In my last post in which I told you that our lovely little foster pup Dippity was adopted, I also mentioned, mostly just to make a point, that another little dog who looked just like Dippity had landed that same day in the very same shelter in south Texas.
My point was that the stream of unwanted dogs filling up our southern shelters is neverending. You save one; and another just like it takes its place like some kind of warped Ground hog day. It’s worse now than before the pandemic. (I wrote about the reasons for that in a post on Medium a few months ago.)
On this past Monday, I learned that Dippity 2 was still in the shelter and she was closing in on the end of her 10 days. If no owner reclaimed her, no local adopted her, and no rescue pulled her, she would be euthanized today.
Thanks to some very generous people who answered my plea on my Facebook page, more than enough money was donated to X-Port Paws to rescue Dippity 2 (now known as Bippity Bop).
On Tuesday, she was pulled out of the shelter and into a foster home by a partner of X-Port Paws. She will stay there this week, be vetted (vaccines, health certificate, and 4Dx test). After that she will likely go to a boarding facility until X-Port Paws can arrange for a transport to Virginia. She will be our foster, and we’ll work to get her healthy, spayed, and then adopted.
I’m grateful for the donations that have come in which should cover having her vetted, boarded, and transported. We may even have enough to cover her spay surgery. I’m waiting to hear if she tests positive for Heartworm, which will mean expensive treatment (paws crossed we’ll luck out as we did with Dippity).
It seems like a lot of effort and expense for one little dog. And, of course, I have to wonder- why this dog and not another? Right now there are so many.
I don’t have an answer for that. In rescue it’s very easy to become overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. When my heart feels swamped, I remind myself: Help the ones put in your path.
Thanks to Serendipity, this little pup was placed on my path. The response of my dog-hearted community overwhelmed me. Within an hour of my post, donations had started to come into XPort Paws for Bippity’s rescue.
That fact confirms for me once again that people want to save dogs. And when we ask clearly for specific help, they respond.
As I travel to shelter after shelter, my frustration builds because I KNOW it is possible to save all the adoptable dogs. There are solutions; it is a fixable problem. As my friend, Aubrie Kavanaugh said in her book (of the same name), “It’s not rocket science.” There is NO reason that dogs as adoptable as Dippity or Bippity should die in a shelter. No. Reason.
There are lots of excuses, lots of blame, lots of indifference, and plenty of ignorance. Those are obstacles, as are personal agendas, politics, and people who can’t see past history. I will continue to work toward a future I know is out there—one where all the adoptable dogs find homes.
If you want to learn more and/or get involved, visit WhoWillLettheDogsOut.org. Meanwhile, you can follow the rescue of Bippity Bob here on the blog or in real-time on my writer Facebook page or the Another Good Dog facebook group.
I don’t know very much yet about Bippity other than she landed in a shelter in south Texas where a lot of dogs die. Bippity is just 25 pounds, so she’s a little smaller than Dippity. She has a little gray on the ridgeline of her coat which suggests some shepherd DNA. She has the same big sad brown eyes as Dippity. She also looks to be a little more shell-shocked and terrified, but she is safe now and hopefully soon she will know it.
Until Each One Has a Home,
Cara
For information on me, my writing, and books, visit CaraWrites.com.
If you’d like regular updates of all our foster dogs past and present, plus occasional dog care/training tips, and occasional foster cat updates (!) be sure to join the Facebook group, Another Good Dog.
And if you’d like to know where all these dogs come from and how you can help solve the crisis of too many unwanted dogs in our shelters, visit WhoWillLetTheDogsOut.org and subscribe to our blog where we share stories of our travels to shelters, rescues, and dog pounds.
If you can’t get enough foster dog stories, check out my book: Another Good Dog: One Family and Fifty Foster Dogs. Or its follow up that takes you to the shelters in the south One Hundred Dogs & Counting: One Woman, Ten Thousand Miles, and a Journey Into the Heart of Shelters and Rescues.
I love to hear from readers and dog-hearted people! Email me at carasueachterberg@gmail.com.
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