Bea and Efran Look for a Family Together

This is Bea and Efran. They are a mom and her son. Efran was born at Smiling Dog Farms, and has grown up here. He has lived with his mommy his whole life!
.
Bea came to us from a Texas shelter. She was a "cracker jack" dog, who came to us with a surprise inside! We had no idea she was pregnant when she arrived!
.
Bea didn't really "show", so she caught us off guard when she finally delivered Efran. She had a second baby who was not born alive, sadly.
.
Bea was an excellent mom to Efran. We don't really know if she had puppies before and was experienced at mothering, or if she just naturally knew by instinct. But she was a great mom to Efran. Efran still follows his mom everywhere she goes!
.
That was a little over three years ago, before we had an adoption program.

Efran has never been separated from his mommy. And because they are so bonded and clearly love one another so much, we do not want to separate them in adoptive homes.
.
We are hoping to find a family who will accept both Bea and Efran, together. They are not large dogs. Maybe 25 lb for Efran, and 30 lb for Bea.
.
Bea is more gregarious with people, and Efran is somewhat more shy. But both dogs enjoy being petted and fussed over. They are easy going and get along with other dogs.
.
If you or someone you know might consider providing a forever home for this special pair, please contact us at Intake@SmilingDogFarms.org.

Ed Has Been Going Over the Books...

My family brought me to Smiling Dog Farms from Dearborn, Michigan a while back. I have a cottage and an oversize play yard that I share with my friend, Ilse. She is kind of shy. I could not get her to join me for this photo. (And, no, that is not a funky hat I am wearing. That is our bed that we moved outside our cottage. Bad camera angle!)

I am one of the dogs who would not be alive without Smiling Dog Farms. There was just no one else, no other rescue or group willing to take me, because of my bite history!

I need to talk to you today about finances at the farm.

Today is the absolute last day of the Year End Fundraiser. It should have ended January 1. But we had not reached our goal, and American Dog Rescue offered a second $2500 Matching Grant, to try to get us over the top. (A friend of Smiling Dog Farms had offered a $2500 Matching Grant in December.) These matching grants each turned $2500 in donations into $5000 in new funds!

So we extended our Fundraiser through January. And then one last time to today, Monday, February 7. In hopes we would raise the money we need.

Sunday, you donated $100, which reduced the amount we still need to $4078. Thank you!

And we got one new sponsor for Blue, and another existing sponsor for Blue increased their monthly donation. That is a total of $20 in new monthly donations, reducing our goal to $655. Thank you!

Today is pretty much going to be it. We can't keep dragging this out. Whatever we have by the end of today will determine which programs we keep, and which ones have to wait until we can fund them.

Most of you who are reading this have already donated... or you are a regular monthly donor... or you are both!

We can't ever emphasize enough how important you are to our core mission. You are the reason we are still here, helping the dogs who have no where else to go. Quite literally, without you there would be no Smiling Dog Farms! We owe our very existence to you and your continuing support. Thank you does not seem adequate to express our appreciation.

We try to keep our fundraising efforts down to just three major events each year. No one likes to always be asked for money. And we don't like asking for it. So we will "give it a rest" after today.

If you know someone who might be willing to help us today... to keep chipping away that that $4000 we still need... please send this on to them.

All donations are fully tax deductible because Smiling Dog Farms is a 501c3 non profit corporation.

You can make a donation, or sign up as a regular monthly sponsor at http://smilingdogfarms.org/Donations_Page.html

If you have already donated... or already donate as a regular monthly sponsor... or have already gotten a friend to donate, THANK YOU! We are not asking you to donate again!

But if you know someone who might want to help, please pass this along to them.

We are still hoping for a $4000 day! All the dogs and me have been barking it up for a BIG final day that will put us over the top!

Nigel Reports on Odds & Ends...

Since I live here, I guess I can report on "odds and ends"... information we wanted to share.

Cookbooks:

We all remember the sad story of the cookbooks. All summer, we collected recipes. A volunteer said she was reformatting them as they came in, getting them ready to go to print. She said she would turn them over to Ricky in September to be printed in plenty of time for Christmas. But what she turned in had not been formatted at all... in fact, it did not even include all the recipes that had been turned in! It was just a mess.

Ricky retrieved all the original emails that had been submitted but it was October by then and there was no chance of getting the cookbook completed for Christmas.

Thanks to our friend, Dione, we got some really great software for getting all the recipes into the same format, which is necessary to make a book out of them.

Now the problem is time. We just have not had any.

Ricky and Jay wanted me to ask if there was anyone who might be willing to help us get the recipes into this software program so we can get them print ready. It would have to be someone with some time to donate, and someone who is meticulous and pays attention to details!

If you think you might want to tackle this project for us, please contact Ricky at Intake@SmilingDogFarms.org

Whatever it takes, we promise we will get this cookbook finished and printed, even if it takes until this coming Christmas to do it!

Weather Conditions:

Today, things were closer to normal for the first time in five days. Our high was 60, and the low overnight will be in the mid 40s. That is still extremely cold for our area, but it's positively balmy compared to what we have had all week!

Today, everyone enjoyed the sunshine and milder weather. Tomorrow, it is supposed to be even warmer. We are just holding our breath that whatever it was that took over our weather this past week is gone for good!

I always tell people that our climate is much like Tampa, Florida. And 99.9% of the time it is!

I don't know what blew through here this last week, but I hope we never see it again!

Building Schedule:

We have pretty much lost a whole week because of the weather. The artic weather left us in pure Survival Mode all week. The focus was on keeping the dogs warm and safe, and that was about all we got done! Even with most team members working overtime each day.

Even if there had been time, it was so cold it would have been impossible to build anything!

Ricky was able to resume his construction schedule today, and will be working at it again tomorrow. And we are hoping the weather will hold this coming week.

There are some ominous predictions for another cold wave, but it is hard to imagine that we could possibly have cold on the scale we just endured! This past week has been a once-in-a-lifetime kind of winter.

Yvette Visits Happy at the Farm...

This is Yvette. She is in the military. She adopted me from a shelter in Virginia a while back, because I was an older girl and no one thought I would live much longer. She didn't want me to die at the shelter. So Yvette took me home with her.
.
Back then, I could still run and play. My back legs had not given out on me, yet. Now I sort of drag myself around by my front legs because my back legs just don't work.
.
But I still have fun and I can still get around!
.
The problem came when I lived too long! ha ha I guess a better way to say that would be that I've lived longer than anyone expected, and Yvette is being deployed and has to go back to Iraq. And there was no one who could take care of a big girl like me, who has to be carried up and down stairs!
.
Yvette found Smiling Dog Farms on the internet and she asked if I could come live out the rest of my life at the farm. And Ricky and Jay said "Yes"!
.
So I came to live here last Summer.
.
Because of my age and my bum back legs, I get to live inside the house.
.
A couple weeks ago, Yvette came to see me here at the farm. She wanted to see me before she had to leave for Iraq. Neither one of us wanted to think about it, but we both knew that it may be my last chance to see Yvette, because she will be gone for about a year.
.
We had a great time. She packed me up in her car and we went to the park and we just enjoyed being with each other once again. You can see how happy we both are in this photo Yvette took of us in her car!
.
I am really glad that I got to spend the afternoon with Yvette one more time. She writes to Ricky and Jay about me, and they tell me how much she still cares about me. But it is still nice to be with Yvette, to touch her and feel her touching me again.
.
This has to be one of the things I like best about living at Smiling Dog Farms -- families who send dogs to live here are encouraged to come back to visit and can even check us out for a day or a weekend or however long they want!
.
It meant that I got to spend one very special afternoon with Yvette, whom I will always love! I will cherish those memories from that day, and keep them in my heart!

Puppy's Advice About Contests...

I'm Puppy.

I'm an older guy. I'm supposed to have acquired a little wisdom over the years.

So here is my advice about The Animal Rescue Site Contest: Don't vote for us. Or anyone else!

We all remember what happened last December. Smiling Dog Farms was way ahead in Texas. A huge lead of 2.42% going into the final day of the "contest". Team Smiling Dog had really pumped out the votes and kept Smiling Dog Farms number one in Texas every single day from the middle of October right to the end of the contest!

But the prize went to another group. The folks at the Animal Rescue Site just pushed our concerns aside, condescendingly telling us "the other group got more votes than you"! Without so much as an explanation of HOW any group could make up 2.42% in a single day, when the MOST that had been recorded in a single day during the entire contest was just .23%... or less than 10% of what the "winning" group allegedly did on that final day.

Didn't make any sense then. Still doesn't make any sense now. Never will.

Well, when you look at how much time and energy our team expended... it was just not worth it.

When our supporters are focused on a contest we can never win, it saps energy that might be used more productively. It gives our supporters a false belief that their hard work might actually result in us winning that contest. But we have seen how that goes.

The worst part about voting for us -- or for anyone -- is that is tacitly approves the way those folks do business. It tells them that it's really ok the way they did us.

No, I don't think any of us on Team Smiling Dog want to send that message to Greater Good and Petfinder.

The message we want to send is that we know we had the votes, and we know we were Number 1 in Texas in that last contest. We are not stupid. They can't just say we got less votes and not back it up, when the contest was not even close!

Now we sure do appreciate all the good folks on Team Smiling Dog who have been voting for us on that contest again. We know you are doing it because you want to help us.

But it just sends the wrong message.

What do I think you oughta do? BOYCOTT that contest. Don't vote for us. Don't vote for anyone. Stay off their website altogether.

Let them know the folks on Team Smiling Dog believe in honesty and contests that are fairly run. And we just want no part of their contest.

That's what I'd do.

But I'm just an old dog -- who still has a few new tricks left in me! Ha ha!

Buddy Snuggles Under Covers to Stay Warm!

It really got cold around here yesterday! I'm a Florida dog and I am not accustomed to this kind of weather!

You can see that I was one of the dogs who came inside last night because of the weather. Ricky and Jay said that all the smaller dogs, the older dogs and dogs like me who have issues that make us more vulnerable had to come inside. I am a cancer patient, so I could not risk staying out in the cold!

Most of the dogs who came inside stayed in kennels stacked in the living room and bedrooms and hall... but I got to spend the night in the bed! The covers really felt good!

Everyone who works here at the farm was working extra hard and extra long hours today, to make sure that everyone had a soft, cushiony puff to curl up in, and that the extra partitions were installed on the housing to keep dogs out of the cold night air.

We all got to go out today and play in the sunshine, even though it was still pretty cold. But it felt good to breathe the fresh air for a while and have a chance to run and play.

Tonight, we did the same drill as last night. We are back in the house to stay warm.

I heard Ricky and Jay saying that this cold spell is now looking like it is going to last longer than we first thought yesterday. So I guess we will just keep doing what we have been doing until the weather breaks and it feels like Texas here again!

I saw on the Weather Channel tonight that it is even going to be cold in Florida tomorrow and the next few days!

I thought we were supposed to be having Global Warming!

Winter Storm Hits Smiling Dog Farms

When I woke up this morning, I had to check to make sure I wasn't back in Pennsylvania! Boy, was it cold!
.
Normally, our overnight lows are in the 60s. We think it is cold when it drops into the 50s around here. So you can imagine everyone's shock today when it dropped into the low 40s and high 30s!
.
The smaller dogs and the older dogs and the dogs who might be adversely affected by the cold came inside. They stacked crates from floor to ceiling all over the house, so everyone could spend the night inside where it was warm!
.
All the team members at the farm were working overtime today to make sure that everyone was tucked in, snug and warm.
.
I heard Ricky and Jay saying that it has never been this cold since Smiling Dog Farms moved to Texas! The weather report is calling for bitter cold again tomorrow and Thursday, then slowly getting back to normal for the weekend.
.
Wednesday will be in the 40s and then Thursday will creep up into the 50s and by Saturday it is supposed to be in the 70s again.
.
Today was actually the worst. In the early morning, we not only had cold but strong, gusting winds. My friends Oreo, and Lyndon Baines, and Anastasia each had the roof blown off their cottage! Ricky and his team members were out in the yards, putting roofing back on houses!
.
However, not a single one of the new townhomes were affected by the gusting winds! Ricky and Jay were proud that the new construction is so much stronger than the old.
.
We will all be glad when it warms up again and things get back to normal!