comes in once on Saturday and Sunday to feed/clean), plus the ACO salaries, and the property utilities, but everything else is left up to the Bertie County Humane Society.

Beyond the $2000/year the county gives the Humane Society, they must raise the money to pay for everything else – veterinary needs, vaccinations, spay/neuter, food/treats, transport to rescues, beds, heartworm preventative, flea/tick treatment, dewormers and anything else.

Pretty much every dog that comes in is heartworm positive. As Vicky, a volunteer who used to be the kennel manager at the shelter, told me, “If we get one that’s negative, I go buy a lottery ticket!”

Vicky was at the shelter that day to give rabies vaccines to Cooper and Spot, two young dogs at the shelter. (NC is the first state I’ve discovered that doesn’t require that rabies vaccines be given by a veterinarian.)

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We learned about Bertie County after we connected with another of their volunteers, Gina. Gina lives two hours away, but she is a tireless advocate for the dogs and the shelter. She networks the dogs to rescues, arranges for veterinarian appointments and transports, even finds donors to pay for heartworm treatment. Gina is one of those rescue warriors with a heart that just slays me. It’s inhuman how many hours and how much work she puts in to save these dogs, many she has never met.

Gina has been involved with BCHS ever since she discovered how many dogs were being killed in Bertie County. She began pulling dogs to foster within her rescue operation and eventually called on other rescues to get involved. Because she lives so far away, she depends on Diane, who lives in Bertie County and is the president of the Humane Society, and Vicky, who used to be the kennel manager at the shelter and still volunteers her time there.

There were only six dogs (and lots of cats) the day we visited thanks to Gina’s work to find rescues to empty the shelter just before the holidays and the bitter, record cold that came. The shelter normally handles about 100 dogs a year.