This video says so much. Just watch it.
This is what we do in rescue. I wish more people would help so less dogs would suffer and die. If you help, thank you. If you don’t… well, suffice to say, I just don’t understand.
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Welcome!My name is Jenna Gates and my cute black and tan canine companion is Snickers, a purebred Shiba Inu. I believe that animals are sentient beings who should be treated with dignity and respect. My companions are not toys or livestock, nor are they human; They are dogs, they are family, and they add to my life. Snickers and I enjoy working to educate others about the benefits of companion animals. Please explore the site to learn more about me, about Snickers and about our mission. I posted these Tips on Training Shiba Recall to my old site a couple years ago. The subject of teaching dogs to return on command, continues to come up on various message boards and mailing lists, so I thought these tips seemed worthy of reposting here. Shiba Inus are infamous for their disregard for returning on command, but, of course, these tips can apply to any breed or mix, not just Shibas! Snickers recall is fairly good – exceptional for a Shiba really. Here are a few things that helped get it that way.
And it isn’t me! Brandy seems to be more attached to my daughter than to me, probably because they spend more time together and go on more walks together. Brandy’s crate has been in my room with me and Snick, but that means my daughter has had to wait for us to get up in the morning before going walking. She decided she wanted Brandy to move into her room (which is kind of a big deal because her room is not huge and Brandy’s crate is huge), so she rearranged her bedroom this weekend and Brandy moved. Ms. Brandywine is a bit confused by this and keeps wandering into my room when she’s ready to take a nap. (She is 16 years old after all. Change is hard!) For now, we’re keeping my door closed and keeping an eye on her so we can redirect her. Hopefully she’ll get used to the change quickly. Brandy went to the groomer on Tuesday. They brushed out all the loose undercoat, clipped her nails, gave her a bath, cut out the mats and trimmed her little butt feathers. She came back looking like a different dog. Here are a couple photos of her that night, while she was still wearing the little bandanna they put on her.   She’s easily walking three times as far on walks now as she was when she got here and she’s eating like a champ. Her little hunched back is straightening out and tonight she playbowed at me and then at Snickers right after I got home from work!!! We’re starting to think her reported age of 16 may have been a lie on the part of the woman who brought to the shelter… maybe to help justify her request to have her euthanized? We’ll see. I want to give her a couple more weeks of good food and exercise before taking her to the vet. One week ago today, my daughter and I added a third Shiba to our pack. Please welcome darling little Brandy (who we’ve affectionately started calling Ms. Brandywine, as it seems to really suit her). Last Friday, I received an email about this little girl. She’s 16 years old and had been surrendered to a shelter in Connecticut. This is a good shelter in a nice area with a policy of only putting dogs to sleep “that suffer from medical or behavioral conditions that are beyond treatment and render the pet unable to be placed with a family.” Basically, she wasn’t in any immediate danger, but Shibas don’t tend to adjust well to shelters and the idea of a senior Shiba most likely living out her last days in a shelter was more than I could stand. Her StoryBrandy was at the shelter for about a month. The young woman who brought her in said that her owner had died. She’d had Brandy for about a week but "didn’t have time for her" and wanted her euthanized. The medical director at the shelter convinced the woman to sign her over as a surrender instead. Brandy’s teeth were in really bad shape, so the shelter removed most of them; she only has three left. These are the photos that the shelter took for her kennel card. She looks like a little raggamuffin. Unfortunately, she looked even worse in person.   Meeting BrandyEarly Sunday afternoon, I set off on the two hour drive to go get Brandy. When they brought her out to us at the shelter, we were delighted by the spring in her step but dismayed at her physical condition. She’d had diarrhea, some of which was still matted in her fur. She was severely underweight and her skin is horribly dry. As you can see, she’s a "wooly (long coated) Shiba" and she was a dirty, matted mess. She kept looking around and checking every person that walked by as if she was looking for someone in particular, which made us feel really sad for her. Making ProgressOur friend Zennia came over, Furminator in hand, the night Brandy came home. She brushed a big bag full of fur off of her that night and we’ve Furminated her several times since then also. She’s looking better, but she has some mats that need professional attention and her TAIL is a disaster area. Here’s a photo of her a couple days after she came home. Her eyes are a little cloudy and her tongue pokes out the side of her mouth where she has no teeth. Pretty cute really.  Brandy only weighed 11.5 pounds when she got here. The shelter was feeding her Science Diet I/D which, in my personal opinion is G.R.O.S.S. stuff. I’ve just finished transitioning her to what Snickers and Secret eat and, between that and having plenty of water to drink, she’s put on a pound already! She eats really slowly (only three teeth, remember?) but she’s gone from barely eating to cleaning her bowl in the past week, so that’s a great improvement. She’s already easily walking twice as far on walks as she could go on her first night here. She’s gaining stamina and building muscle tone! She’s stopped looking for whoever she was looking for and she seems to be growing attached to my daughter. Snick and Secret mostly ignore her and let her do her own thing. Snickers has snarked at her a few times for getting in his face, but he’s getting better. He even tried to get her to play with him once recently. Here’s a photo of her looking pretty content a couple days ago.  What the Future HoldsWe know that adopting a 16 year old dog is essentially setting ourselves up for a near future heartbreak, but we knew that when we decided to go get her. It’s worth it to us. She’s very well trained – house trained, gentle, an excellent leash walker, pees at the curb, enjoys grooming – and it’s clear that someone loved this little dog very much. After a lifetime of providing companionship to someone, having her life turned upside down must have been very traumatic. She deserves the best we can do for her in whatever time we have her. She has an appointment with the groomer in a couple days. (A Shiba at a groomers? I know. Weird.) I’ll post more photos then and updates as she gains weight, grows stronger and visits the vet. hi peeples! snickers here. did you know that i was born on thanksgiving day? well, i was. my birthday is not on thanksgiving every year, but mom says she gives thanks for me every day. this year, my birthday will be the day after thanksgiving and i will be six years old. and this year, me and mom have a special request. we are trying to help nyc shiba rescue raise some money. they had to stop taking in new doggies because of the economy (and a couple dogs with health problems – one with cancer, one with cushings). i want to help them help doggies, so this year my birthday is all about nycsr! please click the donate button on the box in this post to go to my fund raising page at firstgiving and wish me happy birthday. even just a dollar or two will add up and if you can give more we would really REALLY like that too! Oh. My. God. This may be one of the most fun things you can EVER do with your dog. This past Saturday morning, Snick and I trekked to Central Jersey with friends Catherine and Nick and their two dogs Wylie and Tigger. I believe the course was about 700 yards long. No one was officially timing the dogs, but we used Cathy’s iPhone and clocked Snick’s second run at just under a minute. That’s a polo field they’re running on and, no, there’s no fence. I was terrified to let Snickers take off like that without a leash, but after watching Tigger do it, I swallowed the lump in my throat and let him go. We had a little trouble catching him after his first run because he was trying to figure out where the “bunny” went after the bags stopped moving. Luckily, the lure operator heard us stressing and turned the lure back on long enough to grab his interest so we could snag him. Letting him go the SECOND time was even scarier, but at least we were more prepared to catch him that time. I’m going to take some sort of toy for him to “kill” at the end of the course next time – more satisfaction for him and an easier catch for me. There’s really not much else to say… just watch the video that Nick posted (THANKS NICK!) of Tigger and Snickers chasing the lure! Care2.com is sponsoring their third "America’s Favorite Shelter" contest to give away $25,000 to deserving animal shelters and rescue groups. PLEASE VOTE FOR NYC SHIBA RESCUE The top ten rescue and shelter groups with the most votes at the end of the contest will win anywhere from $500 to $10,000. That can go a long way for a smaller rescue organization such as NYCSR. We fully recognize the competition we face against larger shelters and rescue organizations in this contest, but please do not be discouraged or consider your vote a wasted effort. Every little bit helps. Just participating offers us the opportunity to raise funds for NYCSR. Each week, Care2.com will also be randomly selecting 1 group to win a $500 cash prize, the only requirement for inclusion is that we receive five new votes each week. Just five votes, so be sure to cast your vote now! You can only vote once, so send this link to your friends, families, strangers on the street who love your shiba, anyone! Show your love for the breed and lend a hand.
One thing that has been on my mind a lot is Humane Education. I was very excited during the summer, because Snickers and I had plans to work with our local shelter’s humane education program. I was really looking forward to starting school visits in the fall. Well, long story short, the shelter doesn’t really have a program. They have good intentions, but right now the only visits they wanted our help with were for fund raising events. That got me thinking long and hard about humane education, how important it is, and how no formal, organized plan to teach our children empathy towards animals really exists. An idea popped into my head and I’ve been formulating a plan. I plan to start a new, national, non-profit organization to promote and support humane education – specifically to teach compassion and empathy for companion animals – in the public school systems across the US. I’m considering naming it Animal Educators Alliance. I know it sort of sounds like people who educate animals though, so I’m not entirely sure. It means animals who ARE educators. We’re not just teaching about companion animals. The animals ARE the teachers. What do you guys think? Good? Bad? Have any better ideas? The primary objectives of the organization will be:
Ambitious? Well, yeah. Impossible? I don’t think so. Thoughts? Volunteers? Multiple people, for various reasons, have asked me for a post-event review of Meet the Breeds, so I decided it would be easiest to post it here and just point people this way. I’m going to include some of the pre-planning information also, as I’ve been asked by a couple folks for advice on planning similar events. Before – Planning for the EventMeet the Breeds is an AKC event, with only the national breed club for each recognized breed being invited to participate. The purpose of the event is to help the public understand the differences between breeds directly from breed experts. That meant I needed decor, materials and volunteers all up to the task of educating the public about our wonderful Shibas – their history, their characteristics, where to buy a puppy, how to adopt a rescue and more. Decor and SuppliesSince all the events I’d planned and manned in the past were for NYCSR, I needed new booth decor and materials for this event. Luckily for me, I know a wonderful designer – my friend Scott Lauben – who also created the banners, brochures and other materials for NYCSR. I had photographs of banners used at events on the west coast and wanted to do something similar but unique. Scott did an amazing job creating the banners and signage you see in the photos below. I borrowed most of the booth supplies from NYCSR, only purchasing what was necessary to go with the new banners. The club also donated black club t-shirts for the volunteers so we all had matching tees to help set us apart. Printed MaterialsSince this wasn’t a rescue event, I left out some of my regular rescue materials and created some new ones. Here’s what we had:
Volunteers and DogsNone of the planning or materials would be worth anything without great volunteers to make it all happen during the event. I was lucky enough to put together a great group of people from the Shiba Club of Greater NY, NYC Shiba Rescue, and the NYC Shiba Meetup. I want to say thank you to Kathy Mahoney, Barbara Leung, Molly Sumner, Antoinette Crudo, and Kathi Willi-Melton. I want to add a special thank you to Kathi’s husband, Matt Melton. We recruited Matt on Saturday morning to take a sick volunteer’s place. He was a huge help and ended up working all day Sunday too. So, Matt, you get the gold star for being so easy going about being recruited to work all weekend! Physical Set UpJavits was open all day Friday for early set up, so my friend Kat Mahoney and I spent the afternoon and evening setting up the booth. We played around with several different layouts. Normally, for rescue events, I put the table along one side with the rugs and ottomans in the remaining area. This is partly because we’re selling items at rescue events and I want them easily accessible. For this event though, I wanted to be sure passersby could see the banner on the front of the table, so the table went along the back. We put it at an angle to cut down on the amount of space lost behind it (plus it looked cool that way). We put the ottomans up front, with the plan being to keep one or two dogs on each ottoman during the whole event. During – Surviving the ChaosThe actual event was amazing. The aisles were jam packed practically the entire time. Our booth was mobbed. Several people mentioned that we had one of the busiest booths (more on that later). The crowd at this event was different from the crowd at a Pet Expo, pet fair, or even Responsible Dog Ownership Day. First, attendees couldn’t bring their own dogs, so they were more focused on the event itself. Secondly, it really felt like a large percentage of attendees were there to learn about the various breeds. I’ve never been asked so many intelligent questions about Shibas in such a short period of time! I was really impressed and excited by some of the people I talked to. We had six dogs each day with three crates under the table for them to get breaks from the crowd, but they were still exhausted about two thirds of the way through the day each day. Events like this are hard – even for the most social dogs – and this one was noisier and busier than most. Snickers never wants to go in the crate during most events, but he actually asked for a couple breaks during this one.
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After – The PostmortemBreaking DownBreaking down and getting out of Javits on Sunday night was a nightmare, mostly because Javits only had one small elevator for most of us to use (only the folks with the big trucks were loading out through the freight exit), but also because no one but Kat stayed to help me break down and we were both ridiculously exhausted at that point. What I LearnedI’m hoping this will become an annual event, so I made mental notes all weekend regarding what went really well and what we could do better next time. In the interest of helping other people with similar events, here is what I learned.
I think that’s everything. If I missed anything or you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to answer! |
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Copyright © 2008-2010 Jenna & Snickers 
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