Long-time companions of Nancy Pleibel, a manager at the Farmer’s Market, Ginger & Peaches used to wait in Nancy’s car until closing time. Recently, Nancy asked if she could leave the two dogs tied up to a signpost behind the FoPAAS tables. We said Yes, so she brought out a plush bed and a flannel blanket for the dogs’ comfort and left them watching the activity on the street from their little perch on the curb.

Peaches on the left and Ginger on the right. They are sisters.

Then came the magic. Children stopped to look at the dogs and ask permission to pet them. Others in strollers were lifted out by their parents so they could inspect Ginger & Peaches up close. Parents with toddlers paused and demonstrated to their children how to pet the dogs. The dogs relish the affection and attention. Nancy says that when they get home from the market, they fall asleep quickly and dream of that day’s adventure.

Enjoy these photos of children in love with Ginger & Peaches. To see a full-size version of a photo, click it. The magic speaks for itself.

Note:  We expect to add photos as we capture more of these lovely moments, so check back in the following weeks….

The post Ginger & Peaches appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

Editor’s Note:  We first met Charlie at Dog-O-Ween 2013, along with his constant companion, Elizabeth Guare. Charlie and Elizabeth are also regular customers at the Downtown Farmer’s Market, where FoPAAS has a small booth on the street facing the market. While Elizabeth shops, she leaves Charlie near our table, and we enjoy keeping him company.

Here is Elizabeth’s story with a happy ending.

Charlie Button was discovered in the overnight box at Oakland Animal Services, matted, paraplegic, and miserable. Nevertheless, the shelter determined that he might be treatable, given time….

Charlie went through a few foster homes, but he was uncertain of what was happening to him.

Charlie and I adopted each other three years ago, and he has found his forever home! With the help of physical therapy, he’s taught himself how to walk again. If he gets tired, we use his pet stroller, which has everything he needs.

We were lucky to find each other!

The post Charlie Button Gets Around! appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

To many of us who live on the San Francisco Peninsula, horses are not all that familiar. We see them at a distance, as we’re driving in the hills or along Page Mill Road, and we may wonder how they got there. Who’s the owner? Are these horses cared for and ridden? Does anyone watch over them?

On May 31, Palo Alto Animal Services (PAAS) received a call about a starving horse who had apparently been abandoned at a public horse ring in Los Altos Hills. When Animal Control Officers William Warrior and Cody Macartney saw the horse, they knew she was in poor condition. She needed the care and protection of PAAS, and for starters they gave her a new name: Jasmine!

The rest of this story illustrates how civic agencies, nonprofits, and generous animal lovers can work together to rescue a neglected horse.

Officers Warrior and Macartney trailered Jasmine to Page Mill Pastures, a safe, comfortable stable in Los Altos. Concerned about the cost of stabling Jasmine, Connie Urbanski, Superintendent of PAAS, contacted Maddie’s Fund to ask for financial aid. Joey Bloomfield of Maddie’s Fund promptly agreed to pay the fees for Page Mill Pastures where Jasmine could recover.

Veterinarians Bonnie Yoffe, of PAAS, and Sinead Divine, from Peninsula Equine Medical Center, examined Jasmine and ran standard blood tests, which came back normal. On a body condition scale (BCS) of 1 through 5, where 1 means a horse is emaciated, they gave Jasmine a score of 1. Her problem was lack of food.

The veterinarians determined that Jasmine is about 25 years old. After 7 days on “stray” hold, Jasmine was given vaccinations, treatment for abscesses on her feet, a set of new shoes, and lots of love from a great team of helpers at Page Mill Pastures, including Giselle Turchet and Susan Anderson.

In just two months at Page Mill Pastures, with regular feeding and veterinary care, Jasmine has blossomed into the sleek, beautiful mare she always was. Even better, a person with love to give and space for a horse adopted Jasmine as a companion animal.

Reports are that she’s happy and quite social in her new home—friendly with visitors and stretching her head over the fence for petting. Her owner considers her to be retired. No more trail rides or racing, no more saddle or bridle. Just relaxing, grazing, and spending time with her new forever family!

Want a horse?

Then be aware of the specialized care and tools required to maintain a horse’s health and happiness.

About the Author
Scottie Zimmerman, our President

The post Sweet Jasmine Blooms! appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

Shilo’s curiosity, enthusiasm, and zest for the great outdoors parallels mine to a T. If I go sledding down a snowy hill, Shilo comes galloping after me. If I step onto a paddleboard, guess who’s right there with me, even though she’s brand new to the sport! Shilo is more than my co-pilot, she’s my fearless best friend.

We have run races together, camped together and canyoneered together. We have romped around Tahoe, Clear Lake, Yosemite, the Russian River Valley, and coastal areas between San Francisco and San Diego.

Adventuring comes with occasional misadventures…. Among other things, Shilo and I have dealt with mechanical malfunctions, injuries, bites, and getting lost. But I tell you, when my clutch failed and I was stuck in unfamiliar territory, I was happy to have a companion to wait with me for the rescue and repair. When Shilo sliced her carpal pad open tromping off trail through the forest, I was her nurse, wrapping the pad tightly with her bandana and getting her to the nearest hospital.

Life wouldn’t be the same without my eager sidekick, and I’ll continue to venture the road less traveled with her as long as she’ll let me.

The post Adventuring With Shilo appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

We met up in Marathon, Texas. I had cycled there from Corpus Christi, and my brother from San Diego, California. It was March, 2012, and the dreadful heat of the summer was still weeks away. That did not make our bike trip back to Corpus any cooler. Through Sanderson, Comstock, and Del Rio, the sun bore down in unrelenting tones of yellow.

We were on Highway 90, the southerly route trekkers use to cross the U.S. on bicycles. My brother was hauling his dog Raisin in a burley attached to the rear of his bike, and 25 miles outside of Uvalde, Raisin started barking. My brother spotted two puppies ducking under some high weeds that served as a poor shelter against the sun. One, a white and black-splotched creature, stepped forward and barked. The other, light brown, cowered behind. My brother fed food scraps to the starving puppies, and we got them into the burley.

Over the next few miles, the pups vomited and lay in the burley, exhausted. Raisin, herself a rescue, seemed to understand what was happening and tolerated their misery. We stopped intermittently and took turns removing clusters of ticks that obscured entire areas of the puppies’ ears, necks, and feet.

In Uvalde, the hotels we checked refused to accept dogs. When it looked as if we’d be crashing at a local park, a man introduced himself. He and his wife opened their home to us—strangers both. We and the puppies slept soundly. The next morning we bought food for the pups, bathed them, removed more ticks, and the effect was dramatic.

Over the next few months, I taught Spot and Sandy their new names, took them to the clinic for the usual round of shots, and escorted them on daily walks through the neighborhood. They loved running along the beaches and sniffing out the sundry odors thereabouts. Other walkers and runners became familiar with our rounds, and Spot and Sandy enjoyed a reputation as two of the friendliest puppies on the block. No one would have guessed the trauma of their early months.

Eventually, I moved back to the Palo Alto area, and about three months ago I drove Sandy the 2,000 miles from south Texas to California. He enjoys his new home and meets and plays with the neighborhood dogs at a local park. He is also a regular among the dogs who visit the downtown Farmer’s Market.

The post Sandy—A Texas Miracle appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

Hal’s leaves are selected and retrieved from our neighbors’ yards, from trees and shrubs we don’t have in our garden. That means he travels over 5-foot fences carrying the leaves and then brings them safely through our cat door. Dry, brittle leaves make it in one piece.

I collected and photographed many of Hal’s gifts. (The apple is to show scale.)

In 2008 I spent six days in the hospital for back surgery. The first night I returned home, I slept in a downstairs “guest” room. All the animals were pleased at my return, of course. But after dark Hal went out of his way, bringing bunch after bunch of green leaves into the house and dropping them like a trail of breadcrumbs along the hall that leads from the kitchen to the bedroom where I slept. A tangible, verifiable “Welcome Home!” from a cat.

The other thing Hal does as he’s returning with leaves is meow. He meows loudly and repeatedly, continuing even after he’s inside the house. In summer with the windows open, I hear him and respond with a comparable “meow.” I think he appreciates the back & forth. Who knows what the neighbors think?

About the Author
Scottie Zimmerman, our President

The post The Cat Who Loves Leaves appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

My husband & I have been supporters of various dog rescues and shelters for some time. We were lucky enough to find our latest pup through an organization called Peace of Mind Dog Rescue  , which focuses on finding homes for pups whose owners are no longer able to care for them. They also help place in adoptive homes senior shelter dogs whose probability of being adopted by the general public is low.

I was impressed with the organization, especially with its help to elderly or sick owners planning for the future care of their dogs, that I knew I wanted to help support them in any way I could. We didn’t really expect to see our next family member on the webpage so soon, but, when we did, we knew he was waiting for us! We saw Lex, a big and happy looking 8-year-old black lab and read the heartbreaking story: Battling cancer and unable to care for his dog, Lex’s owner left him at a friend’s house, where he was tied to a dog house 24/7. When the owner died, this sweet boy was bequeathed to Peace of Mind.

Seeing his video on the webpage made us think we had to foster him, at the very least. We brought him home to meet our two black lab girls, and it felt like he was part of the family from the moment we all met him.

He’s called Max now, and our three are like peas in a pod!

The post Peace of Mind for Max appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.

Along came an interesting couple: a beautiful young woman with big sunglasses and straw hat; her husband laden with large bags of fresh produce. They introduced themselves as JJ and Marco Graziano and asked what they could do to help.  Scottie and I immediately said, “Help us create a website?”

JJ grinned and said, “I can do that!”

And so commenced the most delightful journey for us as we began to work with this amazing woman who has proved to be the best friend anyone could have.

JJ was eager to learn WordPress, and she claimed that this work on our website was as much a benefit to her as to us. I hope that is true because there is no way our tiny budget at FoPAAS could have paid her for the hours she spent working on this project. What she created is so much more than any of us expected or hoped for that we hardly know how to express our gratitude.

We met with her frequently to ask questions and make suggestions, and she always listened to us carefully. Then, thanks to JJ’s magic, each thought or suggestion found itself magnified into a reality that was even better than we imagined.

Her husband Marco suggested she was suffering from OCD because as we neared our launch date JJ would postpone the big day—more than once—for one more tweak or another refinement.  Finally we received a message from her that said,

“After tossing 3 coins 6 times and looking up the I Ching, it tells us that our website is ready to go live. And according to Chinese Lunar Calendar, Tuesday Aug 20 is a good day to launch our site because it will bring us luck. (No… not true, I made it up.)”

How did we get lucky enough to find someone with that sense of fun and adventure?  And how grateful we are to call JJ and Marco Graziano our friends.  JJ has promised she will stay connected, nourishing our site and our organization, and we have tried to guarantee that by electing her to our Board of Directors. We look forward to an exciting future with these two wonderful people as we work together to increase the breadth and value of the offering FoPAAS makes to Palo Alto.

About the Author
Jeremy Lindston Robinson, our Vice President

The post Queen of Our Website appeared first on Friends of the Palo Alto Animal Shelter.