thepawandfeatherplan

Dear Chunky,     During the summer of 2007 you came home with me.  Then, I was working as an Animal Care Specialist at Louisville Metro Animal Services.  One of my functions was to clean the cat rooms and feed the cats.  There was a kitten room and a cat room. A Young Chunky!     You were in the free roam kitten room.  The only problem was, with each passing day you were looking less and less like a kitten!  You were twice, or even 3 times the size of the kittens in that room, and had pretty much grown up in there.  One day I told myself, 'if he's still here tomorrow, I'm adopting him.'  I told myself that a few days in a row, and every day at the beginning of my shift, upon seeing you, I'd feel a mixture of pena for you and silliness for me and us (like I'd chuckle to myself 'ok, you're still here!').       I really didn't 'want' or plan to take a cat home at this time.  Back then I was still married to my first husband, hadn't

  Late last March a longtime acquaintance reached out via text, saying, "Hi Jessica, do you have any dogs I can foster? Now I'm working from home, and I'd love a dog." I had attempted at least a 1/2 dozen times to get this friend to foster over the years; she had always politely refused. And suddenly here she was wanting, yearning for canine companionship in her condo of solitude.  On several occasions I had urged (pseudonym) Lourdes to foster because she: loves dogs, lives alone, is responsible, friendly and lives in a dog-friendly condo. Again, she had always said no. So I was flabbergasted, and eager, to help find her a foster dog when she reached out at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown.   rescue puppies Within a week I had dog-options for her to foster, but by that time she had borrowed, or was pet sitting one of her supervisor's dogs.  "Whatever," I thought, but was intrigued because this was one of a few signs I was getting that, suddenly, do

April 23, 2021  Dear Ms. Sadler and DPFL Team,   Certainly you know how awesome your work is, and must see the benefits of what you guys do on a regular basis.   I needed to take a moment to share how awesome your work is from my perspective too. Way back in 2007 I worked at Louisville Metro Animal Services (hereinafter LMAS) as an ACS. I got a job there after having volunteered for some months (before they even had a volunteer program), and after having completed college and discovering corporate America wasn’t for me.   As an ACS, I worked 2nd shift. I got recently-arrived-dogs off of ACO trucks, mostly alive, but sometimes dead, mostly nice, but all scared. I did intake vaccines, I fed 300+ dogs their afternoon dinner, and what I consider most important during this time: I socialized dogs. Back then our municipal shelter, like many others of that time, was euthanizing more than 60% of what came in, mostly for ‘time/space,’ as would be written on their kennel cards. T

 Before we bought our house in 2018, we rented a nice little house in the U of L district.      We moved there from Miami when my son was just 7 weeks old.        -It was late February.       Once the weather was nice, I used to walk up and down the dead-end street with the baby in the stroller, and our then-4-dogs; the dogs and I built our way up to taking longer walks with the stroller pretty quickly.      I consider myself a highly sociable person, and typically befriend many of my neighbors. There was a house on our street a few doors down, across the street, that had a lot of activity.  Cars coming and going, a walker or two coming and going.  There were a 2 cars in the driveway that never left, one could almost assume they didn't run.      One afternoon as my husband and I were walking the dogs and our son, a man in his late 50's hobbled out on his walker, saying he knew we had called the police on his roommate, he knew my husband worked with his roommate's sister, an

What do you feel, or think, when you read this Facebook post? This post circulated on Facebook in early February.    "Yes I can help," was my initial thought when I saw this (a couple of rescue friends had tagged me).     It took about 5 seconds for my brain to process the gravity of this post, and for  ~what I know  to come~ to surface.     " Often a pet is a senior’s sole companion and when they lose their pet, the senior often goes into a downward spiral and we end up losing the senior not long after the pet is gone," as simply put on hospets.org .      Losing a pet, especially for a senior citizen, can be fatal.          So when I read through some of the comments on this post's thread, seeing only, "I can take the dog," "I pm-ed you," and tagging so-and-so and so-forth, I felt helpless, and at the same time wanted to scream.       Hello... is anyone thinking about this lady?!      Of course I commented on the thread, mentioning our rescu

  More Options Now Than Ever for Pet-Loving Seniors   Something shared by a friend on Facebook caught Margaret’s eye last fall. It was a post about including pets in planning. As an owner of 3 dogs, a single, middle-aged, woman, Margaret identified with the post. She had wondered, “who would take care of my pets if something happened to me?” 2020, among other things, could easily be considered, Year of the Pet. With Covid-19 came a yearning for constant companionship in the home, which led many to seek out pet ownership. Fortunately, there are more options now than ever for older Americans with pets. Many Senior Living Facilities are Now Pet-Friendly Most elder care professionals recognize the vast array of health benefits that pets offer seniors, like lowering the rates of bad stuff such as cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression, and increasing the rates of good stuff , like social interaction and calmness. This has led many senior living facilities to not