ART HELPING NARA!

Thanks once again to the artists of ART HELPING ANIMALS who have banded together to paint for a new art event helping

NATIONAL AIREDALE RESCUE AND ADOPTION!

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Thanks to the co-ordination efforts of AHAA artist TANYA AMBERSON

and NARA rescue liason SIDNEY HARDIE

we have a wonderful event

SEPT 20th-30th

with a variety of original art listed to help NARA

TO SEE A PREVIEW OF A FEW OF THE PIECES

AVAILABLE ON OUR ART BLOG & EBAY

Please view our video created by the artist VERNITA BRIDGES-HOYT:

Where's Dave, Director of HSUS NRRO

Dave has had a busy week. Here is the update in his own words. He's included photos.


Scrat: Gettiing Ready for A Soft Release

"I closed last week announcing my trip to Kalispell to do a shelter inspection and then back down to Missoula for a meeting before deadheading back to Billings. I met a great transitional team in Kalispell who is trying to maintain the good and to bring improvements to a County Animal Shelter that recently transferred from the Sheriffs Department to the County Health Office. Even though I only spent a few hours walking through the building and interviewing a few locals I think I can give them them some goals to shoot for.

This last week has been a whirlwind of activity on prairie dog, bison, canned hunting and animal fighting issues. The Mike Vick case continues to be a driving force in Idaho and Wyoming legislative circles and I have been doing more interviews on dog fighting in the past few months than in the past few years combined. It is sad to think it takes a case of that magnitude to bring the publics attention to this repulsive activity…but at long last we will see all fifty states make dog fighting a potential felony offense when ID and WY take legislative action.

I have also been spending considerable time trying to bring some closure to several old cruelty cases and to place the animals into forever homes. This includes six horses and four cats that we have been paying for intensive care for since January of 2006. It is unusual for animals to be held up in foster care for this extended period of time…but the system moves slowly and does not change much because it is living evidence.

For rescues I had calls for a mangy fox (that has not been spotted since the original call), some help catching Bullfrogs, and for the release of the pictured Western Prairie Rattler that was found in a residential neighborhood. This one was truly a bit more greenish than most but was a perfect match for the sagebrush prairie countryside I released it in. I also held a volunteer work party at my storage area and we managed to get over 50 live traps for upcoming feral cat clinics and Swift Fox relocation projects cleaned and partially painted for the projects. I am whittling away every morning and evening at getting a few more painted, tagged and prepared for this upcoming projects.

Released: Western Prairie Rattle Snake


For next week I will be attending a Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Exotic Animal Committee meeting in Helena, a Day long class on Pet Loss Grief Support and attempting to convert some turtle traps into Bullfrog traps to try to catch some bullfrogs from a few private ponds. (Bull frogs are non-native invasive species and I get them relocated to agencies in states where the frogs are native. I am also including my second to last photo of Scrat. He and Squeakers are gaining weight daily and will be ready for soft release by October first. I will try to remember to get you a photo of their soft release pen screwed to their birth tree. Until Next time…." Dave Pauli.

Siamese Mix Kittens available for Adoption

True Blue Animal Rescue near Brenham, Texas, has adorable Siamese Mix kittens available for immediate adoption.

They are absolutely precious. Their mother was adopted, but not them. The mother was a stray and had them in a field and brought them to someone's house for safety. Luckily, that person called T-bar, and T-bar was able to find the kittens a foster home, but they really, really, really want a forever-after home of their own. Let it be you.

The best time to get these adorable Siamese Mix kittens is now!

Adopt one or all.

Click on the following link for more photos of the kittens, instructions on How to Adopt, and T-bar's phone number.

http://www.t-bar.org/kittens.htm

Where's Dave, Director of HSUS NRRO?

Dave, Director of the Northern Regional Office of the Humane Society, got requests from the AHAA artists for more photos. Here's the latest information from Dave. Thank you, Dave!! for all you do for the animals!!

The Week in Review from Dave.

"Thank you for some feedback and follow-up concerning my previous postings. In response to your requests I am including a "top view" of a western painted turtle.




This week included several humane live-trapping issues, as the third photo showing the live-trap and KONG dog toy was part of a KONG company web-page article I drafted to teach wildlife trappers that they need to include a "worry toy" like a KONG inside the trap so that the captured dog, cat or raccoon will worry/chew on the worry toy rather than the wire cage. This greatly reduces the potential for facial, paw or tooth injuries to trapped animals. I also drove to Red Lodge, MT and trained a half dozen Beartooth Humane Alliance and Beartooth Nature Center volunteers on the tricks of the trade to humanely catch feral cats in volume. My simple tricks of buried bait, sight attractors, fear removers, worry toys and saturation trap deployment generally help local groups both improve the efficiency and humaneness of their trapping outreach. These two excellent groups will be trapping dozens of rural feral cat populations for a Spay Neuter Clinic in late September.

Life Trap with a Kong Toy.


The next day I got a call from a local animal shelter telling me they had a wild ferret! I asked what color it was and they said Black as coal with a white chin patch. I immediately told them it was a wild MINK, and that I would stop by to pick it up for release. Indeed it was a quite beautiful and quite upset subadult female mink. I suspect she was a larger juvenile mink , as she was in excellent coat, young teeth and no signs of litter rearing this spring. I mapped out her capture site, and plotted a upstream drainage release site so that she would be within 5-6 miles of the capture site on the Yellowstone river.

The rest of the week was consumed preparing for a potential wild horse darting trip and today's trip to Glacier Park area where I will be doing an animal shelter inspection for a County Health Department and then visiting the Blackfeet reservation to see if I can help them with their ongoing community animal care and control improvements. With my daughters involved in school and sports... this will be the last road trip that Scrat and Squeakers will have to endure. I have built a large final squirrel cage for them that has some ten feet long branches and a climbing gymnasium in it. When I get back mid-week they will go into this much larger pen to strengthen their climbing muscles and to both condition and fatten them in preparation for their release within a month. I have now fed them well over 100 meals with the first feeding being just one cubic centimeter of warm electrolyte to this morning's 04:00 feeding of Nine cc's formula each. I will miss them bounding into my lap for groceries...but will feel really great seeing them up in their birth tree barking at the big new world beneath their feet."

Updated photo of Scrat and Squeakers - but even this one is a few days old and not showing their continued growth. Both squirrels are gaining weight are partially weaned and are pretty much looking like a target soft release date of October 1st. We will, of course, be monitoring them and providing supplementary feeding them throughout the winter.

SALUKIS SEIZED IN GEORGIA RESCUE

For those of you not familiar with the breed, the Saluki is the oldest breed. The pharaohs use Salukis to hunt Gazelle and rabbits. The Saluki was one of the few breeds to sleep in the Pharaohs tents. Salukis are in the sighthound family along with the Greyhound, Whippet and Afghan.

About 18 months ago, STOLA rescued 40 Saluki hounds in the Elektra Rescue case. Stola hoped a Saluki rescue of that magnitude would be a unique event, but now they are facing another large rescue of up to 29 Salukis. Stola was informed that Animal Control of Gwinnett County, Georgia was in the process of seizing 19 Salukis from a home in Duluth, GA. Just a few days earlier, Gwinnett county had impounded 100 animals from a different case, so they had very little space to house an additional number of Salukis. Stola is very grateful to Gwinnett County Animal Control for turning the Salukis over to them without putting them through the trauma of a shelter impound situation. STOLA had to agree to have all the 19 Salukis neutered/spayed and to provide Animal Control with proof of neutering in the form of veterinary certificates. STOLA had no choice but to comply with this mandate. If Stola did not agree to this, all the dogs would have been impounded into Animal Control facilities and been neutered there, which would have been very traumatic for these Salukis.

These 19 Salukis have been turned over to STOLA's custody. An additional 10 Salukis in this case may also be turned over to Stola. STOLA will need funding to pay for veterinary medical care and transportation to carefully screened adoptive homes. With this number of dogs Stola needs to raise $25,000 for their care. Stola is asking for your generosity in assisting them to help these needy Salukis. Situations like this are very difficult on everyone involved, but it is hardest on the dogs.

Please help Stola by making a tax-deductible donation today.

Donations may be made through the STOLA website at this link Donate to STOLA: http://www.stola.org/support/index.html#donations

Donations by check will be gratefully accepted. Please mail checks to:
STOLA
3701 Sacramento Street #345
San Francisco, CA 94118

Permission granted by Stola to post.

Where's Dave? Director of HSUS NRRO

Howdy… First an update. In my first note to you I reported that we had rescued 16 painted turtles from a Yellowstone county pond being filled in! Update: We ended up saving THIRTY FIVE turtles and a few hundred tadpoles from the pond. As artists I knew you would enjoy the natural beauty of our Western Painted turtles so imposed upon these two urban-sprawl victims for one quick shot of their beautiful carapaces for you to enjoy. Seconds later they were in the pond with their choice of pond life or river life!

Scrat and Squeakers are also growing quickly and getting rather…. err … “Squirrely”. I am planning their “soft” release under their birth tree as soon as they double their weight and show the skills necessary for survival. ( soft means they will have their current den cage and can decide to leave and live in a tree when THEY are ready)

I like to share the good stories with you…but for balance you need to know that my job is not always warm and fuzzy… this week I spent time on providing logistics for a dog fighting ring bust in Idaho; offered a $2500 dollar reward for some troubled people in North Dakota who are shooting big game animals in August and just letting them die, and offering a grant to South Dakota Agriculture to bring in a trainer to prevent a reoccurrence of the 2200 cattle that died from heat stress in SD feedlots last week.

But I still managed to complete a hands on recertification for Swiftwater Rescue (need to recertify every three years) and to be the guest speaker at a regional disaster conference with 38 folks in Billings from eight states.

And finally in the rescue department we took in a ferret and rehomed her, closed down the last of our wildfire emergency animal shelters, and did some planning for a huge project next month to contracept several herds of wild horses. But that is,indeed, a story for the next issue of Where in the world am ... I !!!