Sparky's Grand Adventure

Today, is the day after Christmas which is also the day Sparky got his stitches out of his butt. He had the large tumor removed and was in recovery for two weeks. We drove up to Murray to the Spay & Neuter to get his stitches out, we actually ran into Arlene and Kristy while we were there, turned out nothing was wrong with Arlene (btw) ANYWAYS, they took Sparky back and took them out, you could hear him yelping! For those that don't know Sparky yelps like a human it's the craziest thing, I wish you all could hear it.

That was that and he was thrilled to see us.

We drove him, he loves car rides and has to sit up staring out the window the WHOLE ride home (45 min) We get home, take him inside and my niece Anna (2 yrs) is our dog letter outer person. She constantly is letting dogs go in and out, so she let Sparky out. Sparky was one in the past 2 1/2 weeks we'd let him out, he'd do his business, and then come straight back inside since it was cold. It was about 10 min when we realized he was gone. The gate in the kitchen was left open so we thought he had gone to the other side of the house to go to sleep. We asked Anna if she let him in, she said she did. We looked EVERYWHERE, every little spot he might get to. He can't use stairs, so it was just one level of searching. 

We tried looking for little footprints in the snow around our house, but Sparky is old and can't walk very well in the snow. We called out neighbors, searched their yards, everywhere around our house, and drove around our neighborhood a couple times. Me and my mother went to the police department to have them keep a look out for him but of course, Animal Control wasn't in today. We went home and my mom was stressing out SOOO much, Sparky had all this surgery done and has soon as he's fully recovered we lost him! Where could he have possibly gone?! This guy name Mike from Rescue Rovers had come over to help search for little Old Man Sparky, he was also confused on where in the world Sparky could have ran off to! 

We were just about to get our minds off it for a little while and go to have lunch, all we could hope was someone found him and would call us. I was going to stay home just in case he was sleeping somewhere in the house that we didn't know about. Though right before we left the house my mother got a phone call and someone had found Sparky!! Thank goodness he was wearing a Rescue Rovers tag!! We got the ladies address and heading over there as fast as we could, turned out he had walked from our house up the street and towards Maple Mountain and stopped at the last house before hitting the mountain and just walked around their house shivering and tired. The people said that he was walking around so they though he was someone's down the street and left him out and left, and when they came back he was still there so they brought him inside and called Rescue Rovers! We are so thankful we found him and that he's doing great, he won't be outside alone ever again... We are keeping our eyes on that old man for now on!! Guess he was feeling super great and wanted to go on a mile walk, i'm surprised on how fast he walked over there too. So glad to have him home! :)

Apparently when he went to sleep he was still dreaming of running away, that stinker!! We are keeping an eye on that old man!!

When you pick up Sparky his legs will go straight out and he
 looks like he's an airplane about to take off!

Also, there the Spay & Neuter has two cats that live in the building and one came and sat on my lap and was super friendly and made me happy, I LOVE cats but i'm allergic to them so it's hard for me to resist them when they just climb right into my lap!

Recovery and Goodbyes

       Today Bullwinkle went to his new furever home. After 6 apps, one not able to adopt it, one not calling back, one getting a new job and not able to take him, one no show, and one not calling back to schedule a meet and greet. We called the lady last night and she set it up for today and then texted me today and said she got out of meetings early and came EARLIER to see Bullwinkle! She even asked if she could bring her cat to see how well they got along (she didn't bring it). When she got here Bullwinkle was about to take a nap so he was extra sweet to her. She helps with The U gymnastics so since it's off season she'll be with him more but during the Spring she'll be gone more, though she can bring Bullwinkle with her since the coach usually brings their Lab to practice. I think it's a great fit for him!

Bullwinkle and his new Momma

       

 It's going to be pretty quiet without Bullwinkle, he started to bark when you prepare his food, he'd get SO excited and just bark and jump behind you. When he was hungry he'd walk to the pantry and just started barking at the door. Just today he was finally going to the door to go out and go potty! Sparky's recovery will go a lot smoother without a puppy trying to play with him constantly. I think after Sparky gets adopted me and my mother will take a break for a couple months. We'll do things for Rescue Rovers  if they ever need anything. 

Bullwinkle & I

Rush was the one that played the most with Bullwinkle, he was so good with playing with him! When she took him he was standing outside watching her leave with him. I think he's find now, no more little doggie biting his tail and stuffs. 

In other news, Sparky is on day 5 of recovery from his surgery and he's doing so awesome! When I fed him dinner tonight he was bouncing all over the place he was so excited! He had quite the appetite too, I ended up giving him three servings of food since he's soooo skinny. He needs to get some meat on his bones, he's also using stairs like a boss too. When I open the door for the other three dogs to go out he'll go on out with them, do his business, and then come back inside. He enjoys following me around the kitchen and if i'm standing at the table scrapbooking or something he'll just stand right next to me looking around. He'll make a great companion to someone someday. My husbands cousin absolutely adored him when I talked to her the other day. She told me the dog I had was so cute, and I asked "which one?" I was assuming Bullwinkle or Hector NOPE it was Sparky she thought was so cute! Hopefully somebody out there will think he's so cute and adopt him and give him the lovins he 

deserves! 

Day 5

He seemed to be more awake today too, we keep the thunder shirt on him so he'll stay warm, there is a sweater underneath it also. :)

Also, I just learned that Rush and I can wear the same size shirts now. Stinks for him, but awesome for me! Basically he's the most patient dog in the world, but you'd have to be if you were my dog. I test all his limits and see how long it takes for me to annoy them. So far he hasn't snapped once, he's so good. We did have a visitor today and he walked right up to her like to big deal.

Tough Day for the Sparkinator

As you know, Sparky is 10-11 years old, he was found a stray and was super ratted up that he could barely see. The shelter cut his hair in front of his eyes and Chelsea did the rest. He had little dreads under his chin that were absolutely disgusting. Anyways, he got surgery yesterday. He had to get most of his top teeth yanked, neutered, and a tumor out of his behind. The tumor on his behind that you could see apparently wasn't even a quarter of the size that was inside of him. We had him stay over night because it took longer than they thought. So today we picked him up in Murray Spay & Neuter and took him home. Boy does he look uncomfortable when he sits, walks, lies down, or anything. He has two different pain meds he has to take 2-3 times a day. He has stitches all around his bum area and has blood on his fur (he can't take a bath yet since he has stitches) I can't even imagine how much he aches, it seems like his back legs don't even want to stand up for very long. He's been sleeping all day and whines when he's away (reasonable). Bless his little old man heart he's a good sport!!

Day #1 of Recovery

He needs to go back in to the Spay & Neuter in two weeks to get his stitches out, which is the day after Christmas. They said they were dissolvable but they want to check up on him anyways. He has to have a lot of fiber and super soft food with chicken broth. SO he can get adopted in 2 weeks and I think he'll be feeling a TON better than he has been in a long time. While he's been sleeping he's been snoring big time which is really fun to listen to.

Turn up volume -

He is a wonderful dog that will make a GREAT companion to someone someday. <3

So. Many. Dogs.

       As most know, me and my mom foster dogs together. I live in the basement apartment of their home with my wonderful husband. I love having this interest with my mom to help save dogs and get them a great furever home. We started in May and are still doing it with breaks in between! At the moment we have 8 week old Bullwinkle and 10-11 year old Sparky, they are both awesome dogs and deserve the best home possible!!

Bullwinkle

Bullwinkle is a Bulldog Dachsund mix, he has a cleft palate and was bottle fed since day one. His mother didn't want him because he wouldn't be able to latch on and feed. Rescue Rovers took him in and let him survive and BOY is he a handful. He has SO many apps on him, we had three approved apps but the first one was able to take him, the second one never returned our call, and the third one got a new job and couldn't take him anymore. He gets fixed tomorrow and is READY to go to a furever home. Just need some more approved apps so we can pay all our attention to our old man Sparky. We then tried picture #2 on the main wall to get him some more apps, let us just say, it was a success. They have SO many apps in and we're just waiting to see who the special family is to get the Fatty McFat Fat.

Bullwinkle

SPARKY

Sparky is about 10-11 he came from the Tooele shelter, he was found a stray and was super ratted and smell like death. He was malnourished, shy, and just paced around whining and standing by each door. I had given him a bath as soon as we got home just so he might feel a teeny bit better and kept trying to get ahold of Chelsea the groomer to cut his gross hair. 

Sparky Day 1

We took him to Chelsea that night at 6:45 the weather was SO AWFUL you couldn't see ten feet ahead of you, luckily she had lived very close to us. Eric, my brother had driven my that morning to Salt Lake to pick Sparky up and the weather was so incredibly bad!! I thought we would die. Anyways I took him to Chelsea and she bathed him again and we noticed he had a BIG owie on his bum, apparently either he has a tumor or an anal gland bursted. He gets fixed tomorrow and they will take care of that but he's been in a ton of pain for who knows how long. 

Before and After

He hasn't gotten SO much better in the 5 days  we've had him, he's come out of his shell, wagged his tail and comes up for pets. 

Sparky Day 3

He has come a long way

Sparky Day 5

In other news, today I took some Christmas pictures of my Rushbo. He is possibly the best model out there when it comes to me taking pictures of him! He is incredibly patient with me dressing him up, posing him, and making him stay there for 5 minutes. 

Merry Christmas 2013 (7 months 60 lbs)

Also, Storm & Rush love the snow

Thanksgiving 5k & My Miracle Mutt

The past two years my family does the Thanksgiving 5k, Scott usually goes plays football or soccer and me, my parents, brother, and sister run the 5k. This year was special though, my 7 month puppy Rush ran his first 5k (3.2 miles)!!! He did awesome!! We had trained for about a month, which was hard because I didn't want to take him too far since he was still growing.

Before the race!

Rush has been known to be VERY shy, when it comes to strangers he doesn't want none of that. So when we got there every little kid pointed him out and wanted to pet him. This little 7 year old girl came up to me before and asked me if she could pet him, I said yes and gave her a treat. It took a while but he accepted it and hid behind me again. He got a little bit more comfortable and automatically started shaking all the little kids hands around him, they thought it was so cool and told their parents! We started the run and it took a while for Rush to get used to the pace we were going, we ran with my mother and Storm (blue tick hound mix) so Rush would have motivation to keep going. We were about .30 into the race when Rush just STOPS in the middle of the road and takes a huge juicy dump. Now if you have ever ran a race you know that at the beginning it gets pretty crowded for the first mile or so. So when Rush pooped EVERYONE saw it and EVERYONE pointed it out. I luckily had a baggy and picked it up and ran with it for a mile. By mile 2.5 Rush was starting to slow down, the only thing keeping him going is not wanting my mom and Stormy to get out of his sight. I was starting to almost drag him along until we had about .3 left, he got all this energy and just sprinted with me to the finish line! He had finished his first 5k!!

Showing his medal off

Hopefully within the next year or so I can train him up to a 10k-1/2 marathon. It will take a LOT of work for him, he's not your typical athlete when it comes to running. Though he has me slow down so I don't continue hurting my joints for pushing too hard. My sister Kristy runs with her two little doggies - Rufus & Marlene.

That weekend we got to take some pictures of our contest winner of "My Miracle Mutt". They were such an incredibly family and I loved taking their pictures! 

Fox & his Family

It was probably my favorite photo shoot I've ever done, their dog was gorgeous and the relationship with the JulieLynn and Fox was remarkable! 

FOX

Rush

       I've had a sudden urge to post about my wonderful 7 month old puppy Rush. Rush is a spoiled dog that every night he gets to sleep with our portable fan facing his dog bed, a tub of toys, gets a cookie every night before bedtime, and me working at home and being with him every second of the day. He wasn't abused a day in his life, though, him and his 9 other siblings were put in the shelter at only 4 weeks old. My sister had just adopted a rescue a couple months before named Rufus. Rufus was seconds away from being put down but was saved minutes before, Kristy saw him on the website and knew he was the one she wanted to adopt. Rufus was abused by his previous owner and was TERRIFIED of everyone, it took him a while to get comfortable with family and visitors. Kristy then decided she wanted to try out fostering for Rescue Rovers, she talked to my mom about it and got my mom thinking also. We decided we would, as we drove to Salt Lake thinking we'd only foster 2 MAYBE 3 puppies, Kristy called and asked if we were willing to foster 5 instead. We said yes and continued driving up, we got there and I searched every crate to find these four week old puppies. I stopped at this one crate, kneeled down, and saw the cutest puppies I had ever seen in my entire life. All I could hope was that those were the puppies we'd be taking home with us, and they were.

10 puppies in the shelter.

They didn't provide us with a crate, so we had to get the puppies home somehow! We set down a blanket on the passenger side on the ground between my legs and put the five puppies there. These puppies were so attention starved and just wanted to climb up on my lap. (Note - These are 4 week old puppies) These puppies already had so much love to give at such a young age, they were taken way too early from their mother, starving, and covered in ticks.

On our way home

Boomer

Memorial weekend in New Mexico was apparently the weekend to take your puppies to the shelter. They were so over packed with puppies that they needed to start putting them down soon. 

Home

We had arrived home, they say the first night with your foster feed them as much as they want to eat since they had probably been starving. We fed our five pups and boy did they chow down! You could see their stomachs starting to fill and they were getting ROUND. They were maybe five pounds each at the time. We kept watching Zelda, we were so concerned about her because she was quiet and she just had the saddest look on her face. We were worried she may not make it, but boy is she a strong gal! After a couple days Zelda's personality brightened and she was the favorite out of them all on Facebook! 

There was one picture I know caught the eyes of her adopters -

Zelda was actually my 7 year old niece's favorite, she would just carry around Zelda EVERYWHERE. She was so sad when Zelda went to her new forever home. 

Me with five 4 1/2 week old puppies

These puppies had so many personalities and the later fosters we had had some tough competition beating these little guys. I never grew attached to any other fosters puppies, we had the 6 Simpsons bulldog X, 3 superhero blue tick hound X, and 2 hobbit Collie X puppies, 1 boxer chi X (Hector), and 1 adorable bull weenie (bullwinkle). There is something I find very special in German Shepherds, their loyalty, smarts, and strength. Ever since these puppies I've changed to wanting Australian Shepherd to adoring the German Shepherd. Rush is a German Shepherd/Rottie(?)Lab(?) mix, he is much more built than a pure bred German Shepherd. He has the smarts of a GSD and the laziness of a Rottweiler.(?)

Rush 5 weeks

Rush has always had a week stomach, the first week we had him he ate too much and threw up SO much. He was always the food driven one, he loves food so much and always had a giant belly, which his siblings would knock him over while playing and he'd just be on his back trying to get up. He would always try to eat the most and sneak some out of the others bowls, he was the one annoying brother.

Knuckles, Zelda, Samus (red bowl), Rush, Boomer.

Rush was the puppy that when you let them out of their crate he would ALWAYS run right in front of you, sit down, and stare at you to pick him up and love him. He was the most affectionate little guy, even though at first I wanted to call him Chomper because he was a serious nipper! The more you think about it, the more you wonder if he knew this was his home from the very beginning. He just had to win me over with his cute little face. 

Rush week 6

I posted pictures of these puppies at least twice a day on the forum to get them some people to adopt them. I got likes on every puppy except Rush, I was so confused why no one was looking at him. I mean, how can you not?! One by one they were getting adopted, and still no likes/comments on Rush. I then started considering adopting one of them, I had first picks on any of the 5. 
I chose Rush and I think he new he was going to stay. I adored him. 

Everything he did made me love him more, he always picks up a toy whenever he sees you and brings it to you, he loves hiding my shoes, and he is VERY treat motivated. I wanted him to become my running buddy; for one, he would look intimidating. 

Hai

He is the perfect dog for Scott and I. He's laid back, not too much energy, yet will run with me. He chases leaves that blow across the road, butterflies, and sticks his face deep in the snow. He's incredibly smart, loving, and shy (working on that). 

4 months

He's the perfect dog.

7 Months

Dirty Dashing & Ripreza 5k

       This past weekend my whole family (minus brother & sister-in-law, nieces&nephew) did the Dirty Dash over at Soldier Hollow, I love that race you get so incredibly muddy without even trying. We've done the Kiss Me Dirty 5k a couple years and you just got the watery muddy, although there WAS a foam pit at the very end, and only females could run that. Anyways, the Dirty Dash is one of my favorite races of the year, although I would rather do the 10k next year. We've just been running the 5k and this year I don't think the 5k obstacles were that great compared to the 10k.

Dirty Dash 2013

       When you first start there are a TON of people, even if they do it in heats of however many. So basically you walk the first 15-20 min, unless you care enough to sprint in front of them HOWEVER you run up this big muddy hill, by muddy I mean they have this giant hose spraying it down at all times and everyone is sliding into each other.

Climbed up that muddy pit.

AND THEN THERE WAS THIS

MY MOTHER CONQUERED THAT OBSTACLE. 

       She had been working hard on being able to lift her body weight for these types of things, and she DID it. 

My brother

Gettin Muddy

After the slip-n-slide

       So we did that last weekend, and THIS weekend we had another 5k. We did the Ripreza 5k Run for Recovery, we have done that last year and really enjoyed it! It's a great 5k, not many people run it and it's for a great cause. I highly suggest it for you beginner runners out there, I got my best time at the 5k (26.28) which I guess isn't THAT great for some of you, but for me, I'm proud I did it. Also, at the end they have a crazy drawing that has awesome things. Like, I got called and got a $50 gas card, which is nice since Scott just started driving to Orem everyday for work. I thought he'd owe me for winning that gift card, but RIGHT after I got that gas card his name was called for a cute small winter jacket that fit me perfectly. All in all, it is one of my favorite 5k's that I've done.

The family

Scott and I

       I am also really excited for some upcoming races I am signed up for, I'm doing the Pink 1/2 Marathon this October with my wonderful mother in Park City. Only ladies can run this, and it may be quite chilly in October but I think it'll be a great run. Also, the Thanksgiving 5k ON thanksgiving, I did that one last year and it was hard and cold but at the end you get some pumpkin pie! 

      In other news, Marianne and Gilligan were adopted today at the Rescue Rovers event at the Hogle Zoo! I'm excited for their new journey with their new furever homes, getting all the attention they deserve.