Elvis and Priscilla Found A Home!

For those who haven't been following our saga of Elvis and Priscilla here is a brief recap. They were found lying in the road by a deputy who took them to our school guidance secretary who lived nearby. They were exhausted, scared, and hungry but otherwise in fair condition. She contacted me for help in finding them a home after her posted signs in the neighborhood brought no responses. The local rescue group I volunteer for had no room for them and local calls to the other area groups had the same response. The secretary lives in a condo and had no room for these Walker hounds who were apparently lost while on a hunt so she took them to the local kill shelter. We have no space here for them since we live in a mobile home with 9 cats and a bunny so we began calling and emailing everyone we could to find a foster home for them. A lady volunteered to foster them who was supposed to be skilled in training dogs so we got them out of the pound a week before they were to be killed, had them neutered/spayed, shots given, and other medical treatment. We took them to her with the intention that she would work with these sweet dogs who had never been treated as pets and we would help to get them adopted at the local Petco on my group's adoption days. It turned out that she did not have the skill or patience to deal with their wild natures and she dumped them back on us. After another week of calling around the state we found a dog trainer living 5 hours away who would take them in and work with them. We took Elvis and Priscilla to her and she really worked wonders in converting them into house/yard pets. After a month of training they were ready to be adopted and this week the bonded couple were adopted by a good family with a high fence. They will be indoor/outdoor pets with a lot of room to run in a protected area and a caring family who will show them a lot of love. It's been a long struggle with some harrowing moments but these former hunting dogs have now settled in as family pets! I was adamant that they would not be killed just because they were large dogs and not your typically docile, cuddly pets because I could see the real potential after meeting them for Elvis and Priscilla to be loving family members. They were so energetic but so desperate for affection that it just broke my heart. We are "cat people" rather than "dog people" here but I was determined that these dogs were going to have a chance at happiness no matter what effort or cost was needed. I am just so tickled that they will now at long last get the chance for the affection they never had in their previous lives as penned hunting animals. On rare occasions my bullheaded nature does pay off and something good comes from it. This story of saving two animals from death, transforming them into calm house pets, and finding them a great home may not mean much to most people out there but it means the world to my wife and myself. I only wish we had the resources to save all of the neglected, unwanted animals but at least we had this one small victory. Elvis and Priscilla have a very bright future and I am so glad they have found happiness and love. It is almost impossible to find homes for furkids now with so many people in these tough economic times dumping their animals at local kill shelters. Our local shelter is so flooded with animals now that the holding time before euthanization has been decreased from 2 months to a couple of weeks. This speaks volumes for our society's lack of compassion or caring. The unwanted dogs and cats out there deserve so much better than this.

It's been awhile!

I have been battling another blasted sinus infection and stayed home today. We had a planning day so it worked out that I didn't miss any teaching time. Here are the updates:

1) The foster family for the dogs Elvis and Priscilla did not work out. These were former hunting dogs and to acclimate them to home life will take a lot of work. They did not have the time/skills/patience to adequately train them. We got two calls this weekend from them telling about how they got out of the yard, though they were supposed to be under strict supervision while outside. I knew that they were trying to find a nice way to dump them back into our laps. The wife stayed with them for the Sunday adoption day and when the day was over she took them up to our vet to be temporarily boarded. We had a fallback plan for Elvis and Priscilla. There was a lady who worked for a rescue group 3 1/2 hours away who said she would take them. She has a lot of experience with training dogs and a high privacy fence with 2 acres of land. While I recuperated from my infection Karen drove them to their new foster home. This woman loves animals and I think she will do all she can to socialize them and find them good homes. Elvis and Priscilla are very sweet dogs but they have never been treated as pets before. Now maybe they will have the chance.

2) The students are teaching the section on viruses and bacteria. They made 2 labs for the material and are in the process of explaining the topics, complete with overheads and posters.

Stress and good news

On the teaching front nothing too unusual to report. I am close to exhaustion now with all of the demands of teaching. It has been a good year so far overall but most days teaching is a little like dancing through a lion's den while juggling. I am trying to motivate all of the students and get them excited about learning science with mixed results. Many really get into the lessons but I have had discussions with several students who don't complete assignments or bring their books to class. These students come into class with the attitude "make me learn". I have changed seating assignments for a few of them and called several parents concerning their lack of effort. It is the same old story. 95% of my students are trying hard to learn the material and the other 5% are just marking time until they get out of high school and move on to another phase of their life where they once again will have no goals and no ambition to succeed. My impossible task here is to keep the good students on track and interested, to keep those few who are just taking up space from interfering with the learning of others, and to draw some of these recalcitrant students into the motivated camp. It requires a huge investment of energy to do this. Throw in the little irritations like having students pulled out of class for ring sales and similar meetings, losing students from class due to sporting events, and having a science FCAT progress monitoring test dumped on us this Friday with
no warning and the stress level has been over the top this week. With the progress monitoring test I have had to revise my lesson plans at the last minute to accomodate the time needed for administering the test. All of this is occurring while students who need extra help from me bombard me with questions all period. It can be quite overwhelming and every once in awhile I have to just step back and take a few deep breaths before jumping back into the fray.

Last week i got a call from a coworker here who needed help with finding a home for two Hunter hounds who had been found lying exhausted in the road near her home. She put out posters but no one responded. She lives in a condo and had no room to keep the dogs so she took them to our county kill shelter. Normally they would keep them for 40-60 days before euthanizing them but our city shelter is closing at the end of the month due to a lack of funds and they have been flooding the other shelters to capacity with their animals. These dogs, whom we named Elvis and Priscilla, had roughly a week before they would have been killed. I swore this would not happen to them so my wife and I spent all weekend calling and emailing around 30 rescue groups in our state. They were all overflowing with dogs like my own rescue group and had no available foster families. One email I sent to a friend finally paid off and a local woman offered to take Elvis and Priscilla in and to bring them into Petco on Sundays so my group could try to adopt them out to permanent homes. My wife and I adopted them out of the shelter yesterday and took them to our vet for a bath, exam, and tests. They go back Monday for their spay/neuters and rabies shots. Elvis and Priscilla apparently escaped from a deer hunter in the area. They are both the sweetest dogs who seem to really appreciate any attention. I got a huge tongue slurp across my face the first time I met them. I am really a cat person but I couldn't see these wonderful guys put to sleep just because they had no one who wanted them. The photo at the top of this post shows them at the vet just before we took them (they actually dragged us!) for a walk. Elvis and Priscilla are now with their foster mom and if all goes well we will be looking for a home for them very soon.