Wow, it’s been quite a week.

Last Saturday, a quick Facebook check of people’s status updates turned into a week-long drama when I read that one of my friends (also named Jennifer) was “making an emotional plea for her friends to go rescue 5 dogs that were dumped at Lake Conway. Very sweet, but very skinny and tick-laden.”

Oh boy. Well, we couldn’t just ignore that, now could we?

There is so much I could write about this past week’s experience that I hardly know where to start, and if I wrote it all at once it would be way too long. There are several topics floating around in my head:

• The pitiful state of animal control and rescue in Faulkner county
• What I think needs to be done about it
• Our own frustrating and at times infuriating journey that led us to today
• Our observations about and interactions with the dogs themselves
• The actual rescue

I think I’ll start with the happy ending and work my way backwards, because it’s late, and posting pictures and writing about them is the easiest kind of blog post.

To give proper credit to the happy ending: first of all God, who reminded us that He works things out just when we think they’re crumbling apart, and His instruments: Lynda from Memphis Area Golden Retriever Rescue (Lynda is a local contact), and Donna from All About Labs.

Here are the dogs at the lake:

The three of us took turns checking on them and feeding them this week, wishing we could get them out of there but having nowhere to take them. We just hoped and prayed that they would be safe there until we could get them rescued, and they were!

Saturday morning we met Lynda and Kevin with the Golden rescue and rounded up the dogs into crates. We got four of them confined in about 10 minutes. Then we spent over an hour trying to get the fifth one, the one that we knew was the most skittish of the bunch and the one we had been concerned about capturing all along. Unfortunately, after several attempts, he got fed up with us and ran into the woods and we had to leave him behind. We haven’t given up on him yet; we’re going to keep going back for a few more days to see if we can catch him. We took the four down to the All About Labs ranch off of Highway 10 west of Little Rock.

First of all, flea/tick baths for everyone! David and I had never done this before, but it was a good learning experience:

Ahh, much better!

He was one of the friendlier dogs, but after he got his bath and was put in the pen, he was very anxious until his buddies came to join him.

Nothing beats a good roll in the grass after a bath!

This little guy stole my heart from day 1. He was always the first to come running to greet someone and wanted to get right in your face. Some people don’t like that, but it quickly made him my favorite.

The 3 males, cleaned up, vaccinated, and in their temporary pen (they were put into kennel runs later):

The Golden just hung out on the leash while all this was going on. She is just a big huge teddy bear! When we got down on the ground with her, she kept trying to be a lap dog. I can’t believe how calm and gentle she is. She’s going to be a great family pet.

Her turn:

The Golden will be transported to Memphis in a few days. All the dogs will be taken care of: shots, spay/neuter, heartworm treatment if needed, microchipping, the works. When they’re healthy and ready for adoption, they will be matched up with forever homes.

I wish they knew how lucky they are. They’re probably confused and don’t appreciate our turning their lives upside down today, but they’ll be so much happier in the long run. And so will we.

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