Tag: Rescues and Shelters

Loving dogs!

A republication of a post from 2012.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that the first time I used a post title Affairs of the Heart was back in 2012. In fact it was January 20th, 2012. Many of you dear readers will, undoubtedly, not have read it then so here it is again. Both Hazel and Dhalia are now dead.

ooOOoo

Affairs of the Heart

That is, a la dog!

Hazel

This is Hazel. She is one of three dogs that ‘belong’ to Pharaoh.

Last Tuesday, we took Pharaoh and his mini-pack of 3 dogs out for our usual afternoon walk at the very end of Granite Dells Rd, out where the forest road ends and soon becomes the relative wilderness of the Tonto National Forest.

Pharaoh, and Hazel, Dhalia and little Sweeny.

However, on this occasion Hazel decided to leave us and link up with a stranger who was hiking the forest. That was the last we saw of Hazel for many hours. Miracle of miracles, the stranger, Joanie, was a dog-lover so when Hazel had followed Joanie and her dog all the way to Joanie’s car, the next stop for her, Hazel that is, was our local Payson Humane Center. Hazel’s tag very quickly linked her to Jean (a great reminder of the importance of tagging your dogs!) who is well-known as a volunteer assistant at the Humane Society Thrift store and the scare was over.

But during the hours of tramping those miles along challenging forest tracks, calling out Hazel’s name, both Jeannie and I had plenty of time to hurt. Here’s a small insight, that millions of pet owners will resonate with, that demonstrates the way that dogs offer us so much love which, in turn, opens our human hearts to the purity of unconditional love. (And I know it’s not just dogs but many animals in our lives that offer us such love!)

Pharaoh and his ‘team’ sleep in our bedroom. During the Winter months Hazel will often lay stretched out on the bed-cover alongside the back of my legs. If I need a trip to the bathroom during the night, not unknown at my age, I can almost guarantee that Hazel will shift her cuddly body up to the warm sheets just below my pillow.

Thus it was this last Tuesday morning when I returned from my bathroom run about 3am; Hazel asleep with her head on my pillow! I didn’t have the heart to push her off the bed, so just slipped in beside her and moments later back asleep, my head nestled against Hazel’s warm head. Sleeping so close to a dog is more than just nice, it seems to stir very ancient memories deep in the subconscious, perhaps back all those thousands of years to when domesticated dogs were an integral part of early man’s security.

So you can imagine the anguish that, in our own separate minds, Jeannie and I were experiencing. I just couldn’t go to the place where never again would I feel the warmth of Hazel’s body against mine. Jean was desperately hoping this wasn’t a tragic repeat of losing Poppy. Thus when I went round to the Humane Center just as they were closing up and Hazel came out to me, I dissolved in sobs of relief.

That’s the heart-felt closeness of dogs and humans.

The purity of a dog’s heart!

ooOOoo

All of you, including your loving animals, have a wonderful weekend.

Can you give a dog a home?

Please take two minutes to read this now.

Back over two years ago, when Jean and I were living in Payson, Arizona, I wrote a post called Tara’s Babies.  Here’s a flavour of that post:

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Many who follow this Blog will know that my beautiful wife, Jean, is totally devoted to dogs, especially rescue dogs.  Over the years that she and her previous husband Ben lived in Mexico, Jean must have rescued at least 70 dogs.  Even today, we have 11 ex-rescue dogs enjoying a fabulous life in our mountain home here in Payson, Arizona.

So it was a big surprise to come across a dog rescue organisation called Tara’s Babies and find that their sanctuary is in our neighbourhood.

Photo by Wib Middleton

Here’s a description of the organisation taken from the local newspaper from September 9th, 2009.

By Alan R. Hudson
Gazette/Connection Correspondent
It has been nearly five years since Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare began rescuing animals displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Tara’s Babies operates a no-kill animal rescue and sanctuary “off the grid” at the Ellinwood Ranch, near Young.

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Anyway, Alan Hudson left a comment a few minutes ago to the effect that Tara’s Babies is closing.  Confirmed by going to their website.

The reason why this post is being published straightaway is because of the urgent need to find homes for 24 dogs.  Take a look at those dogs; please!

I’m republishing what you can read on the Tara’s Babies website – please share this news as far and wide as you can.  These dogs need good homes.

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Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare

No Kill Animal Rescue and Sanctuary

Practice kindness, save a life…change the world

Tara’s Babies began in 2005 as a desperate cry from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left thousands of dogs and cats, homeless and suffering. Our founder sent a crew of volunteers to search the flooded buildings for animals in need. We rescued 17 dogs and a kitten. and thus began Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare (TBAW).

While down there, we paired with Best Friends and arranged an airlift to bring 150 dogs and cats from Tylertown, MS to Phoenix, AZ. Waiting at the airport when we arrived was a cattle transporter, volunteers and SUV’s to take the animals to Dakini Valley, AZ.

Our sanctuary at Dakini Valley is located on 157 acres in the remote Hell’s Gate Wilderness. Here the dogs and cats were cared for with love and attention three full-time volunteers until every one of the Katrina dogs were re-homed or found forever homes, with the exception of 15 dogs who were non-adoptable needing lifetime sanctuary. As the original Katrina animals were placed, we found our true mission evolve into saving animals from death row.

Since then we have worked tirelessly networking with other rescues, shelters, and sanctuaries to continuously save dogs from death row. Connections were made as far as Taiwan! Pipi, a Taiwanese dog, was brought to our sanctuary through this connection.

We have had as many as 71 dogs at once at the sanctuary. Even those dogs considered non-adoptable, who are human or dog aggressive, have benefited from the peaceful surroundings of the land and our love. These dogs have demonstrated good behavior with their caretakers and some have even been paired with a companion dog.

Due to unforeseen medical and other issues we lost our director and several volunteers bringing the number of volunteers down to only one. Out of concern for the safety of the dogs coupled with ongoing financial difficulties, the Tara’s Babie’s board made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to close our doors.

We will continue to lovingly care for each of the dogs until ALL are placed.

Please help the remaining dogs at the sanctuary. Click HERE to see them!. If you can help us with adoptions or placement in another sanctuary please contact us at  wggnrclr@yahoo.com or call 928-301-1392. You can also visit our Facebook page for photos and stories.

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(Tara’s Babies sanctuary is located outside Payson, Arizona. Most administrative and support operations are in Sedona Arizona. The telephone number is 928-301-1392. Leave a message.)

Once again, if there is anything you can do, please be in direct contact with Tara’s Babies.  Feel free to leave any comments or news here.

Thank you so much.

Go on, adopt a dog!

A delightful example of a dog teaching a puppy.

(Watched over 3,100,000 times!)

Published on Dec 26, 2012

If you would like to donate to Manitoba Mutts Dog Rescue in Winnipeg, MB please go here.

Our 6 month old lab mix rescue pup taught our 8 week old foster pup (adopted now) from Manitoba Mutts Dog Rescue in Winnipeg to go down the stairs once she got up and couldn’t get down! Please adopt and do not shop. This video is hoping to spread awareness to adopt a dog rather than shop around for one.

Rescue animals are just as great, if not more!

Please search your area for local rescues if you are looking for a dog or cat. These lovely pups are from Manitoba Mutts Dog Rescue in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

What the dog knew!

A guest post from Patricia Iles.

Regular readers will know that one of my joys of this blog writing game is the wonderful connections that are made across this funny old virtual world.  Trish Iles is one of those wonderful connections.

In fact, Trish is based at our local insurance firm, Crabdree Insurance, right here in Payson but until we ‘chit-chatted’ about writing a guest post for Learning from Dogs I had no idea there is much more to this lady.

To underline that, anyone who has their own blog called Contemplating Happiness will inevitably generate some curiosity.  That curiosity increases as one learns more about Trish and discovers that she is a published author.

Anyway, that’s enough from me, here is Trish Iles writing What the dog knew!

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The wisdom of Chloe

I was pondering the eternal question: why does two weeks of relaxing vacation seem like so much more time than two weeks of working like my pants are on fire, here at my desk? My sweet husband and I talked about it a little bit, but came to no definitive answer. I chatted with friends about it. No insights. Google had no opinion, either.

Chloe came to us from a rescue organization. I think sometimes about what her experiences have been in her young life. She started out as an abandoned puppy on a reservation in New Mexico and was soon in the pound where she was on the euthanasia list. A kind woman rescued her and took care of her until she found us: just when Chloe was becoming at home with the rescue lady, she was uprooted again and sent home with two new people. What must she have been thinking?

Chloe didn’t close her heart to us, though. She watched for a few days. When she decided we weren’t going to make dinner out of her and that she was really staying with us, she threw her whole being into becoming one of the family. She let herself trust us.

I’m not sure I would have had the courage to trust a new set of people again. I’m doubly not sure that I give a rat’s patootie what those new people thought of or wanted from me. Chloe was willing not only to trust us, but to love us. She forgave us immediately for ripping her from the home she knew, and she adopted us right back.

Chloe was born knowing. She knows about joy. She knows about living a life in balance. She knows about forgiveness, trust, exuberance, a passion for learning and the power of a good nap. I think that when I grow up, I want to be just like her.

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Don’t know about you dear reader but I just loved that story from Patricia.  Deep messages about what we can learn from our wonderful canine friends.

Indeed, I’m going to stay with the theme with tomorrow’s Post.

Phoebe, RIP

Now we are down to nine.

Back on the 18th January we had a scare in that we lost Hazel for a few hours; I wrote about that here.  The reason that comes to mind so clearly is that on the 19th we took our dog, Phoebe, down to see a specialist vet in Phoenix.

Phoebe in healthier times

Phoebe had been showing signs of blood in her stools but otherwise was a fit and happy dog and still eating well.  Our local vet thought that a colonoscopy might throw some better light on the problem.  In fact, the specialist in Phoenix rapidly identified swollen lymph glands, gave Phoebe a scan and diagnosed lymphoma.  It was a bombshell, more so as the specialist didn’t give Phoebe’s chances at much more than 7 to 10 days.

A loving Phoebe right to the end.

One of the recommendations from the specialist was to put Phoebe immediately on a grain-free diet and we have subsequently learnt the dangers of many grain-based dog foods.  We declined chemotherapy as her liver had already been compromised.

The change of diet plus boundless love and attention extended Phoebe’s life until yesterday morning when, around 3.15 am she had a seizure and entered a coma.  By 7.30 am Phoebe was very weak and not registering the world around her.  But she wasn’t in pain, and to the best of our knowledge, had not experienced pain during her last journey.

Last hugs before the last sleep.

Sometime around 9am Phoebe slipped away and Jean and I buried her a little later.  She lies in peace, under the shade of a tall Ponderosa pine.

Lilly, Phoebe and Paloma - Phoebe will live on in their memories.

Phoebe was such a sweet, loving dog.  Jean found her back in the Summer of 2004 when Jean was living, with her late husband Ben, in the coastal Mexican town of San Carlos.  Jean had been running a dog rescue operation for years just out of her love for dogs.

Jean came across this young, female dog, about 4 months old, running through the village of Santa Clara about 12 miles from San Carlos.  The dog was really thin and didn’t seem to belong to anyone so Jean brought her back to San Carlos and placed her in the lot where she looked after her rescue dogs while they were waiting for adoption by caring humans.  Jean found that this little black dog was totally friendly and loving to all.  But within a few weeks some of the bigger dogs in the lot started to pick on her and, Phoebe, as she was now known was taken back to Jean’s house and that was that.

And a final footnote.

Back to Phoebe’s seizure around 3am on Thursday morning.  Something woke me around 3.10am and I rolled out of the bed to make tracks for the bathroom.  Pharaoh sleeps on his blanket just inside the door to the bedroom and is always dead to the world until 7am, give or take.

But not yesterday morning.  He was sitting on his haunches, facing the closed door and totally alert.  He knew something was wrong in the room where Phoebe was, despite there being no sound at all.  Jean and I like to think that the last message that Phoebe sent out to her world was heard by Pharaoh.

Affairs of the heart.

That is, a la dog!

Hazel

This is Hazel. She is one of three dogs that ‘belong’ to Pharaoh.

Last Tuesday, we took Pharaoh and his mini-pack of 3 dogs out for our usual afternoon walk at the very end of Granite Dells Rd, out where the forest road ends and soon becomes the relative wilderness of the Tonto National Forest.

Pharaoh, and Hazel, Dhalia and little Sweeny.

However, on this occasion Hazel decided to leave us and link up with a stranger who was hiking the forest.  That was the last we saw of Hazel for many hours.  Miracle of miracles, the stranger, Joanie, was a dog-lover so when Hazel had followed Joanie and her dog all the way to Joanie’s car, the next stop for her, Hazel that is, was our local Payson Humane Center.  Hazel’s tag very quickly linked her to Jean (a great reminder of the importance of tagging your dogs!) who is well-known as a volunteer assistant at the Humane Society Thrift store and the scare was over.

But during the hours of tramping those miles along challenging forest tracks, calling out Hazel’s name, both Jeannie and I had plenty of time to hurt.  Here’s a small insight, that millions of pet owners will resonate with, that demonstrates the way that dogs offer us so much love which, in turn, opens our human hearts to the purity of unconditional love. (And I know it’s not just dogs but many animals in our lives that offer us such love!)

Pharaoh and his ‘team’ sleep in our bedroom.  During the Winter months Hazel will often lay stretched out on the bed-cover alongside the back of my legs.  If I need a trip to the bathroom during the night, not unknown at my age, I can almost guarantee that Hazel will shift her cuddly body up to the warm sheets just below my pillow.

Thus it was this last Tuesday morning when I returned from my bathroom run about 3am; Hazel asleep with her head on my pillow!  I didn’t have the heart to push her off the bed, so just slipped in beside her and moments later back asleep, my head nestled against Hazel’s warm head.  Sleeping so close to a dog is more than just nice, it seems to stir very ancient memories deep in the subconscious, perhaps back all those thousands of years to when domesticated dogs were an integral part of early man’s security.

So you can imagine the anguish that, in our own separate minds, Jeannie and I were experiencing.  I just couldn’t go to the place where never again would I feel the warmth of Hazel’s body against mine.  Jean was desperately hoping this wasn’t a tragic repeat of losing Poppy.  Thus when I went round to the Humane Center just as they were closing up and Hazel came out to me, I dissolved in sobs of relief.

That’s the heart-felt closeness of dogs and humans.

The purity of a dog's heart!

Don’t forget Tara’s Babies!

Big thank you to all those that have acted.

I have received quite a few emails in response to a mailing sent out by me yesterday promoting the fabulous work being done by a dog rescue centre near Payson, here in Arizona.  Thank you for letting me know you are adding your support to this great effort by Tara’s Babies to win $250,000 from Pepsi!

If you missed the post on Friday, here’s a link to it – https://learningfromdogs.com/2011/01/21/taras-babies/

An email received a short while ago from Tara’s Babies shows that everyone involved is making a difference!

Yesterday we were unplaced in

The Animal Rescue Site, now we’re

#9 in AZ and 266 overall!

Thank you for VOTING : we CAN win!!

 

PEPSI VOTING LINKS:Three dogs
a. vote online here

b. text 105549 to 73774

 

c. Have a Facebook page?
1. Click here
2. Click on “Vote for this Idea”
3. Click on “Login with Facebook account”
4. Click on “Vote for this Idea” again!
 

THE ANIMAL RESCUE SITE VOTING LINK:

 

1. Click here

2. Click on the Purple Box “Click Here to Give, its FREE”

3. Click on thje link in the box at the top of the page “Vote Now”

4. Search for “Taras Babies” in “AZ”

5. Click on “VOTE”

6. Prove you are a human being and not a Bot by identifying an animal!

7. Click on “Confirm Vote”

NB: You only have to do Step 4 – Search – the first time you vote. The site remembers Tara’s Babies for you!
Mr HCompassion  community  innovation

love   determination  humor  prayer

MANY THANKS FROM ALL OF US AT TARA’S BABIES

 

Tara’s Babies

A rare request from Learning from Dogs asking if you will vote on behalf of a dog rescue centre.

Many who follow this Blog will know that my beautiful wife, Jean, is totally devoted to dogs, especially rescue dogs.  Over the years that she and her previous husband Ben, who died in 2005, lived in Mexico, Jean must have rescued at least 70 dogs.  Even today, we have 11 ex-rescue dogs enjoying a fabulous life in our mountain home here in Payson, Arizona.

So it was a big surprise to come across a dog rescue organisation called Tara’s Babies and find that their sanctuary is in our neighbourhood.

 

Photo by Wib Middleton

 

 

Here’s a description of the organisation taken from the local newspaper from September 9th, 2009.

By Alan R. Hudson
Gazette/Connection Correspondent
It has been nearly five years since Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare began rescuing animals displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Tara’s Babies operates a no-kill animal rescue and sanctuary “off the grid” at the Ellinwood Ranch, near Young.

A few dogs from the dark days of Katrina still remain and many more have been added since. This is no normal animal rescue however: It is operated by three very dedicated and compassionate ordained Buddhists.

Kunzang Drolma, a Buddhist Nun and the director of Tara’s Babies, graciously invited the Connection to spend the afternoon at the facility. When we arrived, she was (as we had anticipated) wearing her Shamtab—the traditional Buddhist robe—as she fed her canine adoptees.

From that article Drolma explains:

“Katrina was a catastrophe that threw it in everyone’s faces but ultimately, every day, hundreds of dogs and cats are being euthanized in shelters because there’s not enough space for them—just because they were abused, homeless, old or sick. And so that’s when we just moved straight into this process of being a no-kill rescue and sanctuary. We will never euthanize.”

What’s needed, explained Drolma, is a paradigm shift. One that is so profound that shelters will become a thing of the past. While euthanasia is something that Tara’s Babies does not agree with, the solution lies at a higher cultural level.

Frankly, my view is that we need solutions to so many of life’s problems to come from a ‘higher cultural level’ but this Post is about helping Tara’s Babies raise more funds to help their mission.  It’s easy for any of you to help.  You can do it now from your computer.

Go here – http://www.tarasbabies.org/pepsi_refresh.html and read.  If you need convincing of the purpose watch this video (the one at that last web page or direct from YouTube as below).

And from that web-link you can read:

Feel free to copy and personalize the following paragraph to send to your friends:

“Have you heard about Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare, a No-Kill Dog Rescue and Sanctuary in Arizona? They started rescuing dogs left homeless and injured by Hurricane Katrina, after their founder, Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, felt compelled to act on seeing the devastation and suffering in the Gulf. They have continued rescuing dogs on death row in overcrowded shelters ever since.

Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare is working to win a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh grant by receiving the most votes for their project in the month of January. The grant will allow them to improve the care they provide to dogs at their beautiful, off-the-grid Sanctuary.

I am going to help Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare by voting for them daily in the Pepsi Refresh grant program and hope that you will too. Please visit www.tarasbabies.org to check them out. You will be able to sign up from their website to support their application to Pepsi Refresh.

The dogs need your vote!”

Here, here!  It’s very quick to initiate and then each day all you need to do is to add your daily vote – a few seconds of your life exchanged for the rest of the life of a dog that, otherwise, would have nowhere to go!

Thank you!