Homeward Bound Golden Retriever Rescue – Page 10

In Defense of My Summer Garden

Don’t look too closely at the Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, much less my own.

The dahlias are late, the sunflowers are sad, and the weeds are winning. But I have an excuse.

Actually, 12 excuses.

All of them adorable.

The puppy list is long at Homeward Bound, so everyone is sworn to social media secrecy when a litter arrives. And what an arrival!

With all puppies spoken for, and some already home, the cone of silence has been lifted, and you can see for yourself what poopy cuteness has been keeping me from the garden.

They came to us as a result of a partnership with another rescue, Forever Friends Golden Retriever Rescue in Ventura. A hugely handsome dad, Harley;

a long, leggy mom, Molly;

and their 12 tiny “oops-puppies” surrendered by a woman in ill health, unable to care for them.

Puppies don’t raise themselves. Molly was a devoted and exhausted mom. Dad got himself adopted right away, and made a run for playtime on the coast, naturally! As soon as it was healthy, we weaned the pups and took over the heavy lifting for Molly.

Keep in mind: what goes in…

must come out,

and then it must be splattered on everything and everyone in sight!

For the past few weeks, I have arrived every morning to clean them and their mountain of mess – part of a team that watches over them day and night.

And while the garden has indeed suffered, watching these little fur balls grow, thrive – and go home to long-waiting families – makes it all worthwhile. Including sweet Connor who found his home with mom, Molly!

Six are now home; the rest will soon follow. Then, I will make my way back to the neglected and overgrown garden. Watch out weeds!

A Family Complete

“You have no idea how happy they have made me.”

For those who have followed their story, I am overjoyed to tell you that Lilly and Lucy’s journey is now complete. And while they are beginning a brand new chapter in their lives, we could not have written a better ending to this one.

The family that adopted them had been waiting and searching for a bonded pair after losing their beloved pup two years ago. It took time for their hearts to heal, and then, they wanted to make sure that their children were old enough to respect and care for a dog. Connected through one of our volunteers, they came to meet the girls last weekend. Wisely believing that the entire family needed to be on board with their adoption, they took some time to think it through. Our hopes were answered when the answer came: “yes!” While the kids were under the weather, their mom, Meg, could wait no longer. This weekend, she drove back with her daughter’s friend (a future rescuer, we are sure!) to take Lilly and Lucy home.

Their foster dad had drafted copious notes about their likes, dislikes, personalities, and behaviors. While all this great information was being relayed, a deep connection was already forming.

Lilly, in particular, was our concern. She had a history of not connecting to people right away – while Lucy is very adaptable, easy-go-lucky, and gives her kisses freely. But there was a special bond formed between Meg and Lilly from the start, reminiscent of the one that Lilly had for Erika, the woman who rescued her from the streets of Islamabad.

With notes in hand and the paperwork complete, Meg gently lifted each dog into new travel crates, side-by-side, with a window between them so the girls could see each other. In each crate were new toys and color-coded leashes and collars.

The drive home was easy, and excited text messages relayed their joy.

“Our family is complete now.”

The joy was shared on the other side of the world by two women – their rescuers and original “moms” – relieved and at peace that their girls were safe, loved, and finally home. They did right by Lilly and Lucy, taking them into their homes, nursing them back to health, and loving them knowing the risk to their hearts. And then, they got them to us, so we could help complete another family. An act of sacrifice and selfless love that will not be forgotten.

“If I had a single flower for every time I think of you, I could walk forever in my garden.” ~ Claudia Adrienne Grandi

Do The Waggle Dance

Honey bees are social insects. They live communally and depend on each other for their very existence. Everyone has a role, and when these tiny toilers pull together, amazing things get done. An entire colony is built and fed; the young are cared for; everyone has a home.

To succeed, they need to communicate. They share vital information about food sources by performing a dance when they return to the hive. The “waggle dance” indicates that food is far away, while a “round dance” signals a shorter flight and quick payoff. The more vigorous the dance, the better the food – which means success for everyone.

Rescue works like this. It’s generally not mugshots or desperate pleas posted to websites or social media that gets displaced animals to new homes. It is the communication between people and our communal network. Of course, the photos and stories are important. Great photos create that first connection. And since dogs can’t write, we have to tell their stories for them. But the exchange of information – one person reaching out to another – is how we build a strong network (our hive) and truly connect people to animals in need.

Case in point: Lilly & Lucy’s story was shared hundreds of times across social media. But it was a long-time volunteer who knew that a neighbor had been looking for a bonded pair of dogs that may have made the difference for our two Pakistani girls. This weekend, the family drove hours through thick traffic and scorching heat to meet the dogs. We are very hopeful that it is a match.

Faith and Hope’s story was also viewed extensively. But it was a connection made between friends that may spell hope for Faith. One friend knew that the other had recently lost her dog at age 18 and was looking for a pup that could fit comfortably into her menagerie. We’ll know this week when they meet.

Our paws are crossed for all three because someone made the very human connection.

Everyone can play a role in rescue – but posting sad pictures of animals in distant shelters to a rescue’s social media channels doesn’t get it done. It is in doing the dance and making very personal connections right where you live.

You don’t need to travel too far from the hive. If you can’t volunteer your physical self, familiarize yourself with a local rescue or shelter’s animals and process. Then, become the crazy dog/cat/whatever person that everyone knows at work, church, or in your neighborhood. Talk to people about responsible breeders, training, spay and neuter. Learn about their animals, companionship needs, and when their heart and home might be ready for another. And then connect the dots. Do the waggle dance. Spread the word. Extend the community. Communicate.

That is how rescue works. One person – and one animal at a time.

Wordless Wednesday: Lucy Loves Lilly

Wordless Wednesday: Faith

The Long Way Home

Typically, a bee will travel about two miles in search of food. When nectar or pollen is scarce, the journey can extend two to three times as far. To a tiny bee, that is a great distance flight and a long, exhausting way home to the hive.

For the first part of their lives, “home” for Lilly and Lucy was the streets of Pakistan. Scavenging, starving, relying on the mercy of strangers and garbage scraps.

Home for Erika and Gwen is the United States. But as Foreign Service gypsies, their current home is Pakistan. They have traveled the world to often dangerous places: Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and more. The locals can be hostile, and, as auditors, they are not exactly welcomed by their peers, either. It’s a lonely and isolating life filled with security alerts and lockdowns, but they find the work fulfilling as their purpose is to ensure that foreign aid gets to those most in need. With frequent reassignments, they try not to make attachments. But when Lilly and Lucy crossed their paths, they simply failed to look away.

Lilly was one at the time, half-starved and missing a back paw. Lucy was an eight-month-old bag of bones, staying by the side of her mother and her latest litter of puppies. Erika and Gwen took them in, nursed them back to health, and they found a new home together. The two became inseparable.

When both Erika and Gwen learned they would be redeployed to new posts and tiny apartments without the benefit of yards, the panic set in. Against all good sense, they had fallen firmly in love with these dogs, now three and four, and there was no way they were abandoning them. The expat community is large and, like the military, they do their best to have each other’s backs. Erika and Gwen explored every avenue but were quickly running out of options.

A distant connection and recent adopter suggested Homeward Bound. As difficult as it would be to give the girls up, they knew that a permanent home was what they needed and deserved. They reached out to us, hoping that, if their dogs couldn’t pass for Goldens, they might find some golden hearts among us. Of course, we said “yes,” which is how Lilly and Lucy began the longest way “home.”

I wrote about them for the rescue to begin to get the word out.

On Thursday, after two days’ journey across one-third of the globe, Lilly and Lucy arrived in San Francisco where Judy, one of our transport team members, and I met them.

Tired and confused, it took almost three hours to get them off the plane and out of customs. They still had to endure the long crawl through rush hour traffic back to the Sacramento Valley. It was nearly dark when we got back to the rescue, a twelve hour day.

We let them out of the van and took them to the Park, where they ran – and ran – and ran.

I don’t think they had experienced that much open space since their days in the streets. Exhausted, we gave them dinner and put them to bed – together.

They have adjusted well,

enjoying the open country space,

their feeders and dog walkers,

and their visitors: the couple that connected them to us.

For Erika, Gwen, Lilly and Lucy, it has been a very long and stressful journey. There is one more to go. After we have a chance to spend some time with the dogs and gain a full understanding of their needs, we will help them to find their most important home: their forever home.

Bing’s Cinderella Hour

As the summer heat sets in, I prefer to work the garden in the early evening whenever possible.

The Delta Breeze blows lightly to cool the valley, and the setting sun saturates color and creates little jewels through the lens.

“The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.” ~ Olivia Howard Dunbar, The Shell of Sense

Unlike the morning which is always chaotic – the gardeners and the dogs racing against the sun and the heat of the day – the evening is productive but blessedly peaceful.

The bunnies, lazy lizards, and settling in birds keep me company as the dogs fall into an exhausted hush.

Twilight is a magical time giving rise to winged beauties and fairy tales – when “anything can be believed in.” Like Bing’s “going home.”

Bing came to us all the way from Taiwan. He’s been home before – unsuccessfully. It was all too much for him then: too much temptation, too many ways to get into trouble! He hollered at other dogs, hunted cats, and little critters best beware.

But people? He has always loved people.

He went home; he came back. He went home; he came back. But something interesting happened as Bing waited in our care: he changed. Not completely. But maybe, just enough. So much so that, last week, he even accompanied one of our volunteers to the annual reunion picnic.

He behaved like a model citizen in a venue filled with dogs and chaos, winning everyone’s attention and praise.

Bing must have felt like a prince at the ball. Transported in style; meeting friends old and new. When the clock struck midnight, he probably assumed his Cinderella moment was over. But by proving himself in a most unexpected way – he earned his “going home” papers, instead. Lorey, one of our devoted volunteers, made him her own.

Photo courtesy Rob Kessel

Anything can happen. Anything can be believed in. That’s the magic of the garden at sunset – and this place we call Homeward Bound.

Wordless Wednesday: Puppy Love

Faith and Hope

My name is Hope. Aka “Tootsie.” Otherwise known as the “Come Back Kid,” “Braveheart,” “Too-Smart-For-My-Own-Good,” and “Houdini.” The latter being how I found myself back behind bars.

I’m here with my sister, Faith. Aka “Adorable,” “Sweetness,” “Girl-With-The-Green-Eyes,” and “Tag-Along,” – meaning I’ll follow my sister’s lead wherever it takes me, which is how she, too, became incarcerated.

We spent the last week visiting with the gardener lady and her big dogs. She felt like our Aunt Jody could use a well-deserved break. We think Aunt Jody was secretly betting that we’d be back in 24 hours! LOL. It’s not that we are bad pups. It’s just that we are a lot of work.

So who better to take care of us for a while than a gardener: already a believer in what faith and hope can do when paired with effort. Where others see a blank slate of dirt, a gardener sees a landscape transformed – trusting in the potential.

While all puppies are work, we were born with this extra special thing called Megaesophagus. It means that the tube that sends food down has a tendency to return it if we don’t eat upright and stay that way for a while after each meal.

Gravity is our friend, so we eat in a Hello Kitty® chair. Humiliating, right?

Couldn’t they make a Hello Puppy chair?

But we know the drill, to the point of seating ourselves. Just watch this:

And when we get bigger, we’ll eat and rest in a real dog, specially made, Bailey Chair. There are lots of dogs like us. They make us extra adorable so people will overlook our special needs.

After we eat, we sit upright on the gardener’s lap or standing between her knees while everything makes its way to our tummies. We watch the birds and squirrels in the garden or all the moving pictures on this big black box. We have developed a fondness for The Food Network, TLC, and movie classics. I’m sure we could grow to love sports, too – but that’s not her thing.

We play hard. Really hard. With each other –

And our friends.

But when we’re done, we curl up and snuggle. Sister love.

All of this to show that we can fit into someone’s life and home without too much trouble. We hope that our special someone will see it that way.

We’re going back to Aunt Jody tomorrow. The gardener’s big dog has some medical stuff to do and would prefer to do it in “peace and quiet” – whatever that is.

And Aunt Jody will be on the lookout for special people for us. It’s easier to win your heart when our cute faces are in yours.

So do us a favor? Don’t mention the chewed wall, great toilet paper rolling contest, or how we like to dump our water bucket to make giant puddles. Let’s just say we are cute, cuddly, and endearing – and leave it at that! Oh, and if you have a spare hacksaw – send it our way??

Sincerely,
Faith and Hope (aka Tootsie)

UPDATE!

As they have grown, Aunt Jody has been working with the girls and figured out how to feed them differently so they can be as close to “normal” dogs as possible, now. No more special chairs! The key is in getting them to “graze” on their meals instead of wolfing them down. And they are doing great. So great, in fact, that Hope found her way home!

This means that sweet Faith is all by her lonesome. She is hoping that she, too, can find her someone special – preferably someone that either works from home, or is home often. We’re putting the word out and hoping you will share. Let’s get this adorable girl with the gorgeous green eyes a home of her own!

“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” ~ Christopher Reeve

BFF’s…

Shake on it.

Roots and Wings

Roots are more than an anchor to keep a plant in place. They provide a lifeline – pulling in all that the plant needs to grow from the soil –

sending it up through the leaves so the plant can reach for the sky.

A plant’s seeds are its wings – transporting it to new places.

Good soil provides the underpinning that nurtures the growth and flight.

At Homeward Bound, we give our dogs roots and wings, as well. For dogs that need extra help, we try to lay a strong foundation of trust, training, and understanding to make the best match possible.

For some, this takes no time at all (Gracie girl!).

Those with greater needs might be with us for weeks, months – and in rare cases – years (Red, feral dog).

This groundwork gives them wings, enabling them to fly away – a sometimes bittersweet joy.

But the roots we provide are permanent – an invisible lifeline. In a perfect world, a “forever home” means just that. But the world is not perfect, and unforeseen things happen. If for any reason, and at any point in the dog’s life, it can no longer stay in its home – the dog returns to us.

Winter came back not long after she went home: she decided she liked her new sibling, but not sharing. While all the dogs are tested and spend time with their potential dog mates, sometimes casual play in a neutral space is one thing but sharing a home is another. This weekend, she was matched, instead, to a human who needs but one canine love.

Finnean was home much longer. He’s a special needs boy who arrived emaciated and with a sparse coat.

He found love and success in quiet, calm, and watchful care.

When his dad became ill and could no longer look after him, Finnean came back to us, looking like a different dog. It is in cases like this when that lifetime commitment provides much-needed comfort to both the dog and the adopter. And thanks to the foundation laid by his dad, we know exactly what Finnean needs to fly home again.

Roots and wings. How we find our way to “home.”

Puppyhood: Nature vs. Nuture

“Whatcha in for, little man?”
“Being a puppy,” says Beau.

It’s a familiar story: people purchase a puppy expecting the adult characteristics of a dog in the canine version of a human toddler – only with super sharp teeth and without diapers!

Too many dogs are relinquished to shelters because someone took home an adorable furball that grew and grew into a holy terror. Beau is lucky. His humans recognized early on that this was too much for them. And while it is no doubt a very difficult decision to surrender him to us, they did him a great service my doing it sooner rather than later. At only three months of age, Beau is still impressionable, but the timing of our work with him is critical.

In a garden, two identical plants – even side by side – can grow at dissimilar rates and bloom differently. Is it nature? Or nurture? Maybe a little of both.

The soil may be slightly different; surrounding plants may throw just a touch more shade or shelter creating a tiny micro-climate. Or an unruly tree root may be creating competition for one’s growth.

Why do some puppies thrive, and others turn “terrible?” Between three and seven weeks, puppies learn the difference between canine and human ways. The critical human socialization period is between seven and 12 weeks of age. It overlaps with a “fear impact age” somewhere between eight and 12 weeks where negative interactions can lead to permanent associations. Positive human socialization and avoidance of fear-inducing experiences can shape an adult dog’s temperament and behaviors for life.

So there are certain facts about a dog’s nature and development, but they can be very much influenced by proper nurturing.

Beau is quick with his teeth. He jumps up. He has all the traits of a Lab: energetic, busy, chewing, and expressive when he does not get his way.

It can be off-putting to someone who is not used to the ways of puppies whose energy has to be expended before the cuddle bug can come out.

We found the perfect way to expend Beau’s energy: her name is Daphne. She is hanging out with us until she is old enough to have cataract surgery to restore her sight.

And lest you think that Beau has one up on our sightless little girl…

think again!

Daphne is schooling Beau in dog manners –

While we work on his people ones.

There is a cuddle bug in there.

Just as the bloom is in that plant.
You just have to put in a little extra effort and wait for it.

****UPDATE!****

UPDATE!