Monday, October 6, 2008

Rescue work: It's not "all dogs, all the time!"

Transport run this weekend past... Not a long one, either. Up into Pennsylvania a ways on Saturday, then back south into Delaware, and then a bit further into Maryland. OK, so I didn't reach the farm in the early AM as I'd originally planned, but this was still a good thing - Bringing a pair of young dogs, really puppies still, down to the farm from a foster family, to be transshipped out to another foster family. Everything ran smooth as silk, and my passengers were a delight.

Getting to the farm, I find that it didn't much matter that I wasn't there in the early AM, as there was still a good bit of work to do. So, some of the less-typical taskings one might find when volunteering as a Rescuer:

Pulling weeds... Clearing the fence line of the dog yard, so the low-lying electric wire will stop shorting out, and we can be assured the dogs won't try to tunnel under the fence. Lots o' weeds to pull, but the ground was soft from the recent rains, the weeds fairly strong due to said rain, and that resulted in great clumps of weeds coming out at each pull. But frankly, I'm out of shape, I've been a bit sick of late, and have pulled too many late nights at work, so I faded fast. Fortunately, there were other volunteers, including one particularly industrious fire-fighting architect, who really went to town on the weeds with hand and shovel.

Auto Mechanic... Of sorts. There's an older car, one donated to the Rescue for resale, the proceeds to benefit the dogs, but one which hasn't moved under its own power in a year or more. Nothing actually wrong with it - it's just that no one has gotten the spare time to sell the bloody thing yet, so its been sitting. And, of course, the engine was dry as dust, and the battery flat as flat as Jebal Ali, with nice weeds growing up through the engine compartment, and divots under the tires... So, put it on the booster pack, and periodically try to get it to turn over. No dice. So, gather a bunch of people, and push the little bugger to where it can be reached - It'll leave, even if it has to be towed. But maybe, after a long charge, someone will be able to get it to crank over. Maybe.

Arborist/landscaper... The HBIC got a lot of trees from the local nursery at a steep discount, this being the end of the season, and we being a non-profit and all. So, we dug holes and planted trees, too. Quite a few of them. But, as previously noted, much of this was handled y other volunteers. I'm out of shape. And tired. And not a little it still shaky from the stomach bug. But I did help... And next time I'm at the Farm, I should be in better condition.

Meanwhile...
Several really plugged-in and gung-ho volunteers made the rounds of Washington, DC's various Federal Agency HQs this last week, setting up information booths at the kick-off events for the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). For those of you unfamiliar with the ins and outs of US Federal bureaucracy, the CFC is a coordinated charity drive. Rather than have every charity in the world hitting Federal Workers up at random intervals throughout the year, they all gang together in one giant posse, and hit them up one time, all at once, and get over with it. This is a big deal - paper-pushing administrators like to brag on their support for this official 'non-official' pan handling, and they set up informational fairs that allow charity groups to tout their cause. Well, someone had actually slugged a charity number on us - We are a non-profit, after all - and when our go-getters learned this, they took a table and some flyers and handouts, and a couple likely dogs, and made the tour - State Department, Labor Department, and so on. We may not get much in the way of donations, but a good number of people actually sat down and talked to our people - Some adoptions are likely to come out this, if nothing else!


With all that, things are going well. So, just to put a reality check on things, my son let Suka escape this AM. I don't think he was being malicious, he's just a four-year old. Rather than wait for his mother or I to escort him out of the house, he decided to go ahead on his own, and I hadn't crated Suka yet... So out she went, and vanished like the mist. Perfect way to start a Monday... NOT.
I don't know exactly where she went, though I did hear some random barking in different directions - Fortunately, that early in the day, TRDATEOTN were inside, or at least not active. After a quick close-in search that turned up nothing, I grabbed the car and started a wider sweep. As I was doing that, Suka returned, quite happy to have my wife let her back in the house. *Whew!*

That's more adrenaline than I need on a Monday AM, to be sure. And worse, now Suka has learned that she can slip past my son and go have an adventure, with nothing (in her mind) bad happening. We're going to have to completely change the door protocols now, to prevent a recurrence. Yuck.

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