Dutchess County SPCA "12 Days of Holiday Giving" Donation Drive

By Trista Polo

DECEMBER 17, 2015 UPDATE:
The 12 Days of Holiday Giving has concluded but you can still help them reach their goal! http://bit.ly/1k4oTs5

This past Saturday, December 5th, Bella got to meet Santa Paws! We headed out to the Dutchess County SPCA in Hyde Park, NY for their "12 Days of Holiday Giving" event! This is their first “12 Days of Holiday Giving,” donation drive to benefit animals in need beginning December 1 through December 12. Written to the tune of the popular “12 Days of Christmas” carol, the DCSPCA is asking for pet-related items on its wish list, including monetary gifts toward a new SUV for Humane Law Enforcement, to be donated at designated drop-off locations or the donation drive page on Giving Grid at www.givinggrid.com/dcspca. 

Read on about our day and how you can help the DCSPCA reach their fundraising goal of $50,000 by Saturday!

When we arrived to the DCSPCA it was electric with activity and holiday spirit. Vendors stood at the entrance with so many wonderful gifts for dogs and humans alike! Yvette Yeomans, from Pampered Chef, was in a great spot to see the parade of dogs - and cats! - arriving throughout the day. Yvette says, "My favorite...was the enclosed carriage that came in carrying a cat. I looked over and saw a cat peeking through the mesh. As they went by, I could see the cat was wearing a dress. I found out later that the dress was hand made." 

A photo with Santa, taken by local pet (and people) photographer Al Nowak of On Location Studios, was the main attraction for most that attended. There was also plenty of time to shop and visit the resident "Adoptables" in Cat Land and Dog Village. According to Peggy O'Brien Jones of the DCSPCA, there are approximately 25-30 dogs and over 100 cats in residence at any one time.

Bella was definitely excited to see Santa...but being a dog's dog, she was much more interested in the many new faces (and butts) roaming around on four paws. There was a band of 6 Corgis, a group of 4 Greyhounds, a trio of 3 Cockers, a pair of Bernese Mountain Dogs, a Great Dane and even a Crate Escape alum.

Santa Paws, or Keith Jones as he is known the other 364 days per year, is a regular at the DCSPCA. Now that he is retired from his IT job at Avon, Keith volunteers regularly as a dog walker there. He has donned the Santa hat 4 or 5 times for pups and is wonderful with them. He was having a ball and it was no surprise to me when he told me he is quite an animal lover. The thing he loves most about volunteering at the DCSPCA is that despite their hard life, the rescues are "still trusting and affectionate. They have been abused but still seek out humans."

Keith and his wife Peggy (the DCSPCA employee mentioned above) have 3 dogs of their own at home. A 5 year old Golden named Dylan, a 2 1/2 Golden named Abby and a recent addition of Jessie (formerly Sweetie) a lab mix that chose Peggy's desk as the favorite place to nap during her short stint as a resident of the DCSPCA. 

I asked Peggy how things have been going with the fundraising efforts of the "12 Days of Holiday Giving" and it sounds like they have a way to go to meet their goal. They are 100% donation funded with no support from Government funding or grants. If you can help by dropping a donation at any of the locations below, it would be a huge step toward helping them reach their goal. You can also SHARE this article far and wide to your family and friends and help them get the word out for a last push toward helping them reach their goal.

Donation drop-off locations include:

· Ulster Savings Bank – 7296 South Broadway in Red Hook
· Rondout Savings Bank – 4269 Albany Post Road in Hyde Park
· Adams Fairacre Farms – 765 Dutchess Turnpike in Poughkeepsie
· A Cat’s Place – 738 U.S. 9 #15 in Fishkill
· Snug Harbor – 38 Main St. in New Paltz
· PetSmart – 2534 South Road in Poughkeepsie
· Iseman, Cunningham, Riester & Hyde, LLP – 3208 Franklin Ave. in Millbrook
· Senator Sue Serino’s office – 4254 Albany Post Road in Hyde Park
· All Sport – 17 Old Main in Fishkill
· Healey Chevrolet – 1960 South Road in Poughkeepsie

“Donations from the community are vital to the success of our organization,” said Hope Gamble, Executive Director of the DCSPCA. “Our goal is to raise the funds and necessities we need through the ‘12 Days of Holiday Giving’ drive that will help us to continue our mission work in the new year and increase awareness on all the ways we serve the community. In 2016, we seek to expand our programs and services to offer more low cost medical services for community pet owners, as well as update our popular animal welfare educational curriculum throughout Dutchess County.”

We had a wonderful time meeting all the dogs and their humans. Bella was worn out when we got home - a very unusual state for her active mind and body! We were glad to support such a great cause and organization. 

What is a favorite memory you have of the DCSPCA and its adoptables? Please share with me and share this article with your friends and family. Let's spread some holiday cheer for the animals at the DCSPCA!

Foster Chronicles - Romona the German Shephard Mix

UPDATE and NEW INFORMATION on ROMONA:
Great News! Romona (now spelled Ramona) was adopted by a Forever Family! She will live her life - how ever long she has left - happy and loved and part of a family. She was adopted with a waived adoption fee because her health future is unknown. She had so many BB pellets in her body that surgery was not an option. Therefore, they could not repair the hernia and relocate her organs. We wish her a LONG and happy life with her forever family. Happy Tails Ramona!

Unfortunately, because of her condition - the diaphragmatic hernia - her organs will eventually suffocate her heart. She was adopted without an adoption fee because there is no way to know how long she will live. She has over 250 BB pellets imbedded in her skin, which made surgery impossible. I'm told the pellets are probably due to her ending up on land where she wasn't welcome. There is a custom to shoot stray dogs with BB guns to get them off their lawn. So Ramona was either quite persistent or didn't get the message. I like to think of her as being unstoppable.

Below is the original post:

We are fairly new to fostering so we are still learning all the rewards and challenges that come with this gift of service.

We learned a new lesson with Romona - that there's a dark side to the Fostering experience.

We were foster-free. Henry had been fostered and we were less than 2 weeks away from a trip that would take us out of town for over a week. So no more fostering till we got back to town. And then I saw Romona on the Crate Escape Foster Safe page. They couldn't rescue her from the shelter without a foster family and no one had stepped up.

All I need to hear is - this dog will not be saved - and you have me at your mercy. I figured she would be in the foster system for longer than we had to foster her but better than death row.

Russell picked her up because I was out of town. She was shedding but other than that seemed ok. I asked for updates and photos and all he said was - she won't let me stop petting her. She loves people over dogs and really had no interest in Bella ... which was too bad for Bella. She really just wanted to be pet. She would put her paw on you if you stopped. I was working on ridding her of this habit so her next move was to LEAN on you. She would do what an old friend of mine would call being "IN" you - so close there is NO SPACE. She would scootch up to you so she could really get right up against your leg. It was an insistent and needy love - but love just the same. And her soft eyes and peaceful disposition were hard to resist.

She was due for her vet visit 4 days after she arrived to our house. I dropped her off and the Vet gave her the once over. I mentioned she was favoring her back left leg. She also seemed really skinny. The Vet thought she may have already been spayed but couldn't find a scar.

I was surprised to find out that she would be on 1 month bed rest until she was cleared for adoption, activity, play of any kind. Heart worm treatment post-op procedure. If they exert themselves they could clot and die. I didn't realize heart worm was such serious business. I didn't think Romona would mind the inactivity - though the crate living would be terrible for her. I couldn't help but think of how Bella would do with this scenario. I get stressed for her just thinking about it.

I was due to pick her up on the 3rd day of her stay ... 1 day for the spay and 2 days for the heart treatment. But then I got a message from the foster coordinator that she needed to give me an update.

It was not good. Here's what she said...

"...Ramona was anesthetized for her spay surgery, they found out she was already spayed but while in there, found what that thought was a mass. Her organs we're not where they were supposed to be.'

'They did some imaging and diagnosed her with a diaphragmatic hernia, which means her organs which should be in the abdomen, were in her chest.'

'Well that was only the tip of the iceberg. She had a pelvic fracture which healed funny

A leg fracture that healed wrong, hence the limp. She had bee Bee pellets in her.

And she (still) has heartworm.'


'She also had complications while under for surgery due to her condition. So.......she did not get heartworm treatment.'

'...the hernia obviously needs to be fixed, but that's another story. It's got to be done by a specialist and we were quoted ($5,000 to $7,000)."

I'm not sure what will happen now. At the time of this writing, Romona had not yet had the heartworm treatment and the money for the surgery would need to be raised. We don't know if she was hit by a car and never treated or if she was abused. Either way it's a terrible thing to go through and she's too sweet to have deserved such a roadblock to her forever home.

Please send lots of prayers to Romona for a speedy recovery and a happily ever after!

Foster Chronicles - Henry the Hound

For our first official Foster experience I wanted to EASE us in. So we offered to foster Henry - a hound mix that had been bumping around the Crate Escape foster system for a while and didn't have a Foster family at the time of our approved Foster application. Henry - a name that makes me think of a sweet...ornery...senior. So the name fit him perfectly ;-) They had him down as 3 but I am sure he was at least 6.

He and Bella got along great! He was very low key but he could wrestle and play with Bella for a good 15-20 minutes. Of course he needed a 3 hour nap afterwards but he was a great sport about it! They would wrestle a lot and play and run outside. Bella would take position on the couch and Henry on the floor - both comfortable and both ready for a tussle. It was the cutest thing. They got along great. There were some challenges - like the fact that they absolutely could not ignore the other one when meal time came. Henry can EAT! And he wanted to eat whatever Bella was eating. Also he loved to eat paper..and wood..and cardboard. He would find egg cartons and boxes and notebooks and help with the recycling breakdown.

We got to know Henry's quirks quickly. For example, when he's hungry he would start to gnaw on the nearest piece of furniture. So as long as he got 2 squares a day he never did that. He also had a collapsed trachea. I have to say we didn't know about this at first and were very worried about a cough he developed after a run with Bella in the yard. But all we had to do was blow into his nose with his mouth held closed and he was good as new. He also loved to bite his nails - great for those grooming bills! He would be in his crate but he was so low key and slept so much that he was fine without a crate too. So we quickly realized he should just be left to nap in the living room for short spurts when we were out and he slept on a dog bed in our room at night.

Henry was a sweet heart and was adopted by a great family with another dog named Cookie (also a Crate Escape rescue)
in Wappingers Falls NY. We loved having him with us...even though sometimes he could be a bit of an asshole LOL.

Happy tails Henry!

Agency - Crate Escape
Temperament - low key, affectionate, stubborn, playful
Favorite toy - wood block specially treated for dog use from Puppy Paws in Cornwall
Rewards - Henry was in the system for a while and didn't have a foster family. We loved being able to give him a comfy place to hang out with a furry friend, fenced yard and food galore. He has the best eyes and enjoys a good rub down.
Challenges - His stubbornness translated to him being hard to move around so you would run into him a lot when you expected him to get out of the way. Once we learned his quirks and special needs (listed above), there were no challenges with Henry.

Adopt a Pet Successfully - a FREE Report

When Bella was adopted, it had been a while since we had a dog in the house. So we had our work cut out for us!

We wanted to make sure we had everything Bella would need for a long and happy life with our family.

Food, Bed and Bowls were only the beginning.

Luckily we did all the trial and error for you and put together a report that will ensure you have everything you need.

Don't be left short-leashed! Get the FREE Report today! And share this report with your friends and family that are planning a rescue for a new furry family member.

Happy tails!