Well, I thought it was time to focus on all my Pitbull Rescuers out there and how they obtained their pitties. We could call them Staffordshire Terriers, Bully Mixes, Pibbles, Bull Terriers, whatever you want to call them, I like to sum them up as that dreaded word that strikes fear into uneducated pet owners out there, the Pitbull. So why am I doing this, perhaps to let my reader know of the plight of these wonderful animals and even their fight to truly survive!
I was chatting on messenger to Patricia Legris of Montreal the other day and was fascinated with her story of her two rescue pittys.
Her oldest Luna who is now around 15 and a half years old was the product of backyard breeding in Florida. I guess, the way she tells it, Patricia had very little knowledge of these bully bred dogs at the time. Her ex-husband was the one originally, who adopted Luna but after only a month passed, it seemed he wanted to get rid of her because of her disability. Tragically, she was deaf but Patricia, being a caring human being as she is, decided to work around that and give her a forever home. As I chatted with her, she told me that it had become quite a learning curve,to say the least.
"So glad I kept her, she has lived the life of a queen," she adds.
Patricia's other rescue pit bull is China who was found abandoned with deformed pups out in a parking lot one day. Her educated guess is she puts China at around five years old now. Unfortunately, she has severe anxiety issues, but she has been working on it. All the pups were eventually okay and adopted into really great caring families as well. Both dogs get along wonderfully and are best of friends.
A great many of you probably do not know, that I too rescued a whippet/pitbull mix about 4 years ago in the early winter of February of 2012.
I will never forget that day, as long as I live either. I was parked in Ardmore, Oklahoma at a Love's Truckstop. That morning, I decided to go for one of my many long walks. I had done previously as I liked to stay in shape. I never wanted to be one of those out of shape long haul truck drivers you see with half their belly hanging over the steering wheel. Nevertheless, as I was out and about walking around the truck stop, I came up upon a peculiar sight, as I noticed a broken down horse trailer out in the back of a field, just behind a large hotel. Not only did that peak my curiosity but as I ventured further to investigate the situation further, I then noticed a broken down, pet carrier sitting on the floor of it. There were wet nasty colored rags that had been thrown all over the top of it, as it appeared there was no roof to the carrier. Then I noticed two empty steel bowls, but what really caught my eye was a weird looking red long leash-like chain that was leading into what was in the pet carrier. As I peered through the rags draped over the front of the pet carrier, there inside was a small, very shy, very scared medium sized dog. I tried to get her out, but she wouldn't come out, so I lightly started tugging the chained leash out. As she slowly entered the daylight, I could see she was dehydrated and a bit thin to begin with. So I undid her, from the red coated chain and began to walk her towards the hotel. When I made my way to the building, I chained the dog, back up to a nearby light post and went in.
I told the front desk clerk what I found there, and they then called the Hotel Manager who then called a local animal shelter. I was proud of myself and figured I had a least made it available where this pitbull type dog would at least get a good home. Little did I realize, that at the time, the state of Oklahoma, put stray pitbull mix dogs immediately to death! This was because of the fear of over a dozen fatal dog attacks in the state alone going back to 1907.\
When an older woman told me this, as I had gone outside to check on the dog, I realized I had just sealed her fate, so I decided what to do. I merely walked back in the hotel, as they had called a local animal bylaw officer to come and pick her up. So I told them I was taking the dog for a walk around the hotel to do its business. Needless to say, I never came back to that hotel, proceeded to pick up the dog and place her in the sleeper cab of my truck.
Her first meal ironically,was all I had in my truck at the time, microwave popcorn, which she absolutely loved, and still does to this very day. Well, I managed to get Okee (Oklahoma) to Colby Kansas,where it was apparent she wasn't doing that good. The local vet there had given her all the necessary shots, given her vitamin shots, deworming, anything that was necessary to save her life. As it was the next 48 hours were critical, as Okee would either deteriorate or bounce back in her plight to live. I also discovered she had been pregnant most of her life, and was pretty much used as a puppy mill dog. In fact, when I got her, the lady vet had presumed she had recently given birth to a what she believed to be her fourth litter. She was spotting blood quite a bit, so I had to go the local Walmart to get some puppy diapers for her. That was a real experience, having to put them on her and take her out for her nightly walks too. After two days had passed it was apparent Okee had bounced back in a big way, as well she was enjoying riding up the front with me. Once I got back to Alberta, I took her in to get fixed permanently, so she wouldn't ever have any issues like that again.
It's been four years now, and I don't regret one second of taking her away from that horrible existence back in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Not only has she become one of my most cared for pets, but she has interacted with our previous dog,her late big brother Sampson. In fact, they even trucked together for a month or so. She had a big sister Brodie, my stepdaughter's brindle pitbull who moved to BC and was lonely for a good year after Sam passed away, but now she has her younger sister Julip (Jewel) to play and cuddle with.
Once again, have a great week, and in our case in Alberta, try to stay out of the snow, enjoy another great excerpt from my fourth book Road History,enjoy
As I made my way into Spokane, I stopped at a rest stop near Sprague that was about an hour out of Spokane. As Carol and I got out of the truck, we both noticed this sad looking black pit bull, female dog that was sitting just outside a woman’s washroom.
“It was as if, she was waiting for somebody to come out from there to rejoin their walk they were having,” I thought to myself.
When I got back to the truck, I told Carol about the dog, which she said she noticed as well. We both waited, sitting in the front seats of the truck for another 15 minutes or so and came to a decision. There was nobody coming for this dog, so we both got out of the truck and walked up to her.Unfortunately, this was the same stop area, where a good number of young women had suddenly vanished and later been found murdered! We both knew of this, as we had previously heard of what had been happening here, by listening to Washington newscasts on CNN.This dog had been wearing a feminine looking rhinestone collar, so we assumed the owner of the pooch had been a woman at one time. As I tried to pet the mongrel, she stood up and started walking towards the back area of the rest stop. I followed her but the dog went out further into the back of a field into the dark. It was quite a desolate looking field too, as I stood by this long line of fencing, motioning her to come back to where I was standing. Next thing, Carol was walking behind me, and started to follow the dog to where it was standing but she didn’t find anything at all. When the dog came back walking beside both of us, it appeared to be hungry, so I told Carol to go grab some wieners we had bought that were sitting in the cooler in the sleeper of the truck. About three minutes later, out she walked up to the dog, where I had been sitting on the cement petting it, and reassuring it that everything would be fine. That dog wolfed down those wieners like they were her last meal, plus Carol had brought her some water which she slurped up as well. We both came to the conclusion that maybe the dogs female owner had something very bad happen to her and could have been buried somewhere out back behind the rest stop there. Now our problem was what to do with this dog. We both agreed that we couldn’t just leave her there as the temperature was dipping below freezing on this particular evening. At that point, I didn’t feel the dog was going to bite me, so I picked it up, and placed her in our truck, ever so gently. Carol motioned it to jump up on the bed, and she soon followed her doing just that. Next thing as soon as we left that dreaded area; I was on the CB telling all the truckers out there, what we had just experienced. Nobody in “CB Radio Land” knew anything about the dog, but it was suggested to me, for us to drive to the nearest truck stop. The idea was to see if we could find the dog a good new home with some other trucker on the road, who maybe wanted a road companion. Next thing I did was travel to a Petro Truckstop, which was just minutes from Spokane and tried to find a good home for this fury fella. The real problem here was that I was driving a “Dial Truck” and they had a very strict zero tolerance policy on having any animals in their trucks, so I had to do something fast, before another “Dial Driver” saw me with this dog. I started driving down row upon row of parked trucks along with trailers there that night; meanwhile Carol was telling every trucker on the CB listening if they wanted this dog. Finally after being given cans of dog food, even money along with some snacks from various truckers we came across the ideal guy for this dog. I saw this “Vandecamp Trucking Company Truck” so I walked up to it and knocked on the door. A truck driver by the name of Robert Argo from Iowa opened his door, and I told him the story of the dog, alas he was interested in meeting her, plus taking the dog home with him, if he liked the pooch. After a brief meeting in the sleeper of our truck, it seemed that Robert had bonded with his new found friend. Both Carol and I were absolutely elated that this dog would now be going somewhere else and having a new found life. It was a very touching moment because if it were not for this guy, I don’t know where the dog would have ended up that night. When we walked into the truckstop, I guess quite a lot of truckers had heard of our plight to save the dog on the CB. In fact the lady at the fuel counter had thanked me, for what I had done. It really left me with that warm fuzzy feeling to know that something good had come out of what appeared at first to be a very tragic situation.
As I left in the morning, heading for the Idaho/BC border I run right smack dab into a massive snowstorm in Sandpoint Idaho. The amount of snow that they had experienced here in the last week was unbelievable. I mean there was white crap everywhere. In one place I drove by the snow was piled as high to about half the height of the “Safeway Grocery Store Building” there. There was an insane amount of the white stuff here, about 20 feet of it, and it had piled so high, that there was literally nowhere else to put it. It was obvious, that during our week down in California, that winter had come early in the northern parts of Idaho as well as British Columbia.
Sure enough, as soon as I hit the Kingsgate BC border, the snow hadn’t let up, plus the roads were even more treacherous in the pass on the way to Cranbrook. It is like night and day, to the way that the highway crews keep the roads clean and maintained from snow, sleet and ice in both states. Sadly, I have to say that Eastport Idaho wins hands down, in at least keeping their roads “drive-snow” free. On the other hand, when I was driving through to Cranbrook, well that was another idea totally different. We both could see, vehicles spinning their tires in front of us, along with wildlife such as deer and Rocky Mountain Goats were seen on opposite sides of the road. That was kind of special, but as soon as I drove up by them, they scurried away back up the sides of the mountains. It had taken me almost another hour to drive into the town of Cranbrook, due to the atrocious road conditions. By the time I hit Calgary, it had taken me another seven hours to arrive there, which normally it would have taken about four and a half. I dropped the load of waffles at “Western Grocers” and later headed back to the “Dial” yard to get my pickup and head back to Lacombe.
As the next few months went by, I found myself driving past the “Bonneville Salt Flats” in Utah, down to Dinuba California to pick up a load of oranges, going past Sacramento, stopping in Vegas, and back into parts of Idaho and Montana. I drove through many a snowstorm, rain, sleet, hail and blistering hot sunshine. Only a “Long Haul Truck Driver” can experience such extreme weather patterns in such a short time.
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