Operation Homeward Bound Report

AMAZINGLY AWESOME!!!

Total number of dogs/cats taken to Connecticut - 140.
Total returning to Georgia - 4

Total adopted - 136

An absolutely incredible weekend and a very emotional one, even by dog standards. So many new happy families - formerly homeless dogs proudly walking on leashes next to beaming new pet owners. Hollywood hasn't written better happy endings.

Check back - we'll be posting stories soon - once my paws recover from the long journey home.

'til later,

Buddy

The countdown begins

Three days to go - we leave July 8, Wednesday evening, on our Homeward Bound journey.

Gotta say this - a lot of people have put in tons of work, particularly Paradox vets and staff who've seemingly been spaying and neutering in their sleep. Plus, gathering vaccination records, completing health certificates and loading Petfinder with info on all the dogs has been a logistical challenge and a pain-in-the rump. But you can't get around the benefit of 125 dogs finding new homes. So we'd gladly do it again.

There's still plenty to do. We're doing a mock-load on Monday, working out how the crates would best fit in the trailers. Gotta iron on the kinks out before adding excitable dogs into the mix. Still more paperwork left to do, a few more surgeries remaining, and plenty of dogs to wash and spruce up.

Whew. I'm tired and it's only Sunday!

'til later,

Buddy

Homeward Bound

Check out some of the furry faces going to Connecticut:

Dogs and more dogs

Wow, have we been busy! Just a few weeks left before our trip up north with 125 dogs available for adoption. We've been rescuing 8-10 dogs each week. Today we pulled 10 dogs and 5 cats from the shelter. They were happy to leave, but afraid. If they only knew - things will be a lot better from now on.

Lots of fundraising efforts going on, too. Not our favorite activity, but money is needed to pay for the medications and sterilization surgeries. Check out the Operation Homeward Bound page on our website for more info. Sponsoring a dog would be a HUGE help to us.

And we dogs will be grateful to you for all eternity!

'til later,

Buddy

Wagons Ho!

We've got some big news. WAG will be traveling north in July, transporting 125 rescued dogs to new homes. We've arranged to bring animals to a mega-adoption event held by a regional humane society in New England. At their last event, over 150 dogs were adopted in 3 days!

Can you imagine - 125 dogs finding homes in one month? That's ten times more than what's usually adopted out locally in the same time period. So this is HUGE for the animals. Check out the details at http://www.wagwalton.com/Operation_Homeward_Bound.php. And please help by sponsoring a pet if you can - we accomplish a lot more when we all pull together.

'til later,

Buddy

Shelter update

For those of you watching progress or lack thereof on the new government shelter, here's the latest - The bids came in too high so we've taken two steps back. Time to reassess the plans, the money options or whatever else needed to get this project going.

Unfortunately, after the new office building was completed the old kennels were demolished, reducing shelter capacity by about 40%. Meanwhile the staff struggles with 300+ animals a month coming through and trying to squeeze all those into 20 two-sided kennels. Let's hope government officials address this soon. It's important to remember these aren't old filing cabinets being stored until the new building is complete - it means animals are dying because there's no room at the inn. Big difference.

Kittens? Ewwwwwwww!

It's my favorite time of year - when we try to eradicate the world of those nasty cats!

Well, maybe not that extreme. But WAG is offering free spaying surgery for mother cats of recently weaned kittens. The kittens should be at least 8 weeks old. Act soon, because this program is for a limited period of time. Plus, if you don't act fast mama will be pregnant again!

(sniff) Cats are such shamless hussies. We dogs have much more class.

'til later,

Buddy