On Tuesday, this household swelled by 10 extra noses - 9 rats and 1 dog, all here for a foster stay. Two of the rats left to their new home a couple hours later, but the other 7 (all girls) are hanging out for a week for their quarantine & spay surgeries. They came here from a cruelty seizure in the US (Oregon I think) & were driven up by a series of volunteers known as the rat train. (yes, animal rescue people are incredible and with the internet, so much more can be arranged. People volunteer to drive 'legs' of a route & then pass off the animals to the next volunteer at a pre-determined point. It's really amazing and this particular rescue was arranged on very short notice.)
The ratties are oh so cute, but hard to take good photos of. They are tame, very excited to see people and playful. They move very fast - most of my pictures are of 1/2 a rat in the frame.
Here are some waking up from a nap:
Yes, two of them are hairless.
The rest are all silvery, beigy blondes. Their coats are in bad shape, probably as a result of poor feeding and overcrowding, but they're all sweet and friendly.
In BC, if you're looking for a small companion animal, check out the Small Animal Rescue. I believe most of these have homes lined up already but there are always great animals at SARS looking for a home.
My foster dog is another rescue from a native reserve up north. (I think I forgot to tell you guys that Nelly, my previous foster, found a super home with a young family. She had been with us for just under 5 weeks.) This dog, Kailee, used to have a 'home' for a bit, though I think she never lived inside. I think she'd had a taste of what family life could be but the family abandoned her and she's been living on the streets since.
She is a nice sized girl, 45 pounds, probably husky X lab. She's a very sweet dog but she does have one teeny problem. A couple hours after arriving here, she decided she liked it SO much that she wanted it ALL to herself. She claimed the entire home, yard, all the grass, the people, everything, and was trying her best to convince my sweet Daisy to leave so that she could have all these goodies to herself. She went for Daisy several times & we had fur flying & a whole lot of noise - but thankfully no damage. I keep drag lines (aka leashes dragging) on the dogs during the first few days just for this reason, so I have something to grab at if I need to separate and redirect.
Aaaaack. Not fun. I had to make some frantic calls, borrow a crate (I don't crate normally but this was a necessity) and give Kailee a bit of a time out. She spent a quiet night in her crate & yesterday I reintroduced the dogs and got them to reform a pack on MY terms. Daisy is being ever so sweet, trying to calm Kailee down and just keeping her distance. She invited Kailee to play a couple times but Kailee wants nothing to do with her.
Right now we have more or less peaceful co-existence but I don't leave them together unattended. Kailee did curl her lip at Daisy a couple times today but she seems to be getting the point that it won't be tolerated, and she is calming down. Poor girl. I have to feel sorry for her - imagine being abandoned; she's had to be fight for food scraps and take care of herself. Can't really blame her for trying to keep all these treasures to herself. The fact that Daisy is exactly double her size doesn't seem to be a deterrent. Daisy is being perhaps too sweet. She never responds to the aggression, she just turns away, & I wondered whether she needed a firmer dog to put her in place, but who knows, maybe Daisy's the wiser one, giving this youngster some room for her tantrums. Who knew that my Daisy - the one who, if you met us on the street with your dog, would still look and act as if she wanted to KILL yours - would turn out to be a pacifist at home.
Kailee is a little cuddlebug, very affectionate, loves being petted, adores playing with toys, clean in the house, doesn't pull very hard on leash. She wants to be near her people, enjoys walks, and likes to sit on your lap. How could someone abandon such a sweetie?
4 comments:
I am fine with rats (my brother had a very nice one, named Simon, when we were kids), but it never would have occurred to me that there were rat Rescue groups. How wonderful! Will the hairless one grow some back, eventually?
Melora, the hairless ones are intentionally hairless by genetics & highly prized by some rat people. They will never get hair. They are apparently a bit more difficult to breed & not as sturdy or healthy as the furry ones. Their skin takes a while to get used to - they're not smooth like a baby's bottom, they feel a bit sticky, kind of like a yoga mat. :-) The ones we have here are super social - by far the most friendly of the bunch.
I never understood how people can abandon their animals, especially dogs who have been bred for centuries, specifically to be companions to humans. I guess I could understand "surrendering" a pet that was biting one's children. But by and large, the animals I've met who were abadoned are friendly, very social and incredibly intelligent.
I think it's wonderful that you're doing what you're doing. If there were more people like you in the world ... we wouldn't need people like you :).
Well, I'll be.
I guess there are hairless dogs, too, come to think of it. Doesn't appeal to me, but it would cut down on the pet hair. I'm glad they have nice personalities, anyway, and that they soon find lovely forever homes!
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