Category Archives: 2015

2015 Year in Review, from WordPress

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In case you’re interested….

http://peanutbutterandcheese.net/2015/annual-report/

Giving Thanks, Year 2

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December 2015

Last year, we asked you to click click click to make a pup’s dream come true.  This year, we’re just asking you to share.

We’re very excited to introduce you to Bud and Diamond.  These wonderful dogs have been looking for homes for well over a year.  We made friends with the folks at Alley Cat Rescue, who told us all about them.  We’re hoping to make things a little easier for them.

peanut butter & cheese is proud to sponsor the adoption fees for Bud and Diamond.  Check out this guest blog.  Share their stories.  Share their pictures.  Let’s help these two find a furever home– they’ve been waiting for a long, long time.

 

Alley Cat Rescue is a nonprofit and no-kill rescue organization, located in Mt. Rainier, MD. As the organization name would suggest, our main focus is on cats, but over the years Alley Cat Rescue has also helped many dogs to find homes as well. The staff at Alley Cat Rescue are lovers of all animals, and when we see a dog in need we just have to step in. As a cat rescue, we do not get in a lot of foot traffic in search of dogs, so we have two dogs at our facility that we have really struggled to find homes for. Bud and Diamond are fantastic dogs that just need someone to give them a chance! So this week Kari is letting us share their stories with all of you, in hopes that this post will help them to find their forever homes or a temporary foster home that will get these two out of kennels while we continue to search for a forever family for Bud and Diamond. Kari has also generously sponsored Bud and Diamond’s adoptions, so there will be no fee to adopt either of them.

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Diamond is an American Staffordshire terrier and Pointer mix. She is about 2 years old and weighs about 60 pounds. Diamond has been at Alley Cat Rescue’s facility for over a year and a half. Actually, as I write this post, today is day 556 that Diamond has been at our facility. She is sweet, loving, and energetic. She does well with other dogs and children of all ages. She is a true nanny dog and loves to interact with children. However, she does not do well with cats.

We have been working on basic commands with her and she knows sit, paw, roll over, and lay down. She is currently working on learning to stay and leash training. She can be very active when she is outside, but as soon as she gets indoors she becomes a couch potato. Diamond was found outside of the animal hospital Alley Cat Rescue partners with when she was about 6 months old. She wandered up to their door one day and Alley Cat Rescue agreed to help her find a home. We suspect that she may have been abandoned at the animal hospital by a former owner who hoped the animal hospital would make sure Diamond was safe. It has now been a year and a half since Diamond arrived at our doors and we are desperate to find her a loving family.

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Bud is a lab mix. He is about 5 years old and weighs almost 100 pounds. Bud has been at the Alley Cat Rescue facility for 397 days today. He is extremely loyal, loving, and playful. He is a very people oriented dog, and he doesn’t care for other dogs or cats; he would rather have his people all to himself! Once he gets to know a person he will follow them anywhere and try to be as close to them as he possibly can. Bud is the perfect name for this sweet boy, because he really just wants to be everyone’s best friend! He can also be protective of his new human friends, so we think it would be a good idea if his new human family exposes him to as many people as they can, as often as they can once they bring him home.

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Bud loves to have a toy with him and he will carry a toy in his mouth as long as you let him, he loves to bring them on his walks! He gets so attached to his toys, that he can be toy aggressive. So we think it would be best if he went to a home with older children. We have been working on his toy aggression and he has improved some, but we would encourage any adopter to continue working with him. Bud is fantastic with training! With a little time, you could teach him any trick your heart desires. We have worked with him on sit, stay, lay down, roll over, and he is learning to play dead. He does well on a leash with a no-pull harness, but he can become startled by loud buses or large groups of people approaching him while on his walks.  When this happens he just needs to be reminded that he is safe and changing the direction you are walking with him often helps.

Alley Cat Rescue pulled Bud from a high kill county shelter early last November where he was set to be euthanized the same day that he arrived. An Alley Cat Rescue staff member was at the shelter pulling cats off of death row and saw Bud and just had to intervene. She recognized that Bud was terrified of the shelter environment and deserved a chance; so she packed up Bud along with 5 cats into her car and got them to Alley Cat Rescue where they would all be given an endless amount of time to find their forever families.

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Both Bud and Diamond are spayed/neutered, up-to-date on all vaccines, and micro-chipped. And thanks to Kari’s generosity their adoption fees have been sponsored! There will be no fee to adopt Bud or Diamond. Check out Bud and Diamond’s profiles on Petfinder for more information on these two dogs or any of the other animals available for adoption from Alley Cat Rescue .

Bud and Diamond are really great dogs; we have just not been able to bring in people who are looking for dogs to our facility. We are happy to care for Bud and Diamond until they find their forever families, but they have been here for far too long and we want a better life for them. Please consider adopting or fostering Bud or Diamond. If you are not local to the DC/Maryland/Virginia area, that’s okay! We are willing to transport Bud and Diamond anywhere it takes to find them their forever families! We would also be happy to set them up with a foster caretaker and cover all food and medical expenses while they are under foster care. If you are not able to adopt or foster, please consider sharing their stories for us and help them find the forever families they have been waiting for. Help us make this holiday season their best ever!

Giving Thanks (Year 2)

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It’s the season of getting and giving, although we particularly love giving– presents, hugs, surprises.

Remember last year when we asked you all to “like” our post, and we’d donate money to a pup-related organization for the amount of likes we received?

This year, we’re taking things up a notch.  Check back on Tuesday, and please get your “shares” ready!

 

 

Why so quiet?

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Hello, dear readers!

It’s been forever since I consistently posted about our adventures.  We’ve had a long summer of treatments, and we came through just fine.  We took a wonderful family road-trip, which I’ll write about at some point because, really, if you can make the drive it’s absolutely worthwhile.

Really, I haven’t written because I’m too busy holding my breath.  MJ came through her treatments like the trooper she is, but every cough or bump or stumble makes me think her disease is sprinting back.  Zozo had his annual check-up, and his blood work needs to be redone because his levels are nearing “abnormal.”  I worry.

We don’t have human children, we have furbabies.  This year has been a tremendous, traumatic learning experience for us.    The time I should spend blogging and celebrating I’m instead spending compulsively counting the seconds between snores.  What if her pheno stops working and we can’t control her seizures?  What if Zo’s liver enzymes need more than a supplement?  What if what if what if?

We always expected to have gads of time with both of them.  We had plans for CGC certification for both dogs, and play dates and adventures.  Neither has a death sentence- not really, not yet– but I find myself fatalistically trudging through each day.  That’s not fair to them.  It’s not fair to James.

I’ll snap out of it.  I’ll figure out a way to cope with more than a smile and the utterance, “She doesn’t know she’s sick!” and “Our old boy is such a goober!” I’ll get there.  But for now you’ll find me under a puppy pile on our couch, all house rules broken, sharing vanilla ice-cream and bacon and watching Downton Abbey and staying up past bedtime.

We’ll be back.  It’s just taking some time.