Simba's on the Road

Hi Karen,

Obviously Melissa is aware that I dropped off Simba at noon...figured you might want to know as well. :)  By now he's probably almost to Jessica if not already there.

We had fun last night.  He is quite the cuddlebug.  And he gets attached easily, as I found out when it was time to hand him over to Melissa and her dad.  I had a suspicion he was attached when I would use the bathroom only to come out and almost trip over him.  He would always be directly on the other side of a closed door. 

It's pretty amazing that a dog that has been tossed around so much in his little life still has the capacity to make attachments.  He's still willing to give us silly humans a chance.  And I'm sure the right adopter will come along and prove him right--that we're all not just going to hand him over to someone else.  He's a keeper.

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention the food thing.  The HUGE bag is from Deb, as it's the same brand as the small 1/2 quart that the previous owner had handed over (which ran out in three days)--just a different taste.  Deb said he gets 3/4 of a cup morning and evening, around 6-8am in the moring and 6-8pm in the evening.  I'm a late riser, so he ate around 8am this morning. 

No accidents in the house, and he was kind enough to wait till after I took a shower before we went for a brief walk before breakfast.  He's not one of those dogs who has to take his sweet time to poop and pee.  Any ol' place will do for the most part.  His stool was a little soft, but not bad.  He didn't bark again after I mentioned it last night and his itchiness wasn't too bad either. 

He's pretty laid back and go with the flow.  I do have a question since youtube is inundated with Pugs and Frenchies doing this--but is it purely a Pug & Frenchie thing to fall asleep WHILE SITTING then fall over, rather than lying down FIRST?  It's amusing to no end, mind you, but I didn't know if it was more prominent in one breed over another.

This morning about an hour after breakfast we sat down to play.  I have a raccoon pull/plush toy which I found out is not really great for short-snouted breeds.  It's a bit cumbersome and wide for their mouths--there's a lot of snorting involved when playing with it.  He lied down on my lap knawing on it and I thought it was stuck on his tooth.  But I was wrong.  He just fell asleep with it STILL IN HIS MOUTH!  He is one enormously cute dog.  He will make someone very very happy.

Here's a few snuggle pictures from last night... and yes, that's the fly on my jeans in case you were wondering.  I have to say 30 pounds of French Bulldog is much warmer than an electric blanket!

Let me know when he gets to Arizona and how's he doing!  It's been a pleasure spending the evening with him.

-stephanie.

Another Transport...and an Update

The following is the mass email about my first transport after the grand summer adventure directed not to those I transported for, but those who received my emails along the way that summer.  The original email includes an update on every dog that rode shotgun with me.  I've edited it that out here, so you might have the experience of reading their updates right after you get to know them in the book.

So, after over three months of trying to get a transport, I had my first one last night and today.  Karen, who I got Freeman from, needed another Frenchie to get to Blythe, AZ where his fostermom would pick him and drive him to his temporary home in Phoenix, AZ.

Even though his markings remind me more of a Gizmo from the Gremlins, his name is Simba.  He was living the OC life down near San Diego.  He's a year old, and in those 12 months, one owner gave him up, then a pregnant woman with three other dogs and a husband adopted him only to realize once the baby was born that 4 dogs was too much to handle.  Her mother was kind enough to take him in, but apparently the France-England grudge from centuries ago is carried out today in the canines:  he and her english bulldog didn't much like each other and ended up in one too many altercations.

So, he was then sent to be boarded/temp fostered with a lovely professional petsitter in Santa Rancho Margerita, where for the past week he was hanging out with her other frenchie, Bugsy, and her sweet mastiff, Warrior.  There were no altercations and it was one big happy family.  She wanted to keep him, but couldn't.  So I picked him up yesterday afternoon to spend the night with him and then hand him off in Corona, CA (about an hour away) where another volunteer made the long haul to Blythe, CA.

Simba is awesome.  Despite being tossed around, he still makes attachments.  Eventually someone is going to realize he's a keeper.  He's a snugglebug, always having to be in contact with you even when he's just gnawing on his nylabone.  This morning he was chewing on a toy on my lap and actually fell asleep in the middle of it.  I thought his tooth was stuck on it--but nope, he just fell asleep with it in his mouth.  Like all the youtube videos of pugs, he too, has the habit of falling asleep and then falling over--rather than the more efficient procedure of lying down, then snoozing.

He's not up on the adoption page yet, but he will be on this page (and I'm sure he'll be adopted quickly!):

http://www.frenchbulldogrescue.org/htdocs/available.html

And here's the following updates on my other pups:

...you'll have to read Precious Cargo: The Journey Home for that...
...but until then, please enjoy the more recent adventures with my new charges as this blog picks up where the book left off...

Precious Cargo: An Introduction to The Continuing Journey

In the summer of 2007, I drove from California to Massachusetts, giving a lift to homeless canines in need of a ride out of high kill shelters and into rescues, fosters, and forever homes. In an effort to stay in the moment with the dogs and not be interrupted by phone calls, every night I emailed those who had entrusted the lives of these canines to me to let them know how they were doing. I cc'd my friends and family so I was still on the radar and they knew I hadn't driven into a ditch somewhere.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, those who received those emails then forwarded them to others to share with them what one 29 year old single woman was doing with her summer vacation.

When the journey came to close six weeks later, I began transforming those emails, photos, and memories into a book. That book, Precious Cargo: The Journey Home, is now in its final stages of editing before it tries to find its own forever home with a publisher.

So while my manuscript is in the capable hands of a professional editor, I've compiled all the letters, emails, photos, and blogs about the canine charges I've had since that fateful journey ended.

From this point forward, all the dog tales will run as current blogs. All previous posts are original emails and blogs I've written about those homeless canines who have shared the road, my home, and my heart for an hour, a day, or a week on their journey to their forever home.

As for the pups that rode shotgun with me across the highways and byways of America during the summer of 2007, you'll unfortunately have to wait for the book to be groomed to perfection and ready for adoption (hopefully later this year).

-February, 2010