Katie Gets Adopted

And so, after more than 10 months of patient waiting in our shelter, our Catahoula Katie was adopted today.  Katie has been difficult to place because Catahoulas are unique dogs that

require a devoted caretaker to understand their need for exercise and training to become successful family members.  Katie is a beautiful athletic dog who loved our swimming pool and used it daily to work out.  Although Katie was a bit to handle on a walk because she was always looking for wildlife to chase she was also one of our best mannered dogs at adoption events.  She loved to lay out on one of our beds and watch all the people and dogs coming and going in front of the stores we would visit.  My partner Tom spent endless hours working with Katie teaching her commands and giving her confident love.  Veronica worked on photographing Katie and Carol worked on marketing Katie to the public.  All of our volunteers took turns spending time with Katie, and our shelter owner Augusta gave us constant training tips and provided Katie with a safe environment until she was able to finally find her forever home, and that happened today.

We thank the new caregiver for taking Katie into her world and we are confident this is a really good match.  While we want to get all our dogs adopted, our number one goal is to make sure our dogs are going to good loving homes and I feel we accomplished this today.

On a personal note I want to say that I don't wear my religious beliefs in a church, I do my talking to God while walking these beautiful animals that He has put under our care.  Thank you God for being with us and making this day possible.

Peace  

When Friends Return



Paco



Well, how can I not be happy to see this dog again?  When I came in this morning Tom gave me the news that Paco was returned to us.  How can that be?  Paco was adopted almost a year ago

by an older couple who were familiar with Malinois and to my knowledge we never received any negative feed back from them that Paco had problems.  I remember the day that Paco left it was the first heartache I felt in seeing one of our friends going away from us.  After all, it was Paco and his pen mate Asti (aka Molly), who provided me with my first shelter lessons.  I remember one day the two of them ganging up against me when I went to retrieve one of them for a walk.

As I opened the pen gate Paco pushed against my leg and when I knelt to block him Asti took a leap over my shoulder.  When I reached up to try and grab Asti Paco wiggled past my leg and I just lost two dogs in two seconds.  I also learned the importance of closing doors behind you when working with mischievous dogs because both dogs ran directly into our shelter full of barking dogs.  Lucky for me our very experienced shelter worker Colleen was inside and helped me gather up our little escapees.  From that day forward if I have two dogs in a pen or I'm working with an unfamiliar dog I shut doors behind me.  Thanks for lessons learned Paco and welcome back.