Caiyenne

She came in as Caiyenne – like pepper Sauce and her name ended up being Cheyenne.

It was a Military family that lived over near the military base and the husband didn’t like her (the dog) They had 3 dogs and her husband said that one of them had to go and he would suggest that it was Cayenne.

So the lady called me and I tried to tell her that you cant just randomly pick which dog you give up. I could understand if it was a legal issue like the building manager says that you can only have two dogs or something like that, but the lady seemed like she just wanted to cower down and do as her husband had told her. Basically when she called me she said that the dog had to be gone by 6pm that day. I was afraid of what the husband might do to the dog, so I immediately drove out there and I picked her up.

Caeyenne was one of the first to go out to one of our new foster homes with an older couple in Boulder called Dee and Mac. They immediately fell in love with her. She was little on the chubby side, but soooooo sweet and they both fell in love with her. I told them, as I tell all of my foster parents, ‘Don’t adopt your first foster dog’ because there are so many other ones come along the line. I speak from experience, because as I did adopt my first foster dog, well not the first, because that was Dolly, but I adopted Jasper, and I have seen alot of dogs and I wish that I could keep alot of them, but there was no telling them. Dee and Mac adopted her and change her name to Cheyenne because they have a summer home in Cheyenne, Wyoming, so they are 6 months in Vegas and 6 months in their summer home, and they still foster for me to this day. Dee is like my second Mom and she always takes care of me. When they are here from October to April, I could fill their house with dogs, and when the see a dog on the website they call me and say, ‘you should send this dog out to us, we will take care of it. ‘ They are just so sweet.

They gave me, the first summer they left for Cheyenne, they gave me this lovely picture of their four dogs on a Thank you card. They adopted 2 dogs from us. Cheyenne and Minnie. And all 4 dogs were on the picture in the window of the car, with Dee sitting in the passenger side with all 4 dogs lined up.

I love it when my adoptive parent send me pictures so all you adoptive parents out there, please keep the pictures of your doxies coming in to us – we love to see how they are doing.

Egypt

Another rescue story from our Rescue Director Barbara Yumart  over Coffeeat Espresso Culture & Cuisine

Egypt was a female that I brought in from two UNLV students.
They should have never really had a dog.

They crated her ALL the time on the balcony outside their apartment.  Even in the heat she was kept out there and she didn’t have any access to water.  The crate bowls are so tiny, so once that water was gone it was gone!!
She also had a really really mean attitude, she was not socialized at all.  I remember sitting on the steps of the apartment, and she nipped at me a couple of times, and I thought I didn’t really want to bring her in but the young woman that had her already had animal complaints against her tsaying the dog was in a crate and it was howling all day long.

So I brought her in to rescue, and this was also in the early days when we didn’t have foster homes for the dogs. So she came to my house.
She was a normal weight and healthy which was fine, but she just had such a mean attitude, so much so that I was afraid to put her in the crate in the back of the car when I collected her, I had to get the owner to do it because a couple of times she tried to grab at my pant leg or my shoe.

I took her home and unfortunately she was not a good match with my dogs because of her attitude but I had to just deal with her.
She would do things like chase my other dogs around, bite their ears, bite their butts, and pin them in the corner.  She just had a mean spirit.  So, when I put her on the website and an application came in I was so excited I called Leilani and told her straight away. We have to be honest with applicants about any problems with any of the dogs, so we told the lady that she had a attitude (she only got 1 application) and that she could be a bit mean.

I did the home visit and saw that they had 2 big labs and I thought, ‘this is perfect, they will keep her in line – they are not going to take any monkey business from her’.
The lady ended up adopting her and she just loved her.

Usually when I do an adoption, I give the new families about a week and call them back to make sure everything is going ok.
I like everyone to know that when they adopt a dog from us, when I let the dog go, I am really not gone.  I am always there, so is Leilani, to support them if they need help with anything.
I thought that I might get a call from this lady, asking me to take the dog back and I was constantly looking at my cell phone all week worrying that I may have missed her call, but the call never came.

So I called her at the 1 week point to check everything was ok and she said ‘We just love Egypt, we changed her name to Eva Longoria and took her shopping and bought her collars and dresses and stuff ‘.
I just couldn’t believe it and wondered if I had just heard right and if this was really happening??!!

This was a real light-bulb moment for me as far as rescue is concerned, because it made me realise that there really is a person for every dog.
I genuinely thought that Egypt was going to be in rescue until the day I died, but her new family just loved her.
I think her attitude change was because she had a lot more interaction with her new owners and the other dogs, although she still doesn’t like me.  I saw her at our petapalooza event recently and she saw me and just growled.  I like to think that she just associates me with the bad time in her life and that is why she growled at me, but I don’t care, its just great that her new family love her to pieces and she is happy and settled in her new home.

The First Rescue – Cheers!

Barbara our Rescue Director has been rescuing Doxies for over 3 years with Las Vegas Hot Diggity Dog Club & Rescue and her first rescue was Dolly Madison. This is her story.

Dolly was a puppy and she came in. She was 15 weeks old. Her name was originally Zelda. I asked if she was Zelda Fitzgerald or something like it. The owner said ” NO!! we named her after a kick ass video game!” (Zelda warrior princess). I couldn’t have her named after a video game and I didn’t like the name Zelda, so I called her Dolly Madison.

She was adorable, a real little love bug. The owners had to give her up as he was in the military and heading off to war and she was going to live with her parents, but her parents would not let her bring the dog.

So she came into my home (into Foster Care) we did not have any foster homes then – it was just Leilani and I so we were limited on the number of dogs that we could take then.

Before she went out for adoption I needed to train her on how to use the doggy door and she learned with beer!!
My sister and brother-in-Law came down from Canada and I said to them that “I have to get this puppy trained on the doggy door”.
I got up one morning and walked into the kitchen and my brother-in-law, who was about 6 foot 4 inches tall, was laid on the floor by the doggy door and my sister was standing outside. She said to him – “call her now – call her now” The strange thing was, they had a glass of beer in their hands?!
I stood there a little shocked and said, laughing. “You can’t train a dog with beer!” They said ” Look!! Its working”
They called her through the doggy door and each time she went through she took a little sip of the beer.
I wouldn’t have believed it, a beer drinking Doxie.
I am thinking that we should have changed her name to Bud

Happy Ending:
One of the directors that was working with us, was looking for a dog, and she ended up adopting her. She decided to drop the name Dolly and just called her Madison. I see her quite often and I still call her Dolly Madison and she remembers. She is always really happy to see me which is wonderful and has a playmate now called Oscar.