Elvis Gets Ready to Go to BARC...

This is Elvis. He is getting his bath, preparing to return to BARC, the shelter in Houston. But only for his neuter and vetting so that he will be ready to go to a rescue in Vermont next week!

Elvis came to the farm a week ago with his mommy, Oreo. Both were BARC dogs who needed a foster until they could go to a Vermont rescue which will find them good families. New England has fewer shelter dogs because folks up that way seem to understand the importance to spay and neuter, better than other parts of the country.

So Elvis is in the car, ready to get his vetting and his health certificate so that he can travel to Vermont and find a family!

Elvis and Oreo were out of time at BARC and needed to move out to make room for the waves of new dogs, constantly pouring into the shelter. In a city the size of Houston, the numbers of new dogs coming to the shelter each day is staggering.

We are happy that we can help dogs like Elvis and Oreo by providing them a safe place to wait until they can move on to a rescue which can place them.

Elvis is a really sweet, even tempered dog, just like his mommy, Oreo.

Unfortunately, she has to wait at the farm while we treat her for heartworms. Sadly, she was heartworm positive and most rescues will not take HW+ dogs.

Oreo is taking a holistic heartworm treatment we get from a veterinarian in Florida. It will take her about 6 months and she should be Heartworm free at that point.

Elvis had his operation on Thursday at the BARC clinic and he is coming home this afternoon.

Oreo has cried the whole time he has been gone, so she will really be happy to see Oreo!

Can You Help Elvis and Oreo Stay Together?

If you know someone or have a family already studied who would consider adopting TWO dogs together, I would love to see Oreo and Elvis stay together. They are sweet with one another and very loving. Please email us at Intake@SmilingDogFarms.org or call us a 979-559-1062 if you know someone who might adopt Elvis and his mommy together, so Elvis does not have to go to Vermont without Oreo! We can provide the heartworm treatment Oreo is taking so that her new family could continue her treatment until she is heartworm free!

Animal Rescue Site Holiday Shelter Challenge Daily Contest Update for Saturday, Oct 30

8th Place but IN TROUBLE!

Please vote today and every day on every computer you have access to! And... please... sign up at least ONE NEW VOTER to start voting for us every day! Just click on this link to vote:

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?

We have the same numbers as yesterday nationally. Number 7 is still .86 and we are still .74 --- no change. Number 9 remained at .65 but Number 10 is now tied with them at .65. Someone is moving up... it's just not US!!

The $43 Million Dollar Man is still standing astride the whole contest in 1st Place with 1.94%.

But the Basenji Rescue in Texas -- the ones we were once so sure would never overtake us after we moved ahead of them -- is STILL gaining on us! The spread is now just 2.22%... yesterday it was 2.23% ... day before it was 2.29%... then 2.37... then 2.43...

The Basenji Rescue has shaved .21% of our lead in just 5 days! If we dont do something to start generating more votes and more voters, they will pass us and we will drop out of the Top 10!

It is that bad.

And it is the weekend. When people do not have access to their work computers!

We have got to get our Team voting every day, like we used to. Without that, this contest is lost.

And then we have to get our Team to find NEW VOTERS every single day -- like we used to.

Nothing less is going to keep us in the running!

Sutherelands Home & Garden in El Campo is voting for us every day from ALL SIX computers in their store! (We buy ALL our building materials there because their prices are great and they have superior service! We highly recommend them!) Maybe you can find a retailer in your area where you do business who will help us from their comupter(s) every day!

If you are not currently receiving these daily news emails from me and would like to be added to my database, please contact me at hellerich@aol.com

Please put on your thinking caps and try to find us some new ways to get votes -- some new computers to get online for Team Smiling Dog...

Let's Get Fired Up, Team Smiling Dog! Let's surge ahead this weekend while others rest!

Laverne & Shirley's Big Transformation! The Garland Girls Are Ready to be Adopted!

Some of you may remember when Laverne & Shirley came to the farm from the Garland Shelter a few months ago.

They were two pit-mix pups who had a horrible case of mange -- they were missing large patches of fur and had skin lesions with open, bleeding sores. What was worse, they were going to be euthanized because they had mange and no one had offered to take them!

We brought them to the farm and started treating them with sulphur baths and Amoxicillin for the open sores. They also received weekly Ivermectin shots. We put Nu Stock sulphur cream on their faces, because it is easier to keep it out of their eyes than the sulphur bath solution.

Here is Laverne today! She and Shirley are completely healed and ready for adoption! You can see how beautiful their fur is, and what happy, playful girls they are!

Mange can be cured and these babies are the Poster Girls for that! Dogs with mange can and should have a chance to be cured and live out their lives, like these two frisky girls!

Animal Rescue Site Holiday Shelter Challenge Daily Contest Update for Friday, Oct 29

8th Place but LOSING Ground!

Please vote TODAY and every day from EVERY computer you have access to! Please sign up at least ONE new voter TODAY!

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?

For the first time ever, we LOST ground today! Down from .75% all week to just .74% today! Numbers 9 and 10 remained the same, so we lost .01% to each of them.

Number 7 stayed firm at ,86% so now we need .13% to get ahead of them! Earlier in the week, we just needed .11% to move up!

The giant monolith (the $43 Million Dollar Man) in First Place picked up more ground and is sitting at 1.94% today! They gained .01 and we lost .01 so the net difference is they are ahead of us by .02% MORE today than yesterday!

And if that is not bad enough news, the Basenji Rescue continues its assault on us and continues to climb. Today we are separated from them by only 2.23% in Texas... down from a spread of 2.29% yesterday, down from 2.37% the day before and 2.43% the day before that. They are steadily moving up on us and we are not doing anything to stop them!

If we cannnot reverse these trends, Basenji Rescue will soon overtake one of the groups in spot 9 or10 and eventually inch their way ahead of us, stripping us of our #1 ranking in Texas!

We are no longer just STUCK in 8th Place nationally... we are DROPPING!

We need to get our team motivated to get our votes posted daily, and to get our voters to be finding new voters every day!

If you would like to be added to my database to receive these daily updates directly, just send me an email at hellerich@aol.com.

Let's get fired up, Team Smiling Dog!

Elderly Orson Finds Health and Home!

This is Orson. He is an older Rottweiler mix from BARC in Houston. He was running out the clock and needed to get out!

You can see that Orson has a pretty serious case of mange. He is missing hair all over his body, and he has a few open, bleeding sores. You can him scratching in this photo.

Orson also has heartworms.

We brought Orson to the farm so we could start treating him for mange and heartworms. We have ordered the holistic heartworm treatment from Dr. Wessner's clinic in Florida for Orson. We are hoping it will be here tomorrow.

This photo shows Orson getting his first sulphur bath, to combat his mange. Ricky just saturates his fur with the smelly yellow liquid, until every inch of skin is covered. We apply Nu-Stock sulphur cream to his face, because it is easier to keep it out of his eyes.

When he dries, we will put Revolution on him. Revolution kills mange and other parasites, including fleas, and it is safe to use on heartworm positive dogs.

Best of all, Orson already has an adoptive home lined up through Cindi, a volunteer at BARC. Orson's new mom is Pam and she lives in Cleveland, TX. She will be taking him sometime next week, and will continue his sulphur baths and his heartworm treatment. Pam is especially fond of the older dogs, and she even cooks for them! She is making a vegetable stew for Orson that will be ready and waiting for him, when he arrives at his new home!

Animal Rescue Site Holiday Shelter Challenge Daily Contest Update for Thursday, Oct 27

We are still in 8th place nationally!
Please be sure to vote TODAY from every computer you have access to! Please sign up at least ONE new voter TODAY! Just click on the link below to vote:

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?

We're still at .75% and have not moved in days! Ninth and Tenth place are not moving either... they are still at .65% and .64% respectively.

Seventh place is still at .86% so they did not gain on us today, but neither did we gain on them. It is going to take a .12% surge for us to jump up into 7th Place!

Best Friends is still in first place with 1.93%... they are not weakening at all, and continue to climb.

The scariest part is that the Basenji Rescue is gaining ground on us in Texas! Today, we are only 2.29% ahead of them... down from 2.37% yesterday... down from 2.43% the day before! Somehow, we HAVE to get our voters energized...

And we have to get every voter to go find another voter if we are going to start moving forward again!

It is much harder now, I know. When you are competing on a national scale, our competition is getting large numbers of voters every day, just as we are. It takes all our effort just to stay even!

We will keep our votes coming in each day... and trying to sign up NEW voters each day... and see how high we can get!

If you would like to be added to my daily email distribution, please contact me at hellerich@aol.com.

Animal Rescue Site Holiday Shelter Challenge Daily Contest Results for Wed, October 27

We are still in 8th place nationally!
Please be sure to vote from every computer you have access to, and please try to sign up at least ONE new voter for us every day! Just click on the link below:

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?

Today we are at .75%, the same as yesterday. 7th Place is up .01% today to .86 from .85 yesterday. We now need to gain .12% to move ahead of them!

Best Friends is still in first place with 1.93% of the vote. 2nd Place has moved from 1.49 to 1.50 to 1.51 in the last three days.

We are still in first place in Texas, although for the first time in weeks, we actually lost ground yesterday slipping from a lead of 2.43% over the Basenji Rescue to 2.37% lead today.

I have heard some folks ask "Where are all our voters?" but the fact is, our team is still voting every day in large numbers. It is just that our raw vote is less than #7 and all the others above us. Our teams' votes is what is holding us in 8th Place... without our big daily turnout, we would drop like a rock!

So please know that our team is still out there every day, scavenging for new voters and getting our votes up on the board... It is just that we are competing nationally against organizations much larger than ours!

We will keep our votes coming in each day and see just how high we can go!

Cancer Patient Buddy Arrives at the Farm from Sarasota, Florida

This is Buddy. He's about six years old and he has cancer.

Buddy came to us from Sarasota, Florida. He spent most of his life with a family, chained in the back yard with little stimulation. He finally was sent to the Sarasota Humane Society, where he met two independent rescuers, Stephanie and Asli.

It was at the Humane Society that Buddy was diasgnosed with hemangiosarcoma, which is a malignant cancer that attacks the skin and the spleen . The Humane Society had the skin lesions surgically removed, but his cancer diagnosis made him unadoptable.

Working on behalf of the Sarasota Humane Society, Stephanie and Asli asked us to provide hospice care for Buddy. We agreed that Buddy could live out however many days God gave him, here at the farm.


You'd never know Buddy was sick to look at him! Here, he is enjoying the sunshine out on the deck at the beach house in Galveston. He is smiling because he knows he is getting ready to go down to the beach. Buddy likes the water!

We are giving Buddy Paw Paw, a holistic herbal treatment for cancer. There is research that shows Paw Paw has put cancer in remission in many of the dogs treated with it. We are also giving him Petinic, a liquid vitamin to promote overall wellness and help his body fight the cancer.

Dr. Stern, our veterinarian, will continue to monitor Buddy's cancer and look for any signs of remission.

In our wildest dreams, we are hoping Buddy will beat the cancer! Then he can be adopted by a caring family who will appreciate what a special, loving guy he is.

In the meantime, Buddy will live with us at the farm and enjoy every day he has left. He is great with other dogs, and does not seem to have an aggressive bone in his body!

Animal Rescue Site Holiday Shelter Challenge Daily Contest Results for Tuesday, Oct 26...

We are still in 8th place nationally.
Today we are at .75%... down .01% from yesterday.
#7 is at .85%... up .01% from yesterday.
We need to gain .11% to move ahead of them!
Best Friends is still #1 with 1.93%, same as yesterday.
We are still #1 in Texas, 2.43% ahead of Basenji Rescue.
That is up from 2.28% ahead yesterday! You can vote once from
every computer you have access to every day! Click on
http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?
1st prize is $10,000, 2nd is $5000, 3rd is $2000.
Please try to sign up one new voter every day for us!

A Good Trade All Around !

This is Alexa. You can see from the look on her face and her body language that she is really shy. I mean REALLY shy!

These are five healthy, happy black lab mix puppies. I think you can tell from this photo that they are anything but shy!

A woman called us to say that she had rescued five lab pups from beside the road, out in the countryside. They were just discarded in a cardboard box like so much rubbish. She and her husband did not have the heart to just drive on by and leave them there, and so they scooped them up and took them home.

She called a number of local and regional rescues, but was told that no one had any room for these puppies. Then she called us at Smiling Dog Farms. We agreed to take them and do our best to find them adoptive homes.

Our greatest fear was that the pups would stay too long at the farm and grow up to be big black dogs, which are way more difficult to place in adoptive homes. Our Adoption Partners already had their hands full with other dogs and could not take them.

So we decided to contact Pup Squad, a great rescue group in the Houston area that specializes in placing puppies in good homes. I figured Pup Squad would be able to get them all into good homes before they grew too big to be puppies any more!

What was really funny was that about the same time I was sending an email to Pup Squad about our labs, Pup Squad was sending an email to us about sweet little Alexa!

They had rescued three puppies, and one was almost immediately docile and tame enough to be placed. A second sibbling was fearful, but with a lot of work, Pup Squad helped him learn to trust people. They were able to rehome him.

But Alexa was the tough one. She was fearful, and no matter what Kathy and the wonderful ladies at Pup Squad did, Alexa did not shed her fear. Some dogs are just like that. I think it is in their DNA to be afraid, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't get them to be comfortable with people.

Fortunately, fearful -- or feral -- dogs like Alexa usually like other dogs. It is just humankind they do not trust. (Who can blame them, really?)

But dogs like Alexa will "gum up the works" for a traditional rescue. Pup Squad takes in dogs, works with them and vets them, and then they move them on to waiting families. When a dog like Alexa comes along, she takes up space that other, adoptable dogs could use. In traditional rescues, one dog can prevent many others from having an opportunity to find a family.

And so Pup Squad wondered if Alexa could come to our sanctuary and live out her life with other dogs!

Well, it just doesn't get any better than this! We happily took on Alexa, and Pup Squad took all five lab babies to find homes for them!

You can see from these photos of Alexa that her first night here at the farm, we had her in the bed with us. You can also tell from her expression and body language that she was not all that happy to be there!

This photo shows what we got to see of Alexa most of the night!! lol She hid under the pillow and stayed there all through the night and into the next morning, until we took her out to her yard!

We are still in the process of choosing just the right friend for Alexa. She likes other dogs and we want her to have a friend with whom she can play and bark at the squirrels and nap in the sunshine together. We have several possible mates for her!

The story of Alexa and the lab puppies is the story of rescue at its best. Pup Squad came through for the five lab pups, who might have lived at the farm until they were collecting Social Security without Kathy and her team's intervention! And precious Alexa, who has no love lost for humans, will get to live out her days at the farm with a friend, unmolested by people, happily playing in her yard and enjoying her life, sans-humans!

Happy Came All the Way from Virginia to Retire at the Farm!

Happy has a problem most of us would probably like to have: She has outlived the expectations and predictions for her lifespan! You can see from her photo that Happy is an elderly gal. That is grey, not white fur, around her face and muzzle!

She was adopted from a Virginia shelter by Evette, who did not want Happy spending her final days alone in a cold, sterile shelter. She brought her home, thinking she might have a few weeks, maybe a few months left. Happy became a beloved member of Evette's family.

There was just one thing... Evette is in the military. She knew she would be called up again, but she also knew it would be a while until she was deployed, and so she would be able to care for Happy and be with her when the end came.

Except the end never came! And pretty soon, Evette was going to be deployed and Happy was still alive and... well, happy! It was one of those "good news, bad news" things... Good news was Happy was still alive, long past the time anyone had ever imagined! Bad news was her mommy was going to have to leave!

And then Evette found Smiling Dog Farms. Of course, we agreed right away that Happy could come here to live out her golden years. Ricky created a Chip In account to raise money for Happy's house construction and her care. (http://smilingdogfarms.chipin.com/happys-house-and-care ) Evette got busy finding friends and family to donate toward Happy's retirement home and care!

Suzanne Young agreed to coordinate a transport to bring Happy all the way from Virginia to Texas, and she signed up more people than I have space to list here, all of whom agreed to spend their time and their gas to drive Happy part of the way. That's the kind of self-less, caring folks who get involved in rescue transport! Midway through the process of organizing the transport, a wonderful benefactor named Kelly offered to buy Happy an airline ticket and even provided the money to buy her a crate to travel in! Happy got to fly here in just a few hours, instead of driving for several days. Everyone agreed this was the best possible outcome for Happy!

Happy arrived when Ricky and I were working on our Galveston property, so she spent a few days at the beach with us! She loved laying in the sunshine and feeling the cool Gulf Breezes blow across her body

In spite of her age, it is obvious in her eyes and in her affect that she is still very much aware of what is going on around her, and she is stil very interested in what life has to offer. Her back legs have begun to fail her, but she gets around using her front legs! She can move all around the yard without any assistance!

We don't know how much time Happy has left. Only God knows that. But Happy will enjoy each day until the end finally comes. She is getting more than her share of turns in the bed right now and is actually sitting next to me in the office while I write her story! At the rate she is going, Happy may outlive us all!! lol

And when the end does come, Happy will be surrounded with people who love her. Just as Evette planned for her and wanted for her!

Ella Packs Her Bags for Her New Life!

Ella is getting ready for the long trip from Wharton, Texas to Franklin, New Hampshire! She has an adoptive home waiting for her, with a wonderful new mommy named Tammy.

Ella came to the farm this past summer. A local jogger noticed Ella, sprawled in the hot summer sun on someone's lawn. Ella is blind. So she can only operate on her other senses.

She was clearly lost, and had given up hope of finding shelter and safety. She just laid down, defeated, to die!

Lucky for Ella, the jogger picked her up and took her home. Then she called Smiling Dog Farms, and we agreed to provide Ella with a safe place to live. We contacted the local newspaper to see if her family was looking for her. We checked for a collar tag or microchip, without success.

Because she is a senior, we did not think she was likely to find a family. And we were prepared for her to live out her golden years here with us.

But Tammy saw Ella on our new website and asked about her. We got busy. Our Adoption Partner, Julie from Annie's Angels, contacted Tammy. Tammy completed the homestudy process through phone interviews with Julie and the internet.

Then we contacted our friend Ed from Pets In Need in Dracut, Massachusetts. Ed agreed to have one of the folks from his group do the home visit. Ricky has created a Chip In to raise money for Ella's transport to New Hampshire. http://smilingdogfarms.chipin.com/ella

We are all so excited and happy for Ella and her opportunity for a family of her own! Fortunately, she will spend cozy days laying on the sofa watching Oprah in her wintry new home state, and will only have to brave the cold and snow on her forays into Tammy's back yard!! lol

This is truly a dream come true for our sweet Ella!

jay hellerich

smiling dog farms

a 501c3 non-profit corporation

p.o. box 743

wharton, tx 77488

website: http://www.smilingdogfarms.org/

blog: http://smilingdogfarms.blogspot.com/

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