Rescue Ranger

July 2020

NRGRR continues to operate virtually as much as possible as we adhere to state and local restrictions due to COVID-19. As with everything, the speed at which things are reopening are very fluid and we are adjusting accordingly. We are now hoping to resume Meet and Greets in August. We will be at a new location, Zoomy Dogs off NC-55 in Durham. Our Operations team is working closely with them to make sure we adhere to necessary protocols. We hope to have more information posted on our website toward the end of the month. Unfortunately, some of our biggest fundraising activities have been affected and we are in need of donations more than ever. We are planning some interactive fundraising events to replace the gala and golf tournament and will have more information soon. A fun way you can support NRGRR this month is by voting for your favorite photos in our 2021 Calendar Contest. See below for more information. We appreciate your patience and continued support as we navigate this uncertain time together. While we are pausing our fundraising and community events, we are not “pawsing” our commitment to rescue, rehab, and adopt dogs in need. For the latest on the practices and precautions we are following, please visit our COVID-19 Response page . Congratulations, DaVinci! After 15 months, DaVinci has finally found his furever home. He had a tough background, but there were a lot of dedicated volunteers on his side to ensure we found him a wonderful home. DaVinci's story is truly a testament of "it takes a village."

2020 Statistics through June 70 Dogs Rescued 31 Dogs in Rehab 83 Dogs Adopted Congratulations to these dogs finding their furever home in June Samson 17 Chai 20 Rex 20 Garfunkel 20 Jade 19 DaVinci 19 Cayenne 20 Licorice 20 Katy Perry 20 Simon 20 Sage 20 Paprika 20 Aretha 20 Sign Up For Rescue Ranger

2021 NRGRR Calendar Contest

The NRGRR calendar contest is underway with thirty-four contestants all vying for one of the twelve months on the 2021 calendar. With both the Golden Gala and the Golden on the Green Golf Tournament cancelled, the calendar contest will likely be the largest fundraiser NRGRR has in 2020. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT! PLEASE vote for your favorite dog for the calendar by clicking on the button below. Each vote is $1.00 and you can apply as many votes as you like to your favorite dog or to all of the dogs. With this being an election year, here is one VOTE we can all agree upon! Vote to support NRGRR so we can continue to accomplish our mission to RESCUE, REHAB, and ADOPT.

View Entries and VOTE!

Heart2Rescue

In the January Rescue Ranger we published the many ways you can help raise funds for NRGRR. Of course at the time we had no way of knowing how important your help was going to be in 2020! One of the suggested ways our volunteers, fosters, and adopters can help NRGRR is by having birthday fundraisers on Facebook. Nell Barnes, former President NRGRR Board of Directors (4 years) did just that! Nell just celebrated her 71st birthday with a Facebook fundraiser and brought in over $2,000 between online contributions and some folks who mailed in checks to support her efforts. THANK YOU Nell for choosing NRGRR as your fundraiser recipient and we wish you a Belated Happy Birthday. Those of us who know Nell know that, even at 71, she can run circles around most of us! NRGRR is blessed to have volunteers as committed to saving dogs as Nell has been for many years now. Thank you Nell for all you do and wishing you many more years of health, happiness, and dog rescue! Creating your own fundraiser for NRGRR in Facebook is easy. Follow this link for the set-up template, make any changes you like in the Details section (e.g., fundraising goals, end date, and your message), and click the create button. Simple! Whether your goal is $200 or $2000 - it all helps and we appreciate your efforts!

Medical Tip of the Month

Ingesting Foreign Bodies Has your dog eaten something they shouldn't? Are you unsure if it will pass or if it is an emergency? In this month's medical blog post , our Medical Coordinator Katie McKay talks about ingestion of foreign bodies, basically a solid object that is inside the dog where it should not be. She discusses several items that could be dangerous to dogs and others that may not be so emergent, and provides several case studies with suggested plans of action.

Habits of Highly Effective Dog Owners A Good "Ignore"

One way to help shape your dog's behavior - and often a hard one to do - is the good old "ignore." Removing our attention is a form of response or communication, and it's going to work better when paired with some other tools like interrupting an unwanted behavior before it starts and teaching the behavior you DO want.  You may have heard this advice for jumping up on people. Dog jumps up, human turns slightly away, crosses arms, looks up and away in dismissal. When the dog sits on the floor, the human gives attention to the dog, praises for good behavior. Over time, dog thinks about jumping up, decides they want that lovely attention and praise and "sits to say please" instead of jumping up. Yay! Ignoring is part of creating this success. The other part is teaching and rewarding a more desirable behavior to replace what you don't want the dog to do.

Or maybe you are walking toward your dog in the crate to let him out. Dog starts barking. What can you do? Well, you could stop and ignore (it helps me to pretend that the dog vanished from our physical universe for some number of seconds!) When the barking stops, the human starts moving forward to let the dog out again. Over time and repetition, the dog learns that being a quiet dog results in getting let out of the crate; being a barky dog stops the progress towards that wanted goal.  It's hard to have a good ignore ! When we work on unwanted behaviors, like puppy mouthing, and we talk about interrupting or ignoring . . . well, we're often still engaged with the dog! By engaged, we're still looking at the dog, still attending to the dog, still talking to or touching the dog. And your dog knows that your attention is still on them. You're actually marking that undesired behavior with your attention, even if it's negative attention. We're often better at ignoring our dogs when they are being "good," settled down by our sides as we are writing articles for the NRGRR newsletter for example. (And so we take a break to give some quiet attention and praise for that nice settle!)

In our ongoing quest to learn how to behave so our dogs behave, work on your ignore . Maybe it helps to practice the mechanics of an ignore - that turning away, crossing arms, looking up and away in dismissal. Maybe you need to count to 10 while pretending your dog winked out of existence for a minute. Whatever helps you communicate to your dog "huh uh, that's not what I want" without saying a word. And then when the mouthing or jumping or barking stops and your dog sits or looks at you, or moves on to some better behavior, remember to mark that desired behavior with your attention and praise.  Does ignore work for everything? Well no, it's just one of the tools in your toolkit! For behaviors that are unwanted or annoying - but not dangerous or destructive - ignore can help, paired with teaching and reward for what you do want. The contrast between your ignoring and your praise helps with clarity and good communication with your dog.

To access behavior help for your foster dog, reach out to your dog coordinator. For adopted dogs and others, reach out to Julie Rigby .

And Why Do You Foster?

FOSTERS NEEDED ...the “life-blood” of most rescues are their fosters. You simply CANNOT save lives without fosters. After being pulled from a shelter, or an owner surrenders their family pet, the dog needs a place to land for medical care (if needed), training perhaps, and a safe environment where they can build confidence and prepare to meet their forever family. Fostering saves lives, and you can be part of our rewarding mission to Rescue.Rehab.Adopt.

Foster Spotlight: Robin Parente

Our foster spotlight this month is on first time foster Robin Parente. Robin was approved to adopt from NRGRR at the end of March of this year. On her application she specified a smaller dog, in the range of 35-45 lbs. Robin felt a smaller dog would be easier for her to handle, being fairly petite herself, not to mention that she lives in a high rise apartment in downtown Raleigh.  From the beginning her application advisor suggested she might consider fostering. With many fosters preferring their dogs to go to homes with fenced in yards, her application advisor knew the shortest route to finding a dog for Robin would be for her to foster. After some consideration, Robin threw her name into the foster pool. However, because of the pandemic, so did many others who were also quarantined at home. For the first time ever, NRGRR had more available fosters than dogs!

Robin with Brody

Once Robin decided to foster, she reached out to MiMi Suddath, NRGRR’s foster coordinator, on several occasions, only to be told that someone else had already put their hand up and the dog was covered. Robin was determined to get a foster and so she set up her “smart” watch so she could quickly respond to MiMi’s email requests. After several tries, Robin finally got her foster dog, a handsome guy named Rex20, aka Brodie, weighing in at almost 80 lbs.  Initially, Robin had no intentions of keeping Brody based on his description - too big, too old, and too calm; the dog she would eventually adopt would be a young, small, energetic dog, or so she thought. She was willing to foster Rex but did not think he was the dog she was looking to adopt.

When Rex arrived, he spent the first two weeks in his crate, not eating, and afraid to go outside. His fur was extremely matted and overgrown, he seemed hot and uncomfortable. Robin says he appeared sad, scared, and missing his old family. He quickly lost 10 lbs. and this was very scary to Robin as a first time foster.  Not sure what to do, Robin reached out to Julie Rigby, NRGRR dog behaviorist, and suggested he be moved to another (perhaps quieter) home. Instead, Julie worked her magic and helped Robin and Rex work through their issues. Rex began to warm up to Robin and started spending more and more time with her and less time in his crate. Julie even delivered home-made food for Rex and provided Robin with a ton of great advice and help.

Robin stated that once Rex started eating and spending time with her in the living room, things all came together. By giving Rex a chance she has discovered that he fit perfectly in her life. She also realizes now that a trained larger dog is just as easy as a smaller dog.  The moment Robin realized, “this is my dog,” was when the protests and riots started in downtown Raleigh where she lives; it was a scary time for her. Having Rex, aka Brodie, as her companion to cuddled up with helped them both feel safe.

Brodie has transformed from a sad, scared dog to a loving, confident, gentle guy. Robin reports that Brodie now eats very well and is always looking around for a treat. He also got groomed and seems much more comfortable with his new haircut. New home, new hair, new life! Another “failed foster” and “happily ever after.” THANK YOU Robin Parente for fostering and we wish you and Brodie the very best!

If you or your family are interested in fostering please see our foster page to read the steps to foster and complete the application. If you have any questions about fostering, please reach out to our foster coordinator, Mimi Suddath .

NRGRR 2020 T-Shirt There are just a few T-shirts remaining!! This will be the only opportunity for you to get this design. Click here to purchase.

NRGRR Highball Glass NEW ITEM! Highball glass etched with the NRGRR logo. Can also be used as a votive candelholder. Click here to purchase.

We are always looking for new ideas for store items. If there are any items you would like us to carry, email our store manager, Nikki D'Ambrose , and we will see if it's feasible for us to provide it to you.

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We hope you enjoy this new platform for the Rescue Ranger! You may receive this edition more than once as we strive to not leave anyone out. You can always email questions or concerns to us at: nrgrr.rescueranger@gmail.com . Are you finding our emails going to your spam folder or promotions tab? If so, add nrgrrcommsteam@gmail.com and nrgrr.rescueranger@gmail.com to your contacts.

NRGRR is a 501(c)(3) organization in North Carolina that is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and adoption of golden retrievers in need. The organization advocates responsible pet ownership, community education and protection of all dogs.