"Happiest of Holidays to each of you! My week has been consumed with breaking cruelty cases and scheduling traveling meetings. SO much to report. First of all...please allow some exciting personal news. In Sept I shared with you the not anticipated loss of our dear Lucy dog. We waited a long month in honor of her crossing the rainbow bridge before we began a search of shelters, rescues and recommended breeders to find a puppy or young dog to become the lead hound of our revolving rescue menagerie. After looking at dozens of potential rescues or adoptions we found a still unweaned puppy that will be available just after the Christmas holiday to come into our lives. She will be the third of three versatile hunting dogs that have joined our family in twenty years, so that she can be trained to assist me in our unique wildlife rescue efforts. In her first few weeks with us she will be exposed to this winters house guests including cats, parakeets, tortoises, frogs, raccoon, and whatever else comes our way so that she will learn to turn her hunting drive into a rescue drive and help me with future field rescue projects. She ( Lacy, Lexi, ?????) will soon fill the hearts and empty dog beds of the Pauli household and it will be a joy to again have a fulltime permanent Canine family member.
Future Pauli/HSUS rescue dog: Born 11/2/07Well, those rescue tadpole frogs are turning out quite interesting. Remember these were part of the several hundred tadpoles ( & 36 turtles) we pulled from the muck and mire when a gravel pit pond was filled in to build a shopping center. Well most the tadpoles were native and released but there were two dozen that we were not sure were native so we held them. Some were too exposed or oxygen deprived and did not survive but a dozen were survivors and half of those have metamorphed into frogs and Toads. It is still most difficult to count and species key them...but we know we have at least some Spadefoot toads, three bullfrogs and one still to be determined species...possibly a chorus frog. All will over winter at our two sites (here and at a high school science lab) and will be released in the spring in Montana ( natives) or shipped to native Bullfrog habitat states for release.
We also just completed the fourth trip of a twenty day project to dart and contracept wild horses. This project was amazing and brought together many leading contraception and equine experts to help train and plan for some exciting future equine projects. We darted horses several days in sub freezing weather and high wind gust days and field tested some new marking darts and darting strategies which will help us on many animal projects.
I am packing today for another 7 day field trip...this time with a tribal fish and game agency to live-trap Swift Foxes for translocation to a tribal release site as part of an endangered species relocation project. I will be sleeping in the tack room of our Equine Rescue Trailer ( THAT Sandra and many of you helped us to acquire). The Stock trailer portion of the trailer is now full of almost seventy plastic and speciality live traps, bags of Billings leaves, and buckets of the bedding from my chicken house and The shavings of the litter trays from YOUR squirrel rescue. All these items will be used as fear removers and attractors for the wild fox traps to cover the floor of the cage traps. I also am bringing auditory lures, and some of my field proven feral cat and dog trapping humane techniques to help the tribal team to reach it goal to catch 40 swift foxes. It is an exciting and potentially COLD winter project.
I also have been spending some post Thanksgiving time lining up sponsors and potential sponsors for a bevy of 2008 animal rescue projects that will be at least partially funded through some AHAT account funding. This includes potential projects like:
#A May 2008 Wild Horse Equine Project in South Dakota that will bring in DVM's and DVM students to provide gelding and equine health services to several hundred horses on a south Dakota wild horse sanctuary.
# A June Wild Horse habitat improvement project for horses and wildlife on the McCollough Peaks Wild Horse Range near Cody, WY. This one will be the second annual and will involve a group of Montana Conservation Corp youth to help build water guzzlers, and other habitat projects on the horse range.
# An Alaskan Bush project to bring DVM services to remote Alaskan Villages.
# A native nation training project including a Habitat for Hounds component where we provide dog houses, cable runners, fencing, worming and other basic animal health care and comfort programs.
# A Grizzly Bear training symposium to bring together agencies and individuals to look at new ways to humanely control Grizzly (and Black) bears.
# Some private or public demonstration sites to show how to non lethally control prairie dogs or other urban wildlife species.
Yep... it will be another amazing year... and many of these special projects would not even get to the drawing board if not for support like the amazing Artist for Animals auction that is going on right now! So I want to conclude by thanking each of you for using your artistic talent to truly make a difference for the critters that form, shape and enrich our lives. I am honored to plan a miniscule role in helping to turn your efforts into some on the ground improvements for our nations wildlife. Happiest of Holidays to you and yours. I am not certain if I will have cell service in the fox trapping area...so it might be more than a week before I can update this Blog! Best !!!! Dave Pauli"
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