Rez Adventures take 2….warning a novel follows
A typical Saturday and Sunday in the life of a Rez rescuer……
We were in Crownpoint, New Mexico last weekend to do a Spay and Neuter Clinic so we took the opportunity to get out and about to help some animals in need. First stop was rescuing a super pregnant female from the City Market parking lot where we had been sent pictures throughout the previous week being asked to help. While there, a car pulled up and asked if we could help them with five female puppies that they hadn’t been able to give away. The males went without a problem but the females are seldomly wanted. We gladly asked them to go home and get them and bring them back and we said we would wait for them. 5 super cute little lab mix pups were brought to us.
Once loaded, we headed out to pick up a stray dog that we had seen the week before and also a stray cat that a rescuer had been feeding until we could come. The dog was nowhere to be found but the cat joined our Caravan as we headed towards Kayenta.
We were helping another Rez Rescue group try and trap a dog living in a culvert in front of McDonald’s with a severely injured front leg. Prior efforts had failed but we wanted to give it a shot. Unfortunately we didn’t ever get a glimpse of the dog but we did come across a mama dog and her pup in the parking lot of the grocery store. While we were feeding mama dog and baby and assessing the situation, we made the amateur move of leaving the window down and the pregnant dog that we had already picked up managed to squeeze her fat little body out and take off. One may ask why she wasn’t in a crate, and normally she would be, but she was much bigger than we were expecting and we didn’t want to squeeze her into a crate that was too small, especially after seeing that she was fiercely carsick and was puking all over the place.
The chase ensued. She took off towards a big field and then continued to run and run. We tried to keep eyes on her and coax her back but she wanted nothing to do with it. Luckily we had a trap that we had borrowed from Super Ben Peacock and so we set the trap by where we last saw her. To make an even longer story short, the Cchase ensued for hours and hours. She jumped out of the van at about 4 p.m. and finally at 1:30 a.m. we managed to get her back safe and sound without the help of the trap. The trap would have been our best friend except that some person that I would love to call every name in the book decided that it was a good idea to steal Ben’s $400 trap. We weren’t away from it for even five minutes and when we came back it was gone. Most rappers prefer to Lock & Chain they’re babies, but being overly trusting cost us this time. While we aren’t happy about having to replace Ben’s trap, the most important thing was getting this little lady back safe and sound and secured. After all her and her babies had a safe landing spot when she got back to Denver with our incredible friends at Maxfund.
Back to the mama and pup that had been canvassing the parking lot for food…..after talking to a few locals, and realizing that the mama and her pup we’re living in the bushes near the shopping center, and with the help of some wonderful locals who are there to help us try and catch the pregnant girl that jumped out of the van, we were able to secure mama and pup and load them into the van so that they too could be rescued. At 230am finally it was bed time!
The next morning we set out to another area of the rez where a dog had been living at a gas station for about a month and where a man working in the oil and gas industry had been taking care of some stray dogs but was struggling to give them shelter and food. We wanted to assess the situation, especially after the man said that one of the dogs had recently given birth to a litter of puppies. We went up THE worst road ever, it was muddy and snow-covered and rutted and for about 3 miles we thought for sure that our “crummy-on-bad-roads’ cargo van would get stuck n the mud, but it didn’t and it made it WAY back to the base of the mountain where the man showed us the four skinny dogs that they had been struggling to feed, but yet they cared enough to try and feed them and find them help out. We donated food so that they could continue to feed them, and determined that the dogs were skittish enough that it was going to require a trapping project. Just prior to this adventure, we did safely secure the dog living at the gas station and loaded him in the van before heading off. We assured the man feeding the skinny, skittish dogs and the mama with newborns that we would be back to help.
Then…. we headed back towards the direction of the clinic so that we could help clean things up and think about getting on the road back to Denver. But… as anyone who does rescue on the rez knows, there usually isn’t ever just a quiet and peaceful drive back to your location without seeing dogs in need. We stopped for gas and of course there was a skinny dog wandering around looking for food. Because we don’t want to take somebody’s dog, we talked to the girls that worked at the gas station to see if the dog was a stray or one that was just coming over from its home to beg for food. The girls assured us that the dog had been living at the gas station and to the best of their knowledge was not owned. After feeding the dog, we loaded him in the van and prepared to take care of him as well. While there, a couple men in a truck stopped and asked what we did with the dogs that we picked up. We told them that they go to other places off of the reservation where they are spayed, vaccinated and then adopted into homes. sometimes the places are in Arizona, sometimes they are in Utah and sometimes they are in Colorado. He was asking because he had 5 Heeler puppies that he wanted to get rid of, so he trucked home and got them and we took them as well.
There are always more dogs and cats than we can handle. There is never enough help and one never feels like we are doing enough or that we are working hard enough to help the animals on the rez. In fact we weren’t even able to hit all of our spots where people have asked for help so we have to head back in a few days because we gave some people our word that we would help. Despite the hardships and the heartache and feeling guilty about those that we can’t help, the wonderful and grateful people that we meet along the way, and the best animals anywhere on Earth, and the amazing support that we get from other rescue groups and shelters willing to help these animals when we are full, makes these long and hard and sleepless day’s worth every darn second of them!
We are so grateful to our friends at La Plata County and Maxfund and Nuzzles 4 helping us to help these great animals! We are also so grateful to the people on the reservations 4 seeking out a solution to their unwanted animals. Even though most people what’s scoff at the notion of somebody having puppies that they didn’t want or giving away an animal that they no longer wanted, we see this as a victory. The man in the truck who surrendered the Heeler puppies and the first lady who surrendered the lab puppies we’ll both be bringing the mama dogs to our clinic in January to get them fixed. Small victories.
