Jananas

We’re having a baby shower for a coworker tomorrow. I wanted to make her something rather than just dropping money into the pot. This is the Just a Little Undershirt pattern from the Fall 2009 Interweave Knits.

Its knit in organic cotton and is super soft to the touch. I can’t wait to gift this along.

I’ve started selling some of my hand spun yarn at Wise Daughters in the Junction. One of the difficult things about hand spun is that when you often start with 4 ounces of dyed fiber, which only gives you a skein of yarn. If people want to do bigger projects with multiple skeins they’re often SOL.

One of the things I’m starting to branch out into is dying my own rovings. It means that I can dye 8+ ounces at a time. Even though it won’t spin up with the exact same colour repeats, it will at least still be within the same range. I picked up some roasting pans, just to use for dying. I started playing around with some while we were up at the cottage last time.

There’s something beautiful about seeing rovings drying over the line out in nature.

We also had a meeting last night about ways to help promote my hand spun yarn. I’m scheming away and will be working in the background to get some information, swatches, patterns, and resources put together.

Do you have any suggestions?

This past Friday I was at my tattoo artist’s studio getting some work done (pictures will be forthcoming once everything is healed up). He has an awesome little private space filled with his own art work, fun flash, memorabilia, art work, and fun pieces.

My favorite was this taxidermied squirrel. It came with the miniature beer cans. Caitlin, I’m looking at you.

After my last post, I had a rather nasty run in with the Quinte Humane Society. That’ll be a blog post in an of itself. For now, because Lila is microchipped and because her owners had called to report her missing we legally had to give her back.

I contacted the OSPCA to place a cruelty complaint. They agreed to come down here (from Newmarket to downtown Toronto) to pick her up. The lady I spoke with was open about the process and what would be done and took my concerns seriously. It was a relief. Even though I still feel guilty about returning Lila to a situation where I believe she isn’t being cared for, surrendering her to the OSPCA is the best way to ensure that their process is followed properly and that her care is followed up.

This is the email I sent to the cruelty investigator. Because there was such a gap between when we found her and when she was picked up, the investigators hadn’t seen her initial condition or how much she’d improved.

“Dear Name of Coordinator,

We found her around 8pm on Friday June 11th wandering on Highway 37 between Belleville and Tweed. She was weaving between the two lanes of traffic. She was lethargic and her head was hanging low. We were able to get her to come to us. That was when we saw how thin she is. At that point, we were able to clearly make out her ribs, pelvis, and even her vertebrae. We had dog food and treats in the car and so we able to give her a first small meal right there at the side of the road. She was so hungry that she took my partner’s entire hand in her mouth in her desperation to get to the treat/food.

We brought her with us up to the cottage. She drank 4 large bowls of water (think the giant bowls that are used to serve chips at parties) in the next 12 hours. By the Saturday morning she was hydrated enough that we could no longer visually make out her vertebrae. She also had enough energy to jog through the woods and come tearing back around the side of the house when called.

We spent the rest of the weekend feeding her small meals every few hours so that we didn’t upset her stomach. You can hear her digesting. She also spent time outside with our dog and at no point did she attempt to run away from us or the cottage.

On our drive back to Toronto on Sunday we stopped to take the dogs out to stretch their legs/for a bathroom break. She managed to wiggle out of her collar and ran immediately back to the car, looking to be let in. Again, she had an opportunity to run away/escape and she didn’t.

We made an appointment to visit our vet on the Monday evening. At this point she weighed 23kg (approx 52lbs) and the vet thought she should weigh more in the range of 45kg. We did basic bloodwork to test for heartworm so that we could deflea her. We also provided a stool sample to test for parasites, which came back negative.

By Tuesday evening she was no longer desperate for food. She didn’t take off your hand in an attempt to get a treat. She even left some food in the bottom of her bowl after dinner (i.e. was able to self regulate rather than wolfing her food down in less than a minute).

When I spoke with the Quinte Humane Society on Tuesday (at 1pm), I was told that she had escaped on the Friday and was reported missing on the Sunday.

If in the end the owners decide that they do not want her or are unable to care properly for her, we will gladly accept her back into our home. She has charmed us thoroughly and living with her has made us feel lucky.

Sincerely,
Jana”

We took Lila in to the vet’s last night. We wanted to get her checked out and make sure that at a minimum she’ll be dewormed if needed and given flea medication. She’s 1-2 years old based on how clean her teeth are.

Lila weighs 52 pounds, which is half of what she should weigh. This is after she’s already had 3 days of lots of food, so she initially weighed even less.

The absolutely terrible news is that she has a microchip. The vet called the owner, although the microchip is still registered to the breeder.

Tell me, who buys a purebred Canadian Kennel Club registered dog and then starves it? Who spends the money on a purebred dog and then doesn’t bother to housebreak it?

Because the call has already been placed we run the risk that the owners might ask for her back. What a nerve racking way to spend a week – waiting for someone to call and worrying that they’ll ask for her back.

Instead I’m going to call her local Humane Society & Animal Control services and ask them to open a cruelty investigation. The scary thought is that there could be more animals.

What’s really stressful for us is that if it comes down to a he said-she said conversation, we have no proof of ongoing abuse. We have a severely malnourished dog who was found wandering, but we can’t prove that she didn’t just escape and get away. We can’t prove that this was done either through neglect or on purpose.

What we do know is that she has had multiple times where she could have escaped from us and she didn’t. She was off leash and running through the woods at the cottage and she came back. She got out of her collar when we were walking her at a gas station and she went right back to the car. My gut reaction is that she’s not running away from us, people who picked her up at the side of the road, so why would she be running away from her original home?

We have options and there is no way that we can let her go back to her situation (we’ve already made that commitment to ourselves). [Edit - when this was written, we felt like we had options. Sadly it turns out that because she is microchipped and the owners reported her missing that we legally have to give her back.] We’re tired and not really sleeping (a dog who isn’t housebroken and who is eating lots of food needs to go out every few hours). We’re scared and on edge and waiting.

Despite all of that, we wouldn’t do it differently if we had a second chance. Sometimes these things are more important than your own tiny set of personal circumstances.