Sylvia's Diary 04-10-24

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting in a car park and the van is swaying side to side with the wind building.  I’m in Southern Ireland at the moment I think, but really can’t be sure unless I go in and buy something in the petrol station and then find I would be paying Euros and not Pounds.  I was due to come tomorrow but the ferry company have cancelled all the ferries from now onwards for the next few days and I have dogs in Ireland waiting for me and every day counts for them.

We were lucky and got to change one booking we had made but could not change the return booking, so I got up last night late and I drove to the ferry I could get booked onto and boarded it. It was not a bad crossing and I have driven part the way to my destination, but I can’t get a ferry home till Monday night.  Although I’m desperate to pick up the dogs, I don’t want to collect them today as then they would be in the van for a long time, so now have to kill time and that’s very hard for me to do. I’m always busy so I’ve brought a whole load of paperwork with me and that’s what I will do, but not just now it’s still early in the morning and I’m still getting my bearings and getting myself comfortable.

On the other hand, Joyce who is the other driver of us has driven miles and she went all over the place picking up dogs and this coming week she’s got to do it all over again. We truly appreciate her time and dedication hopefully by the time you read this we will both be home safely.  Both Joyce and I are absolutely hopeless going somewhere and not picking up every dog we are offered.  In fact in all our history we have always done this, the old young what ever we took all we could.

This coming week is going to be very busy; we have a new Vet Nurse Assistant starting who is actually a vet, but qualified in a different country and is just doing the exams to be a vet here too.  There are just so many different sides of the rescue unfolding...

We have got a new office converted in the house's sitting room. The Support Team workers will be working from that new office bar one. It will make it so much easier for us all to be under one roof so to speak and be able to just walk out the door and talk to each other and make sure it’s all working.  Many Tears changed from a little place to a huge organisation. It’s grown and grown and now there’s over 63 paid staff and although if you’re looking our bank account it looks like we’re doing well, the truth is in fact if you knew the running costs you would see how quickly the funds are eaten up and yet we have managed to stay like a family run organisation and that’s because of communication and talking to each other and listening.

The one thing I try not to do is wear my heart on my sleeve, and that’s been very hard and I feel very isolated a lot of time. The dogs are my world and I feel for them desperately, at night when they’re howling for their loved ones it absolutely breaks me hence our Fosterers are so, so important to me and the dogs.

Next year I’m going to do different things to show our appreciation. I am hoping we are going to have a camping weekend for the Fosters and maybe for others, where they can come and the staff or myself will take them on our favourite walk, and then they can go back to their tents or campers with their dogs and maybe in the evening will have a barbecue or something.  I'm going to try and make it more fun for everyone as well as making it so we raise a little bit of money along the way.  I think it’s so important that everyone who reads this, everyone who helps us, everyone who cares feels appreciated so we never lose that family feel and we never get into the feeling of a corporate dog rescue, which would be so sad.  I know I won’t be around forever to do this but I feel that the people working at the present all feel that way too we have wonderful Trustees who help us always by keeping us going in the right direction which is great thing.

We seem to be getting inundated with Cockers now and some of them sadly have PRA which is disease cookers get causing them to go blind. l also believe Labradors are prone to this too. If people breed dogs that have PRA they can produce puppies that when they get to 3 or 4 go totally blind and there’s nothing that can be done about it. That of course that is very sad, they do learn to live without their eyes. I myself have a blind dog. He hasn’t got PRA but he was born without eyes properly formed and has no sight whether it's light and dark, however you should see him galloping across the field - if he can hear you, he is absolutely fine. I feel sad for him often, but he has never known his eyes, but these PRA dogs obviously have.

During this pick up I will add to the diary each day.  It will be a small pick up this time but it’s still an expensive run because the fuel and ferry are all expensive especially when you are not full.  We live near the South so it’s easier for me to go from Rosslare to Fishguard. Then I drive up to the north pick up the dogs and go home.  Northern Irish dogs require no passport, but I could not drive to a Southern Irish port with them to come home. Hence the very long journey.  The ferry from Belfast to Liverpool is an enormous ferry so hopefully it won’t get cancelled too. I must drive now. 

It’s late at night and I’m lying here knowing that I must get up very early in the morning to start driving around up here picking up the dogs. It’s a real privilege for me to do this and see them all happy in their crates in the van on the journey home, but while I lie here I’m thinking of three of the dogs back home.  The reason for this is all three make me think of my life when I lived in Arizona. One is an Akita, a beautiful white female dog that we rescued from the pound just before they put her to sleep and the others are two very handsome and beautiful Malamutes that were imported from Russia as puppies. I will go back to them after I ramble on about why they are so dear to me and conjure up so many memories.

When I moved to Arizona I thought life would be different, that I would have time to start to enjoy it and I would have time time to make friends and have time for my family but I didn’t. I thought I wouldn’t live from day today worrying about dogs and spending every moment trying to save them but that didn’t happen either.

Then when I married Bill I thought he wanted a different woman. One that would want to embrace family life cooking, cleaning and being there to love him but thank God he accepted me the way I really am. Most weeks I found a dog or two or more, but there was one dog that really brings back a lot of memories.  Where we lived (which was Tucson Arizona) you were required to give your dogs rabies jabs once a year. The vet would then give you a little piece of paper that you took to animal control, which was also the dog pound and they issued you an annual tag for the dog to wear. This was a super cool system and you were fined if the dog was found with out one. The tag was also super cool as it was in the shape of Arizona and I always put these tags on my dogs collars with pride. However the pound was very clever. When you had to line up to get to the little window to give your ticket and get your tag issued you also had to walk alongside the dogs that were about to be killed. When the dogs first came in they were in part of the pound and slowly moved around kennels nearer and nearer to the death row.  Anyone who loves dogs would find it very hard looking at that and of course Bill and I did too, so when I was getting issued with a tag (and I went a lot of times because of course I had a lot of dogs that were all adopted at different times) I saw these poor dogs and yes of course had to save those I could. 

One time I saw a huge dog. He was a wolf mix dog, about the size of a Great Dane bitch. Knowing this Pound did not adopt out wolf dogs or Pitbull types to anyone but the original owners who could come and claim them, I knew he had little or no chance of surviving. He was like two others that we had at home and both of us felt very sad. Bill acted as look-out and I took his files out of his plastic sleeve that hung on his door and read where he was found and then Bill and I, like Sherlock Holmes drove a good 30 miles away to the middle of the desert.  Lots of very poor people lived in lorry backs and old camper vans that no longer worked that had possibly been dumped years before, places only rattle snakes liked to live. Places with no electricity. Sometimes it was 120°F/50℃ and there was no way of making it cooler, no televisions, nothing... just a place to live. 

We wandered around the area and asked people if they knew the dog and some did as he had been roaming for awhile but some also knew where he’d come from, as in which trailer. So we banged on the trailers door nearly putting our hands through the flimsy, rotten wood of the door. A young guy came out. We asked him if he owned this big dog and he said yes he did, and we told him the dog was in the pound and was going to be killed. He was very sad but he said he could no longer pay for food or pay to get the dog out, so we said to him if we gave him $25 would he come with us to get the dog. Then we could pay the fine to get the dog out and then he could hand him over to us. He was keen for the $25 and to save the dog. He got in our car but sat on his glasses and began to cry. He could not afford new glasses and he was in total despair. Lovely Bill stopped at a Specsavers type shop and bought him two pairs of glasses and when he claimed the dog who was 7/8 wolf and a tiny bit of Malamute, Bill gave him extra money and delivered him home to his grotty trailer a little richer.

The dog was a stunning huge matted canine. A creamy silver colour with of grey on top of the beautiful but matted coat. He had been a very lucky dog to be saved, but I couldn’t bear to call him just Lucky, so I called him Fluke. Once he settled and trusted me, which was achieved through hours and hours of grooming, he would ride in the back of Bill's open truck, paws on the cabs roof enjoying the breeze as Bill collected the hay from the adjoining ranch for our horses. We rescued him to rehome him but secretly I wanted to keep him. This was not to be. I was going into the vets where my friend worked to get Fluke his rabies shot, when the women who had the appointment before me came out and took one look at me and Fluke and burst into tears. Nancy my friend and vet nurse explained she had just lost her wolf hybrid and was mourning his loss . I took Fluke home and about three weeks later Nancy asked if he was looking for a home as her client was asking. I went and looked at her place and it was amazing so Fluke left me for a new life. 

The two malamutes remind me of Fluke and thoughts of years I spent in the Sonoran Desert, the three thousand plus’s miles I rode for charity sponsorship and the time when life was so much less complicated than it is now.  The female malamute relies totally on the male. Homing one would be hard but homing two could be thought as an impossibility but "believe to achieve".  The two went through possibly a terrifying journey as young influential pups from Russia and I cannot bare to let the handsome boy be homed without his beautiful female companion, who also went through life saving surgery here, as when spayed was found to have retained two afterbirths that were slowly rotting away inside of her.

When I moved to North Carolina and ran a Humane Society (one I took on an as an inhumane society) many folks could not afford adoption fees, they were not bad people just poor people. Dogs and pups were given away free all over the place so they would get one of those, bit could not afford to spay them, and they would have more pups. So I opened a little shop and sold anything I could. With the funds raised I let people adopt free and we had the funds to spay and neuter the dogs and cats.  This way not every dog that stepped in or was poled through those doors died (although most did).
Here in the UK we have lovely people who cannot afford the adoption fee as have spent loads on their old dogs last days. But they can afford insurance. So if there is someone like that out there who will adopt our beautiful Akita, who here is no problem at all, or the two stunning Malamutes I will personally try to pay most of their adoption fees for you, as long as you assure me you can afford to keep them property, love, honour and respect them and their needs.   I guess I must try to sleep now but I have a few prayers to say first - this a worrying week!

I’ve been out on the road all day and gone through black skies, pouring rain and strong winds. I have 35 dogs on board all snuggling in duvets and all bar one are almost silent.  I think we are in for a rough trip so hope it all goes well. Most of the dogs on board seem to be cockers, most golden.  I can’t wait for Stena Lines breakfast as I am known as “the sausage lady”! I get two empty coffee mugs and lids and as many sausages as possible and cut them up to bite size pieces and share them amongst the dogs. I don’t eat any breakfast so the staff usually give extra.  The sausages are warm and smell wonderful and as long as I don’t expect them to take from my hand all eat and enjoy always but we are another good few hours away from that.  Next I need to go through customs, this depending on the staff can be completely stress free or completely stressful. You are either treated like human trying to help the dogs, or a smuggler, drug dealer and villains. I will let you know which in a few hours...

Great!!!  I had kind staff who did not yell, lose their tempers or treat me badly, so now I am waiting for the ferry.

Off the ferry now having fed sausages, watered and cleaned my passengers.  One very sad cocker with terrible ears won’t raise her head.  The journey is so hard for some, as all they have ever known is where they have lived before. She will be my priority once home.  The drive home is long and boring, thank goodness for talking books.

At home now, all get off to see the vet accept my little cocker lady “Fiasco”. I take her to shave and clean her ears, bath her, as she is really too matted to get a flea spot on onto her skin and dry.  She is a sweetie. I take her then to the vets, and ear medicines are prescribed, and she gets a spot on for her lice problem and is wormed too. She will go back tomorrow to the vets to see how she’s doing.  I go back to see Fiasco later and she is thrilled at being with her friends and her snuggly bed and heated lamp - a changed dog, I am SO pleased.

Next Joyce will be back. She’s been up North and picked up Chows and Bulldog crosses. Not easy dogs to home at all, many with cherry eyes, some with extropians, all expensive and all unwanted.  As I said earlier, we pick up all we can, and these were no exception. It is not their fault they were born into this world. Let’s change their luck!!!

Another exhausting week, I find Bill too has been picking up dogs whilst Joyce and I were too. We have had terribly sad calls of desperate people trying to save their dogs that would need to be PTS otherwise.  Even yesterday we had a call from as lady, her 1 year old child and her dog are to be made homeless today and if the dog is not found a home it must be put to sleep otherwise the lady must sleep in her car with the child and dog as council cannot help her with a dog. She tried everywhere. We are going to help but this is only one of MANY stories we get each day.

Without you all we could never go on helping so many. You are all angels, and I am blessed you believe in us and help us save so many.
Sylvia x