Update on Sierra, one of Lucille’s Pups

Harriett and I love to hear about our foster dogs and one of the benefits of social networking is that we get to hear about more of our fosters more often.

Last last summer we had a wonderful Pit Bull mix mom named Lucille. She had seven puppies here and many of you followed their development on this blog and on our PuppyCam. You can look over those posts by clicking on “Lucille” in the tag cloud in the left-hand column.

This puppy was called Sierra and last week we received a wonderful update from her new owner. With her permission I’m posting her note:

Hi Tom,

My name is Valerie and I live in Urbana.  My husband, Nick, and I were fortunate enough to adopt one of Lucile's puppies.  I wanted to send you an update on her.  We adopted Sierra, who is now Goose.  She has been a great addition to our crew.  We have two cats and one other dog, Crash, a two year old lab/dane mix.  Goose acclimated pretty well to our home. She is the dominate dog and Crash was sweet and sharing with her from the start.  She was and still is quite a challenge, but I only laugh when I think back to those days.  House breaking her and getting her used to her crate were only a few of the difficulties we had, but we were up to the challenge.  Goose loves her brother Crash, who was a major help in getting her used to being comfortable when we were not at home.  She is still a bit shy and cautious when meeting new people/things, but she does eventually warm up to them.  She even met a horse last month.  Goose is very sweet and loves to be near us.  One of her favorites places to be is in my lap.  Once I sit on the floor, she is instantly on top of me.  She took pretty well to her training, which we are still working on.  The first few weeks we had her, we had several people recognize her from your puppy cam.  I want to thank you for taking such good care of my baby Goose.  She truly has brought something special to our lives. 

Valerie has promised send me a photo to post so we can all see what Goose looks like.

Thanks, Valerie, we appreciate the update.

Nase’s First Snow

Many of you might remember Lucille’s daughter, Nase (she was called Tulip before she was adopted). Her owner has posted a video of her romping in her first snowfall. You’ll find it on her blog:

Life and times of me and my girls

Update on Nase, Lucille’s Daughter

Nase (formerly known as Tulip) is growing up fast! Here’s the latest update from her owner.

http://chsisana.blogspot.com/2009/10/nase-is-growing-up-way-too-fast.html

Lucille’s Gone Home

Lucille’s new owner picked her up this afternoon. She’ll be living in a small town about 30 miles south of here. Although Lucille had met Gary only once before, she immediately ran to greet him. I think she was trying to sit in his lap as they drive away. We’re pretty confident this is going to be a great match all around.

Harriett took Lucille for one last walk before Gary arrived and they stopped to pose for a photo.

Lucille’s Going Home

Lucille’s been adopted and will be going home on Friday afternoon. The moms stay with us longer than the pups and it’s hard not to get too attached. We’re very fond of Lucille, but it’s time for her to move on to a forever home.

She’s been adopted by a nice couple from Harriett’s home town. Harriett’s in contact with them via Facebook, so we hope to have periodic updates.

Lucille Needs A Home

We still have Lucille. Her spay surgery has been scheduled for Thursday, August 27. If there’s a run open at the shelter she’ll go back there and be put up for adoption.

I don’t think it’s possible to see what a nice dog she is by reading about her and looking at a few photos. Harriett and I decided we needed to show what a good dog she is, so we made a video of her. You’ll see that she’s a really easy dog to live with and is very trainable. How could you not want a dog like this?

Ok, I know, she looks like a pit bull, but you have to look past appearance. She’s a very laid back dog that’s great with people of all kinds as well as other dogs. This is an excellent family pet.

She will be with us for at least another week, but if anyone is interested in her they can come out here to visit. Call the Champaign County Humane Society and tell them you want to arrange to visit with Lucille and they will put you in touch with us.

We hope Lucille finds a good home. If you know anyone who’s looking for a dog, you can help us out by telling them about Lucille and this video.

10,000 Visit Retrospective

It’s amazing to me that we’ve had more than 10,000 visitors to this blog since February 2009. Harriett and I thought we’d share a behind the scenes look into a foster home and the type of extra care some animals need before they can go up for adoption to permanent homes. We’re overwhelmed and grateful that so many people are interested in their stories. The goal of this blog, PuppyCam, our Twitter feeds, and Facebook are to use social networking to get these guys into good forever homes.

Obviously we couldn’t do this kind of work alone. The Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) provides an enormous amount of support. It starts at the top with M. “Tief” Tiefenbrunn, the Executive Director, sending Tweets and mentioning us on TV and Radio. Michelle McKnight, the Shelter Manager; Dr. Jennifer Stone, CCHS’s Veterinarian; and Karen Simmons, the Medical Lab Manager and Foster Care Coordinator; help us keep our foster pets healthy. The adoptions staff at the front desk help match our fosters to good homes.

The animals we take care of are innocent victims. Some of cruelty, some of ignorance, and all of a disposable pet mentality. One way everyone can help them is to spread the word that they are at CCHS and available for adoption.  They can use everyone’s help to find good forever homes.

Most of the time we have moms and puppies, but occasionally a dog like Madrid who needs some recovery time after a medical procedure comes through. Here’s a look back on the first half of this year and who’s appeared on the blog.

Madrid (Feb 2009) Medical Foster
Boogie (Feb 2009) Foster Mom
Daisy (Feb 2009) Foster Mom and Litter
Lucille (May 2009) Foster Mom and Litter
Bonnie and Clyde (July 2009) Foster Pups

Return Dates Set

Lucille’s puppies will be going back to the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) later this week. The boys (Miki, Morel, and Milano) are scheduled to go on Wednesday. The girls (Tulip, Sierra, Juno, and Cricket) will go on Thursday. The spay/neuter surgeries will be on the day they return and they ought to be available for adoption on the day after.

You can check the CCHS website for a list of animals available for adoption as well as the policies and procedures for adopting.

Lucille will be with us for at least another month while her milk dries up, then she’ll go back to be spayed and put up for adoption.

Lucille Gets a Mention

It was very nice to see Lucille mentioned in Jim Dey’s column in the Champaign Urbana News-Gazette on Saturday, July 25.

Jim has been out with his daughter several times to help socialize puppies and checks in every now and then to see what we have in foster care. When he called last week we spoke about the large number of very young animals coming to the Shelter and the shortage of foster homes that has caused. I appreciate Jim taking space in his column to mention the problem. Any help we can get to find homes for the animals is always welcome. And maybe the story will prompt a few more people to become foster homes for The Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS).

If you’ve been following this blog you’ve seen what goes into foster care for young puppies. CCHS also needs foster homes for kittens, adult dogs, and cats. Fostering is usually done for a defined period of time. If you’d like to have a dog or cat, but don’t want a full-time commitment, fostering would let you have an animal companion on your schedule. There’s always a need for people who will take dogs and cats of all ages for reasons such as medical recovery or treatments, behavior monitoring and training. 

If you think you would be interested in becoming a foster home please contact Laura Davis, the Volunteer Coordinator at CCHS. Her email address is 2.volunteer@cuhumane.org.

Lucille’s Pups – Final Week

Lucille’s pups are seven weeks old and we’re starting to get them ready to return to the Shelter for adoption. We’ll be getting spay/neuter surgery dates for them soon and that will determine when they go back. If you have been following the litter here or PuppyCam and are interested in adopting one of these puppies, call the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) and they can fill you in on the details. It’s possible to arrange to meet the pups here, before they go back to the Shelter.

Last night the pups had their second set of vaccinations. Each puppy got vaccinated for Bordatella (“kennel cough”) and they each got a combination vaccine called DHLPPC (Distemper, Leptospirosis, Hepatitis, Parainfluenza, Parvo virus, & Corona virus). We already did one set of vaccinations a couple of weeks ago, so this was their second set.

It’s important for the puppies to be vaccinated before they go back to the Shelter. It keeps each one of them healthy and also insures that they do not carry something back with them to infect other animals in the building. When we started fostering twenty years ago it was not uncommon for puppies to get seriously ill while they waited to be adopted. The current medical program has all but eliminated that risk, and now the worst we usually see is minor sniffles or stomach upsets.

CCHS takes the health of their animals very seriously. They’ve made a commitment to a high level of care by having a full-time veterinarian on staff as well as a dedicated group of veterinary technicians.

I mentioned the costs involved in raising healthy pups a few months ago just before Daisy’s litter left, but I think it’s interesting to look at the costs again. The costs in the chart below are taken from our own vet bills for the last year. They represent what it would cost to provide the medical care these puppies will have before they go up for adoption.

	Retail Value	Times	Total
Bordatella Vaccine	$15.00	2	$30.00
DHLPPC Vaccine	$17.50	2	$35.00
Fecal Flotation Test	$15.00	2	$30.00
Worming Medication	$15.00	2	$30.00
Spay Surgery	$175.00	1	$175.00
Microchip ID	$65.00	1	$65.00

That comes to $365 per puppy. Add in food costs and you wind up with a bit over $380 per pup or $2,660 for the litter. If a puppy gets sick or needs treatment for fleas or something the cost goes even higher.

We'd like to raise the money to pay for the last set of vaccinations. That's Bordatella and DHLPPC for each pup at a cost of $32.50 each. Our goal is to raise $228 to cover the cost of the vaccinations we gave last night. You can help by clicking the Donate button to make a donation to cover part of the expense. If we go over this goal the money will be applied toward the first set of vaccinations and the wormings we have already done. 

Thank you!

Weekly Headshots Posted

Sorry for the delay, but I have finally posted the weekly headshots of Lucille’s puppies.

The photo on the left was taken when the pups were 4 days old. The ones on the right were taken on Thursday evening (July 9). Click on a photo below to see the gallery for each puppy.

Tulip (1)
Sierra (2)
Juno (3)
Miki (4)
Morel (5)
Milano (6)
Cricket (7)

Lucille’s Urinary Tract Infection

It’s tough being the subject of a blog…everyone knows private details about your life.

A few days ago we noticed that Lucille had a couple of “accidents” in the house. We never know the housebreaking status of foster dogs, but Lucille has been acting housebroken since the babies were born. Whenever you have a housebroken dog that starts to have accidents in the house the first thing you have to check for is an underlying medical problem.

We captured a urine sample and took it to the Shelter for analysis. Sure enough, Lucille has a urinary tract infection (UTI). Dr. Stone, the Shelter veterinarian, prescribed the antibiotic Sulka-Prim for a 14-day period.

When we take foster dogs from the Champaign County Humane Society (CCHS) we are extremely fortunate to have their laboratory and veterinary resources available to us. CCHS makes a commitment for high-quality medical care for every animal they take in. As foster parents we appreciate their dedication to having a healthy animal population. This means that our mothers and puppies go up for adoption in excellent health.

This type of care doesn’t come cheap. The urinalysis cost was $31. Lucille will need another one at the end of her treatment to be sure the infection is gone. That’s $62. Then there’s the antibiotics. It costs $27 for the medication to treat Lucille’s UCI. That brings us to $89 if one round of antibiotics takes care of the problem.

If CCHS didn’t provide these resources, either Lucille would have to go without treatment (OUCH!), or we would have to take her to a private veterinary practice at a greater expense.

By the time the puppies go up for adoption the Shelter will have invested a few hundred dollars in their medical care. I’ll be writing more about this in future posts. Each puppy will be vaccinated twice and wormed as often as necessary. If any of them get sick there will be additional medical expenses to treat them. The Shelter also pays for all their food.

We know a lot of people reading this blog take an interest in Lucille and her litter. We’d like to try raising the $89 to pay for the treatment of Lucille’s UTI. You can help by clicking the Donate button to make a donation to cover part of the expense. Thank you!

Socialization

This week marked a turning point in our socialization efforts with the puppies. Now that they are completely mobile and becoming more active we started to bring them out as a group to watch TV with us. The puppy room is adjacent to the room in which we have a television and sitting area. This area was designed like this on purpose so the pups would get used to normal household sounds while they were growing up. They hear the TV, telephone, vacuum cleaner, etc., and become accustomed to these sounds.

The first few times we open the puppy room door to let the pups come into the other room they often hesitate when they get to the tile floor. This is very common. The pups are naturally cautious each time they are put onto a new flooring surface. All it takes is a bit of coaxing to get them to come out into the room. Before they leave us we’ll also take them upstairs and let them explore the kitchen.

The first time we brought the pups out we noticed that Sierra was a bit timid and not joining the group.  When we’ve had puppies since birth they usually swarm all over us when we sit on the floor with them. They are used to being handled because of their twice-daily weighing and other maintenance like nail trimming. She didn’t mind being handled, she just wasn’t sure about the new environment. Whenever this happens we make a special effort to integrate the puppy with our activities to help it overcome its hesitation.

Over the next two evenings we made a special effort to hold Sierra on the chair, snuggle with her on the couch, and lay on the floor with her. We gave her a lot of contact time and made it as stress-free and pleasurable for her as possible. Our reward for a couple of nights of special attention was last night when she ran out with the group and swarmed over me while I was laying on the floor. She stayed with us the entire evening and finally fell asleep with her head on my hand.

We have a very small window of time in which to socialize the puppies to pleasurable human contact. If the puppies are not properly socialized within the first 8 to 12 weeks of their lives they can never recover. Last littler I wrote a post about our dog, Bella, and what happens when a puppy is not socialized. It’s simple to do proper socialization, but we have to be attuned to how the puppies react to new situations and people.

Over the next few weeks the puppies will have a lot of visitors. We like the pups to meet people of all types and ages. The puppies benefit greatly from these interactions. Our goal is to make them comfortable meeting new people so when they go back to the Shelter for adoption they will not be afraid to meet potential adopters and will be comfortable in their new homes meeting relatives and friends of their new families.

Many Changes This Week

There have been a lot of changes in the puppy room this week. The first big change was to let the pups leave the confines of the whelping box and have a larger space. The puppy room has been divided in half and the pups can go in and out of the box as they like. They’re timid about exploring at first, but their curiosity soon gets the better of them and they start to leave the box to explore.

We’re now entering into what I think is the period in foster care in which the pups are the most fun. They are starting to take an interest in toys and playing games with each other. They are also beginning to seek contact with people. This is a very critical time in their development because it is now that they learn to like being with people and to accept handling without a fuss.

We spend at least an hour handling the pups each day and often have visitors come over to help with socialization. Harriett and I hold each puppy and touch the ears, feet, tail, muzzle, and mouth. It doesn’t take too long for the pups to enjoy being handled and start climbing all over us to get attention. Our goal is to have them seeking attention when they go back to the Shelter so they will approach and be accepting of handling by potential adopters.

The other important thing that happens is that the puppies learn to play with each other and how to play with other dogs. Lucille will teach them the basics of dog etiquette. They learn to play with other pups by wrestling and playing "mouth games” with each other. We like the pups to be well socialized so they can be adopted into a multi-dog household and will be friendly to dogs they meet in training classes, walks, or play times at the park.

The weekly headshot photos have been posted in the puppies’ albums. Check out the changes this week! Sierra (#2) and Cricket (#7) are developing a more obvious brindle pattern. It’s really noticeable in the profile shots. Click a picture below to see the album for that pup.

Tulip (1)		Sierra (2)
Juno (3)		Miki (4)
Morel (5)		Milano (6)
Cricket (7)