The Battlefords Humane Society has received an outpouring of support to help the 20 puppies found in a field near Glaslyn Friday.
"[I want to thank] the local businesses and local community for stepping up and helping out," says Battlefords Humane Society co-ordinator Michelle Sparks. "That was fantastic."
The animal shelter took over the care of 20 puppies after Greg Zubiak found them abandoned on a towel in a remote field near Glaslyn when searching for an area to hunt moose. Sparks says it was a remote field that not just anyone would come across. Once given to the animal shelter, the process to rehabilitate the puppies began. The first step was bringing in their veterinarian to perform check ups on all of the dogs.
"He met us there that night and he did a check up on them to make sure none of them needed immediate medical attention."
Sparks says they were all dehydrated, cold and full of lice and fleas. Volunteers gave them food and drink, blankets to keep them warm and combed out lice and other bugs. She says the next few weeks will be focused on maintaining the health of the dogs. The puppies that were six weeks old were vaccinated, but they have to wait to vaccinate the younger ones. Eventually they will all be spayed and neutered. The volunteers are backed up on doing laundry for the blankets the puppies use.
"They poop a lot," Sparks laughed. "Every five minutes we're cleaning up poop."
The local community has responded and flooded the shelter with donations to help the puppies. They have received more than $4,000 to put towards veterinarian bills, "bags and bags" of toys and teddy bears and a large amount of puppy food. The shelter was also given a $500 in-store credit from Canadian Tire to buy whatever they need to care for the animals.
They have also received support from all across Canada, the United States and even Mexico. Sparks says a woman and her son have planned to fly in from Manitoba to volunteer over the upcoming long weekend.
"It's just been crazy."
The shelter usually has six or seven volunteers that come in to help when they have time to do activities such as walking dogs in the kennel. Since the story broke over the weekend, Sparks says they have received calls from 20 to 30 people who plan to come in and volunteer.
Applications to adopt the puppies have come in "faster than we can read them." The applications have come in from all across Canada. However, many are only interested in the rescued puppies.
"We've had more foster home applications in the last three days than we've had in the last four years offering to foster these puppies. Not any of our other dogs."
She added, "If I had this many applications come in for the rest of our animals, our shelter would be empty. And that's kind of a sad thing. Everybody wants these puppies. It would be nice if they would want the rest."
The shelter is home to nearly 80 animals right now that need a home. Many of them were abandoned in a similar fashion to the now-famous puppies. Sparks says the shelter sees cases like this almost every day. They recently were given seven orphan puppies that were two weeks old. The shelter bottle-fed them to keep their health up and they are all up for adoption. They also have a dog and her six puppies that were abandoned at the golf course. So while the shelter sees similar cases all the time, Sparks says this story caught national attention because of the number.
"I think that's what really blew this thing up, the number of them. There was so many."
She added, "We see it every day. And the other shelters all across Canada see it every day. There's more to this story than just 20 puppies. It's the whole global picture of what happens out there."
Sparks hopes the support for the shelter will continue once the 20 puppies are gone as there are more animals in the shelter that need homes. She says there are similar situations that happen in shelters all across Canada.
"These 20 puppies are not the only puppies in the world that need to be rescued and I don't want people to forget that."
