Sylvia's Diary 17-08-24

Is it really August? My feet are soaked and even though yesterday the weather person promised some sun here, it has not even made it’s way through the thick clouds once. Do the dogs care? Well of course not, the muddier the fields for walkies the more fun it is for most. Volunteer walkers turn up in nice walking clothes, bright orange rain tops, fluorescent walking shoes and cargo type trousers. They go home with happy memories and a whole bunch of washing to do. Perfect paw prints often adorn their clothing, and their shoes - well they are just big blobs of mud where walking shoes once were! However, everyone bar maybe Evie seems happy.

Evie is a beagle who came to us about three weeks ago. A lot of dogs came in around then. She came with friends from a breeder giving up. We were told some of the dogs could be pregnant and found that to be true in Evie’s case. Well, the weeks have rolled by and a vet or vet nurse or me have scanned her regularly ever since and her pups seem alive and well and we can see their little hearts beating, but poor Evie looks like she swallowed a football the last few weeks. Every morning and often in the night we visit her in anticipation thinking her pups will have come, but they have not, she now can barely walk as her tummy is nearly touching the floor. She is a delightful gentle happy beagle who knows all about being loved and sets herself up for you to scratch and rub whatever part of the body she chooses.

I spent yesterday helping in the vets. So many staff are unwell and so to help I said I would scrub the kits and call in the dogs who were being operated on that day. One of the staff brought in her foster pup to play around the surgery main reception area whilst she worked. The pup was called Lost and he had come to us lethargic with a bad eye ulcer. The specialist vets looked at his eye, and it was determined it was on the mend and we should carry on with the treatment we were giving. Lilly and Dan took him home and he’s become a real tinker.  Yesterday he managed to pull a drip line through from a dog on a drip and start to chew it. That was very quickly stopped but he then found the cable of a heated matt and started on that!  At this point we had to put him in a crate for his own safety. He is a charmer, but a naughty one!

It's stopped raining for a minute so I will venture out in yet another set of dry clothes and check-up all is well and write more tomorrow.

I was not ready for Saturday night and what was to come.  My spirits were high, my granddaughter Syd was coming and I thought I had a good week ahead but it has not turned out that way. I was very tired and went to bed to do emails and hopefully sleep (something that is incredibly hard with the pain in my back and legs and most nights I lie awake worrying. One email was from a rescue group in Cyprus who I had helped several years ago. 

Having worked in a “no hope rescue" many years ago where 99.9% of the dogs and cats were put to sleep, I truly understand what it’s like to carry on trying to make what little life the dog or cat has left a good one. In my case this was just 3 days as lack of space dictated this and there were no foster homes or adopters. It got me thinking when running Many Tears how we could help rescues by giving the staff a boost in the belief miracles can help. It started with a man's Facebook blog, he talked of running a shelter in N Carolina (the same area as I had) and how the night before the mass murder each week of all the dogs he cared for at the pound he and a friend would buy tons of sausages and each doomed to die would get one and special loving.  The next day he and his friend would kill each one leaving their bodies piled in the corridor for disposal. I related totally to this. 

The next blog was about a dog that had lived in a rescue for 9 years with no hope. This blog was from the rescue in Cyprus called Sirias. The blog was about Bashful, a plain black hound, one like hundreds of dogs I had had to murder when running The Humane Society of Richman County. North Carolina. I decided to adopt Bash and take on 9 other very long-term stayers from the rescue. I hit lucky, as the rescue was run by someone who really cares and still does, so all was done right. The dogs arrived and all bar Bashful homed. Bashful lived out the rest of his life with me. He was very, very loved.

Back to the point of telling you all that. Lying in bed longing for sleep I started doing the emails. One was from Marianna at Sirius. It told of imminent closure for her rescue and others on Cyprus. The government had made stipulations that were impossible to meet for rescues, this means no rescues just kill pounds.  They have battled with this for years and now she too lies in bed wondering how she will be strong enough to live through what lies ahead. Her dogs are mainly hounds; they have little to no chance of adoption in their country. She reaches out to other countries and tries every angle to save the dogs. Now she reaches out to us. Some will not agree saying looking after your own but I want to help again. If I could raise £10,000, I could save so many dogs.  I will show you why, but for the faint hearted  those who already hold despair in your hearts please don’t look. Don’t imagine the staff, the dogs, the sadness.

This first video shows you how and where they live

This second video shows the conditions these dogs come in like on a regular basis

The third also shows the condition of the dogs when they arrive but also the turn around they accomplish.  All now with the threat of closure hanging over their heads and this is why I want to help.

If you want to help too, please send a donation and I will send it on to them to take in both the dogs on the videos and others.

So sleep would not come after all these dogs plus others here are on my mind. I got up to check Evie again. Though bright and waggy she could not lie down and was so uncomfortable. I stay with her caressing those long therapeutic ears thinking of all those Cypriot dogs, those who made it to the centre out there and those who were hung and left to die as no use to a hunter - all those dogs. Evie felt wrong and I decided despite the cost to call around and find a vet to come and assess her.  If we gave her a  c-section too soon the pups would die, but Evie had to come first.  I found Tom was back from visiting his home in Austria and he said he would be 45 minutes. I called local staff to help but no one bar Amanda and Michelle the vet nurse answered. Michelle brought her daughter too. C-sections take many hands.

The vet takes the pups out of a cut open belly and so to keep sterile drops them into a towel hammock that is strung between some one’s hands, that person clears the pup’s airways and rubs the pup until they are clean and responsive and puts in a warm basket to go to the next one. This happens fast and many hands are needed. Eight pups came into our hands and it was a fast and worrying time.  At that point I really felt great relief for dear sweet Evie and even commented to the vet how she had suffered carrying so many. As a rescue we could spay very pregnant dogs and inject the pups to die as they come out as soon as the dog arrives, but I won't murder any more dogs in my life unless putting to sleep for a reason that is valid.

So the vet and vet nurse got on with their jobs and we all tried to save the pups.  The vet was amazed by the amount of fluid in Evie and said how abnormal it all was, and we were all surprised the pups were doing so well. He started stitching her up, but suddenly she stopped breathing.  Tom is a very experienced vet; he has performed hundreds if not thousands of C-sections. I grabbed the crash kit. We used every trick in the books.  Amanda gave oxygen breaths, Tom massaged the heart, Michael drew up adrenalin but after 30 minutes we had to say goodbye forever to Evie.  I am choked up writing this and am feeling like all I touch goes wrong.  That night they all left and I slept on the floor next to Evie’s pups, feeding and cleaning them every two hours and weeping as I am now.

Sunday I continued with Amanda and Syd (who had then arrived) help to feed and clean the pups. This was not easy as two who had been hard to start with kept gasping and turning blue.  As the day progressed so did they. Hopefully, my next blog will be happier. If you win the lottery, please help Sirius in Cyprus but otherwise please help us to save some of their dogs. 
Thank you
Sylvia