The Honor of Knowing Yogi

Here's a story that really exemplifies what rescue is all about through the experience of a rescuer and an abandoned senior dog. Unfortunately, there are too many "Yogi's" out there these days. . .

Thank you Sharon for all that you did for Yogi.

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Rescue seems to leave us with lots of questions about some of our fellow humans. This situation was no different. How could you? That’s the question I couldn’t come up with an acceptable answer for, and never did.

When I arrived home Thursday evening I had an email saying an old Alaskan Malamute had been abandoned at the Petco near Concord Mills. He was walked to the back of the store and tied to a shopping cart with a plastic bag of food and a bowl. I immediately called the store and was told the dog had been transferred to animal control earlier that day, and that he wasn’t a Mal, but rather an Akita. The groomer there explained that once they discovered the dog they went back to view the store surveillance tape and saw her walk in and then exit the store 6 minutes later. He didn’t even have the dignity of a name.

One of our volunteers, Linda, helped get the information passed to the Akita rescue community. Animal control was holding him to satisfy the stray hold. On Monday we were able to get photos and video clips of the dog at the shelter. He was in bad shape, moving very gingerly, but trying. He had severe GI and eyes so cloudy I wasn’t sure he could see. I left with the information and a clock ticking on him for euthanasia at the shelter—a facility that gasses, unfortunately.

By the next morning I had decided the old boy deserved a chance and no less than a humane euthanasia if it came to that. I so hoped it wouldn’t. I have navigated serious long term health problems with my personal dogs and provided hospice care to them. It looked like a tough road ahead, but I wanted to try. I called the shelter in the morning and told them we were hurrying to put up a temporary place for him and I would be there asap. We also arranged for him to have a rabies vaccine while the humane society Vet was there seeing their dogs. Also, Michelle called from Heart of Dixie Akita about mid-day to check on him and I told her what my plan was. She said there were some other Akita folks, Joann Dimon, trying to assist and look for him a senior sanctuary or placement. My heart soured as his band of friends was growing.

When I arrived at the shelter one of the officers came out and said “it doesn’t look good”. I asked what was going on, and he said the dog had not stood all day. My heart just sank and we proceeded to the back to strategize on how I could best load him. They offered to put him to sleep right then—I said no for two reasons. I wanted him to have the benefit of seeing a good Vet and did not want him gassed—he deserved so much more, they all do.

By the time I pulled around to the back of the shelter, he was sitting in a slump. I thought he had walked—he hadn’t and they carried him. He was literally dripping a trail of urine and feces. The officer picked him up and put him in my van. I drove as fast as I could safely back home to a waiting bath for him. He didn’t fight, he was so lethargic and spent, he couldn’t.

I had e-mailed his photos and videos to my Vet and connected with her by phone in the evening to develop an overnight plan. I honestly wasn’t sure he was going to make it through the night. Hopefully he felt better being clean and about 1:00 a.m. he ate a few bites of chicken for me. Although he wasn’t acting painful, I know he had fallen on the slick wet floors at the shelter, so he also got a tramadol for pain, an Imodium for the diarrhea, and subQ fluids to try to rehydrate him. He hadn’t been able to reach the bowl at the shelter and was very dehydrated. We both dosed off about 1:30 a.m. He slept pretty soundly except for another GI upset. At 5:00 a.m. he awoke thirsty and a bit hungry. I fed him a little and prepared him for his 11:00 a.m. appt. with the Vet. When he vocalized it was the sweetest howl. We set up the bottom of a plastic crate with pads and blankets for the ride as he was having a very difficult time raising his front end as well. He rode well and seemed to like the cocoon of the crate and not having to brace himself as much.

He was such a good boy for the exam. He couldn’t stand and it was difficult to tell if he had orthopedic problems or neurological or both. He knuckled all four paws under and couldn’t seem to place them correctly to stand. He was very thin and his muscle mass was almost non-existent. He had urine scolds on his stomach and on his feet to the point of bleeding. They drew blood and we began to talk about a plan to get him mobile again since he had been able to stand on Monday afternoon. They did a blood smear in the meantime that showed no microfilaria—one victory. His lungs and heart sounded okay—another victory! I was concerned though as his teeth began to chatter, a pain signal, and he was super sensitive to touch. Then his lab results came back. Everything started to fall apart. He was in kidney failure and also had high liver values. The room started to spin for me as I was looking forward to bringing him home and working on getting him walking. Now we had internal organ functions failing and a brave boy that couldn’t walk. I needed time to think and sat for about an hour with him considering everything. It’s a road I had personally been down before. My Vet and I both felt there was very little chance that the neglect he had suffered at the hands of his cowardly owner, and the time at the shelter could now be reversed. About 3:30 I finally decided, after another talk with my Vet, that the kindest thing was to let Yogi pass with dignity. He was talked to with kind voices, handled loving and gently by the staff and passed surrounded knowing he was handsome and good in every way. I told him I was sorry and that there were other’s of which their good thoughts he occupied, and prayers he received. How could someone leave an animal at the greatest hour of need? How?

Thank you to both Michelle Wild and Joann Dimon of Akita rescue for calling to support me, as well as my fellow Malamute colleagues. I was honored to know this brave dog, Yogi, if even for a short time. We cared about you boy. Run free, whole, and healthy again, precious boy!

Sharon Huston

Alaskan Malamute Rescue of NC

P.S. A candle has been lit to honor Yogi: 

 

http://www.in-memory-of-pets.com/personalcandle.php?ID=82512

  

Pet Pride Day 2010 - CANCELLED!

UPDATE - Friday 10/22/10: Pet Pride Day has been CANCELLED this year due to Sunday's rainy weather conditions and concerns for the health and safety of the animals.

Hi! Some of the TikiFriends and one or two of the TikiKids will be at Pet Pride Day 2010 in San Francisco on October 24, 2010. At Pet Pride Day, you can see the Halloween Pet Parade with lots of pets in their Halloween costumes, demonstrations with talented animals, find and adopt your new best friend and much more. For more information, please visit www.petprideday.com.

Here's a really informative posting from Mario Vittone about the dangers of not recognizing the actual signs of a person drowning due to most of us being conditioned to expect someone to be dramatically flailing, splashing and yelling for help if they're in distress. Unfortunately, drownings are almost always quiet and deceptive events and look nothing like what we've learned from the movies and television.

This also highlights the need for parents and other people caring for young children (in and out of the water) to be constantly monitoring their activities and that if you can't hear the kids, than you need to be checking up on them.

Click on the posting's title to get to Mario's main posting where there is more helpful information in the article's discussion thread.

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

by Mario Vittone on May 19, 2010

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D.,  is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water.  And it does not look like most people expect.  There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.  To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this:  It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.  In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC).  Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experiencing aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue.  They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.
Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are n the water:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level
• Head tilted back with mouth open
• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
• Eyes closed
• Hair over forehead or eyes
• Not using legs – Vertical
• Hyperventilating or gasping
• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
• Trying to roll over on the back
• Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.

So if a crew member falls overboard and every looks O.K. – don’t be too sure.  Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning.  They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck.  One  way to be sure?  Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are.  If they return  a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them.  And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.
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Mario’s Note:  Thanks to all of you who have posted and linked and Tweeted and shared this article.  As soon as I get home (July 7th) I’ll upload a short video along with a pool safety checklist.  Thanks again for all the support.

disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.

Come visit some of the TikiHut kids at Meet Your Friend At The Zoo Day!

Great Picture of Yoshi and his Mom!

'Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been busy at the TikiHut lately!

For some content, here's a really happy picture of Yoshi and his Mom!

Do you want to adopt a pre-qualified pet?

Times are ruff for specialty-breed rescue groups
By Melissa Bell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 11, 2010

Rosemary and John Yun were looking to adopt.

For months, the Ellicott City couple waited. They filled out applications asking about their neighborhood, their jobs and their daily routines; prepped their home before an agency checked in on
them; asked friends to provide references; and visited with foster families where they were told they were not the only couple in contention. They hoped they wouldn't be disappointed yet again.

Finally, one day last fall, the phone call came: Benji, a mix terrier, could join the Yun family.

The Yuns, who are now adopting a child from Korea, would joke that looking for Benji "was just as hard as finding a human baby," said Rosemary, 38. But the dog was worth the trouble. "He's so smart;
he's super cute; he's just a great dog," said the biotech company manager.

The Yuns needed to find a small dog that had short hair and was nonallergenic and house-trained, but Rosemary worried she would not be able to find one at a local shelter. She didn't want to buy a dog, fearful that the animals are bred in awful conditions before being sold online or to pet stores.

Tails of Hope, a dog rescue group in Mount Airy, Md., provided a solution. Though the search was time-consuming, the Yuns adopted a dog that matched their criteria.

While animal rescue programs have been around since the 1950s, it has only been in the past decade that organizations have cropped up for nearly every breed and those breeds' mixes. The groups foster
dogs to ease crowding at local shelters and offer would-be pet owners more options to adopt.

This month may be the best time to find the right pet. Each spring, after the joy of getting a dog as a Christmas gift shifts to the reality of taking care of it, new owners drop their dogs off at
shelters in droves. Worse, the current economic downturn has forced many families to turn their dogs over to rescue groups. And even the record snowfall led some pet owners to decide they could not
provide for their dogs during the difficult weather, instead surrendering them to shelters, rescue volunteers said.

"The influx of dogs is just tremendous so far this year," said Joanne Hale, the director of MidAtlantic Bulldog Rescue. By the end of February, the group had taken in 27 dogs, and Hale expects that
number to hit 150 by the end of the year. Last year, the rescue group took in 60 dogs.

The rescue groups are usually a loose network of volunteer pet owners who have fallen in love with a certain type of dog. They foster dogs found in the shelter system, rescued from puppy mills or dropped off by owners who can no longer care for them. And they look for the perfect permanent home for the animals.

"We're eHarmony for dogs," said Sarah Ruckelshaus, director of Mid- Atlantic Border Collie Rescue, whose group has a 98 percent success rate at finding a happy "forever" home. "We're really looking to
match up the dog's personality, temperament and energy needs with the family."

The adoption process is strict to ensure the match will stick. Jenny Eisen grew up with the Danes her mother adopted through the Mid-Atlantic Great Dane Rescue League, and she volunteered for the
group. But even she had to submit to a two- to three-month adoption process when she decided she was ready for her own dog. Eisen, a nurse who lives in Arlington, said a volunteer brought over a Dane
to see how it would interact with her two roommates and in her townhouse.

Eisen said some people are reticent to adopt a rescue dog because of the stigma that something must be wrong with the dog for its owners to give it up. "Most people are worried that if they get a dog from a rescue league the dog will have all these issues," said Eisen. "But in actuality they have a pretty rigorous screening process for the people and the dog, so you know what you're getting into."

Though puppies do pass through the rescue organizations, it is much more likely to find a dog that's 1 year old or older. Kimberly Pollard, a lobbyist in Richmond, wanted a pug after falling in love with her neighbor's dog, but she worked full time and could not rush home every few hours to potty-train a puppy. She found Levi, a 3-year-old pug, through Mid-Atlantic Pug Rescue. "A puppy is great," Pollard said, "but if you get a dog a year or two older, they're already trained. And older dogs need homes. That's two benefits right there."

The past 10 years have seen a sharp increase in demand for purebred dogs due to popular culture: Pug sales spiked after one played a role in the movie "Men in Black" and its sequel; Chihuahua fever can be credited to the film "Legally Blonde" and Taco Bell commercials. But purebred dogs often require specific care and can have particular health issues, said Joan Schramm, public relations coordinator for Mid-Atlantic Great Dane Rescue League in the District and Maryland. Great Danes, for example, can suffer from joint problems and heart ailments. Rescue organizers cite a lack of knowledge as the single biggest contributor to the rise in specialty breeds up for adoption.

"They look so cute on the screen," she said, but when owners cannot provide the necessary care, the dogs are sent packing. Schramm is not looking forward to the release of "Marmaduke," a movie about a Great Dane that is scheduled to open this summer. "Six months later," she said, "we'll be inundated with dogs."

The high demand has driven many disreputable sellers into the business, said Hale, the bulldog breeder. Foreign importers, puppy mill owners or backyard breeders pay "$1,000 for a litter of puppies, and sell them for a $3,500 a pop."

While plenty of the volunteers have more than a few choice words for dog breeders, the organizations do not discourage people who want to buy a puppy or a show dog. The American Kennel Club's Web
site offers a checklist on what to look for in a good breeder: someone who would be willing to take the dog back if the purchase does not work out, someone who does not have plenty of available
dogs and someone from whom the dogs do not seem to shy away.

"Just do your research," Schramm said. "Buying a dog off Craigslist is not such a good idea."