The pupsicles, its an on-going saga with Operation Education. You can read the full story here however, on our second trip we came back with two babies Liza Jane & Ocoee, neither of which had ever been handled or loved or cared for in anyway. They had zero idea that a human could be a good thing. They were lost.

Well they are lost no more. Both are blossoming into beautiful little souls & are learning little by little that humans are friends & can be trusted. Its a beautiful thing to witness.

The puppy smiles do our hearts good.

When we first heard about Chloe we weren’t sure there was anything we could do. After all, as always, we were completely full, had no room & no resources to take in another animal, much less a mom & 6 puppies. Impossible, we thought, can’t do it, we were sure. Then we heard her story. How she was covered in cigarette burns, how she had gained 8 lbs while at the shelter nursing 6 puppies (nursing mothers never, ever gain weight, another testament to her terrible condition). Then we heard the kicker, that her ‘owner’ had purposefully starved her, saying he was gonna keep starving her ‘until she quit getting herself pregnant.’ Ugh, such ignorance. So, at that point we couldn’t not take her. This girl deserved a chance. So calls were made, contact achieved & transport arranged. When our director got the high kill shelter where she was we found out 2 puppies had already been put to sleep, both due to the negligence of the owner & the inability of the shelter staff to care for high-risk puppies. We took the remaining puppies & Chloe only to lose two more. The remaining puppies & Chloe required lots of hands-on care, but it was so worth it. Our director learned to give fluids & gave them twice daily every day. Pretty soon the puppies came around & then began to thrive. Slowly but surely Chloe is putting on much-needed weight & all have adjusted to the good life. The shy, skittish, timid Chloe now gives kisses & seeks affection rather than shying from every hand. The puppies now have bellies & fat & are just too cute for words. Another OpEd success. Now they need forever homes where they can know this life & love for the rest of their lives. Is that with you?

After all, who could say no to these faces?

Ms. Chloe

Her daughter Vida.

And Mr. Valor.

If you’re interested in adopting Chloe, Valor or Vida please email us at opedanimalrescue@gmail.com

Cane’s story has been a long one. It has involved multitudes of people, agencies & time. It started out very bleak & had many obstacles, however, all the negative faded into history as his Happy Ever After finally arrived last Saturday.

Cane is approximately 8 years old. For the first 7 or so years of his life he was kept outside, sometimes chained sometimes not, sometimes fed sometimes not & never properly cared for. After a concerned citizen alerted an OpEd Team member the roller coaster of trying to get him out of that situation began. After months of dealing with animal control, then the police, then the courts, he was finally relinquished to us. On the heels of this elation we received a devastating blow when we discovered he was heartworm positive. It seemed his happily ever after would never arrive.

However the OpEd Team persisted, got him treatment & are so proud to say we’ve found Cane what could be the perfect home. He is going to a home with another Rottie sister, an adorable Bulldog/Aussie mix brother & an energetic Rat Terrier brother. He couldn’t be happier & neither could we.

Congratulations to the Ford Family & to Cane, welcome to your Happy Ever After!!!

That is the name of the game around here, just keep on, keepin’ on. Always something happening, going down, blowing up, ballooning & keeping us on our toes. We just try to keep up.

Last week the board members of Operation Education (what? you didn’t know we had a board? Well we do, sadly you probably don’t know names OR faces since I can’t get anyone to give me pictures & bios, however, that is GOING to happen & soon, mark my words.) anyway, as I was saying, the elusive board did what boards do & met. It was a great, productive meeting with lots discussed. Below are the finer points of that meeting, enjoy . Also please feel free to leave us comments, suggestions, ideas (especially in the fund raising arena) or just general love, it helps the blogger feel as though she’s not speaking to a wall!

1) Upcoming Events: Please place these dates on your calendars. We know how quickly weekends fill up, especially in the summer. In July: 10th, 24th & 31st. In August: 14th & 18th, Location: TBA, Time: usually 11-3. These dates lead me right into my second point. . .

2) Volunteers We desperately need volunteers. We need volunteers for the actual event, obviously but we also need volunteers before & after the event so even if you can’t be there for the whole thing, that doesn’t mean we can’t use you.  There is LOTS of loading, bathing, stacking, moving, unloading, setting up, taking down, walking, arranging etc that goes into prepping & taking down an event. As we get larger & take in more dogs the work load increases exponentially as does the need for extra hands.

3) New Board Members: We would like to take this opportunity to welcome Cayte Peach &  Carry Sexton to the Board. As Operation Education grows (YAY) there is a great need for additional help & these two ladies are exactly what we’ve been looking for. This also may explain why you’ve received an email from a name you hadn’t heard before.

4) PayPal: As always we are in desperate need of monetary donations to help us keep our vet bills paid down & to have funds to take in additional dogs & save lives. If you are interested in donating our paypal is now confirmed & you can donate using our email opedanimalrescue@gmail.com & it will go straight into that acct, or if you’d rather it go to a vet you can contact Kinard Animal Hospital @(615)849-7387 or Anderson’s Veterinarian Clinic @ (615) 893-6169 & they will take a donation over the phone & put it directly on our account there.

5) Newsletter: We hope to set up a weekly or twice-monthly newsletter to keep our ‘followers’ in the loop regarding the triumphs, tragedies & regular on-goings of our organization. If you’d like to receive this email & didn’t already receive an email that looked suspiociously like this post If you don’t wish to receive these or any additional emails from us please reply to this email with “Remove Me’ in the subject line & we’ll take you off the list.

6) Finally: We will close for now but before we do, we want to say THANK YOU. From volunteers, to adopters, to crossposters we couldn’t do this w/o each & every one of you. We know the thanks are few & far between but please know, even when we don’t say it we are so appreciative. Thank you for helping us save lives one pup at a time!

-Sincerely, The OpEd Team

And just because I can, meet Vida & Valor, two incredibly courageous pups who are nothing but sweetness.

Good Tuesday morning! Just a quick update from here at Operation Education. There is never a dull moment around here but the last 48 hours have been especially crazy.

The craziness started with a second trip to the scene of Operation Pupsicle. Operation Pupsicle is what we have named a 17-puppy pull operation we undertook in February. The temperatures had been below freezing for several days when we got the call. The caller advised that there were ‘dozens’ of puppies running lose without food, water or shelter along with several adult dogs. The caller advised she didn’t know how much longer the puppies could make it outside given the temperatures & the lack of shelter. We assembled a team, half to go to the location & assess the situation, the other half to start calling potential fosters & gathering all the needed supplies for an unknown number of puppies. When the team members arrived at the location they were shocked to find out everything the caller had said was true. There was zero shelter & there were more puppies than they could count running around. There were clearly two different age groups to the puppies, one definitely old enough to be weaned & so the pulling began. Snatch up armfuls of puppies & dropping them in crates & boxes in the backs of warm cars, vans, whatever was closest. Then came the dilemma; the younger set of puppies didn’t display any clear signs that they were weaned. So the question of whether to risk pulling them too early or leaving them to die in the cold was presented. Given the severity of the cold the rescuers decided to pull the puppies & take our chances with bottle feeding & weaning early. A total of seventeen puppies were pulled that night. Amazingly all seventeen pulled through. The majority of the puppies were taken by A Place to Bark & have sense found forever homes.

The owners of this situation were educated on spay & neuter procedures & where they could obtain them. We provided the adult dogs with straw, shelter &  food & promised to stay in touch. That was February.

We received a call on Sunday afternoon from the same neighbor saying the situation was worse than before, Just as many puppies running lose, another adult dog etc. To say we were frustrated would put it mildly. We once again assembled a team to assess the situation. When they arrived this is what they found:

The situation wasn’t worse, but it wasn’t better either.

The owner advised that all but two of the puppies had been taken to the local flea market. The remaining two came with us, we christened them Liza Jane & Ocoee, & we inquired about the spay/neuter status of the 4 adult dogs on the property. The owner advised none were altered & that two of them were aggressive. The members confirmed that indeed two of the females are aggressive, however the remaining female & the male are very sweet. All are in desperate need of alteration to stop this cycle. We, at OpEd are running desperately low on funds so we ask for your help. Please sponsor one of these dogs, we can & will transport them for surgery & insure they are altered but we need your help to fund this effort.  It typically costs less than $100 to do a neuter, sometimes we can get it much cheaper. Spaying the three females will be a little more expensive, probably running $150 per dog. Even if its more if we could raise that much for each animal we could cover the difference. Please help us stop this terrible cycle.

After getting Liza Jane & Ocoee checked into Camp Tiffany we had another bit of excitement as Mr. Ocoee who was understandably very scared, made a run for it & spent some time in a neighbor’s corn field. Tiffany proceeded to follow him into the corn field, only to be followed by the neighbor because she was destroying his corn. The neighbor promised to look out for the puppy & call if & when he found him. Thankfully it was just a couple of hours before Ocoee exited the field & came looking for food. The neighbor was as good as his word & returned the pup to Tiffany’s house. Tiffany wasn’t there to receive the pup because in the meantime. . .

We received an email from the Cheatham County Shelter liaison yesterday regarding a Bull Terrier named Chloe & her 6 puppies. Her photos showed us a heartbreaking story fraught with starvation, neglect & cigarette burns.

After additional investigation it was found her ‘owner’ intentionally starved her ‘until she stopped getting pregnant.’ With Cheatham overflowing she had no time so we stepped in. When we arrived at the shelter we found that three of the puppies had succumbed & another was fading fast. Despite everything we tried little Elvis (the nearly white with one brown eye)  had to be put to sleep as his lungs weren’t functionally properly & he was suffering.

So the litter went from 6 to 2 which was heartbreaking. Additionally we found out that dear sweet Chloe (who gained 8 pounds before the above shot was taken) is a heavy Heartworm positive. So it is going to be a long road for her but we are prepared to walk it with her. However, once again we need your help. This girl deserves a chance at the good life. She deserves the chance to know what love & comfort & a real life is & we want to give that to her but we have to see her through weaning her two remaining pups & then through Heartworm treatment in order for that to happen. This on top of the $1400 bill we already have at one of our vets. So animal lovers we need you. These deserving pups need you. Please contact us for information about donating, we have a paypal account, a chip-in account & two vets you can directly to. Please help.

The upside is we are happy to report the two remaining pups, a male & female named Valor & Vida, respectively, are doing well & we will continue to administer sub q fluids as they are needed & do whatever we have to to insure they too get a chance at the good life.

Please help us. Every cent counts opedanimalrescue@gmail.com

There has been a lot of discussion about ‘The Tullahoma Dogs’ online through facebook, email & twitter. Like any game of ‘telephone’ the information has sometimes been confused or miss-communicated. So we at OpEd wanted to take the time to set the record straight & explain exactly who ‘The Tullahoma Dogs’ are, what the situation is, what we are doing to help & what we need to better aid these dogs.

This is Slick, such a friendly, out-going guy.

The Situation: The Tullahoma Dogs belonged to a nice lady who began taking in strays around her area, vetting them & finding them homes. She was, essentially, running a home rescue. Well at some point one dog wound up pregnant, gave birth to 11 puppies & now she was in over her head. She attempted to find the puppies homes & kept those she couldn’t. She then fell on hard times, including significant health problems, & found herself unable to even purchase food for the dogs. At this time another rescue/humane organization came & assessed the situation & promised relief. After leaving the lady never heard from that organization again. At this time the local shelter people heard of the situation & put out pleas for help. Those pleas came to the attention of Operation Education & we decided to at least take food & assess the situation. Well the situation, as it was, was much worse than we were originally told. The majority of the dogs were living in a 30′x50′ fenced in area with little to no shelter & very little food. We knew we couldn’t simply walk away so we started talking with the owner about surrendering the dogs a few at a time. She agreed & we pulled two dogs & a cat with 5 kittens first. One of the dogs is heart-worm positive, however the other is not. Both dogs are in the process of being vetted & treated & will be up for adoption soon.

This is Little One, the runt & furriest of the bunch. He’s a doll.

This is Brother LeRoy (& Slick in the background), he is the largest of the litter & has a beautiful block head.

The problems: Lack of Room. Simply put: we need fosters & adopters. We need places for these dogs to go to. It doesn’t do us any good to pull them if we have no where for them to go. So we are making nearly weekly trips to Tullahoma to make sure there is adequate food & to continue monitoring the situation. Also we need food donations, this is a bunch of medium to large dogs that require a substantial amount of food. We need your help!

The silver linings: This is two dogs & six cats saved thus far, with nine more dogs & at least three more cats to be pulled, that’s TWENTY LIVES people, twenty lives. Also many, many new connections made for Operation Education & various other rescue organizations. It is always helpful to make rescue connections & there is nothing like this type of situation to bring people together. So we are thrilled with all the new friends & connections we’ve made.

This is Bob Barker, he loves to talk.

This is Bella & her 5 kittens, already placed with a rescue in East Tenn.

I voted we name this one Houdini!

There are various cats around the property, some of which are truly beautiful. I love these green eyes.

Stay Tuned for a tear-inducing video of rescues past & present!

This past Saturday we had our first major fundraiser. Some of us had modest goals. Others had grander goals. Our funds raised were closer to the grander goal so GO US!!!

Just a few photos from the day!!

A HUGE Thank you to EVERYONE who aided, helped, attended & donated. Thank you so very much. We raise $800 at this event plus the donations towards our vet bills & we are making significant progress. Thank You seriously, to everyone!

The pic below is of a dog found in the Murfreesboro area. If anyone knows anything about this dog you can call 615-904-1733 to speak with the people who found him/her. Please help us find this dog’s family.

Is your car currently a strange yellowish shade? Did it get muddy & nasty in last week’s storms? Have you just not washed it since last summer? If any of those are you then you’re IN LUCK.

Operation Education is having a CAR WASH!!!

When: This Saturday, May 8th 9am-3pm

Where: Get Sconed – 1875 Memorial Blvd, M’boro

Cost: We are asking for a $5 minimum donation.

What: All the proceeds from this car wash are going to benefit Tater & Cane. You may have read their stories here or on Facebook but here is a very short re-cap.

Tater was homeless then taken in by an adoring family, after a couple weeks with this family she stopped eating & very quickly began losing weight, nearly 30 pounds! Having fallen on hard times themselves the family knew they couldn’t afford emergency vet care but didn’t want to give up on their precious Tater. So out of desperation the father started calling local rescue organizations, many turned him down. Some even saying they would immediately euthanize Tater w/o even finding out what was wrong. Well his pleas finally fell on the loving ears of the OpEd Team & we agreed to have Tater looked at by our vet. Turns out while she was homeless Tater at a corncob & it was lodged in her intestines. A simple (although expensive) surgery fixed the problem & Tater is on the mend now. How sad it is to think there are those who would have cut this precious girl’s life short over a perfectly fixable problem. Now that Tater is on the mend it is our job to pick up the pieces & somehow pay the monstrous vet bill, hence the CAR WASH!!!

Cane was a rescue that reached county-wide. He was the victim of a very negligent owner who moved out of the house he was at a& left him & his lady, Shorty there. Weeks went by. A good Samaritan noticed no one was taking care of the dogs & started asking questions. Turns out the neighbors were watering them through the fence & feeding them when they could. Then it was realized that Shorty was pregnant. The good Samaritan started calling PAWS & notified OpEd of the situation. After multiple rounds with PAWS in which nothing was done, the puppies were born & still nothing was done.  Finally a SPD officer got involved, charged the owner & confiscated the dogs. Finally they were getting regular food, water & care. After a 6 month court battle the dogs were released. Sadly of the 8 puppies only 2 survived (negligent owner didn’t vaccinate Shorty & she passed lethal conditions on to her pups). Shorty & the two pups were shipped up north to an awesome Rotty rescue. Cane who was battled over some more was finally released to us only to find out he was heart-worm positive. This poor boy just could not catch a break. However, he was finally in the company of people who weren’t going to give up on him. We arranged for him to be placed in a foster & to receive treatment. Now his treatment is nearly complete & once again we are picking up the pieces & needing help paying the bill for this gorgeous, deserving dog. As many of you know heart-worm treatment is very expensive, running around $1000 for a dog this size. So needless to say we need help.

In short, we need your help. So come on out, let us wash your car & help a deserving dog in the process!

All week the forecast called for storms today. The closer we got, the nastier the forecast got. This morning came & as I was getting ready the first round hit. I suddenly couldn’t see the end of my 100 ft drive way. After a tense phone call we decided to scale down but go ahead with the event. So out I went, driving when every news cast said ‘Stay home, stay in, get off the roads.’ This was my view & this really doesn’t do it justice.

We scaled the event down to just a couple dogs but soldiered on. Despite the terrible weather, we really had a great turn-out. Even though the public numbers were low (smart people stayed home) we had a chance to get to know some new volunteers, meet some new like-minded organizations & take in a couple new pups (more on them later).

We also finally got to meet a couple cuties we’ve been hearing about for at least a week now. Meet Pecan Sandy

And Jackie O

These two beauties were the victims of our economic crisis. From what we can tell their family was foreclosed on & they either didn’t have the ability or the desire to find homes or any suitable situation for their pets. Instead they were left in the backyard of the home. Thankfully an angelic neighbor took on feeding them & contacted us. They will be taken into our program now, Pecan Sandy has already found a great foster (thanks Beth) & we hope to do the same for Jackie-O soon. Of course both girls will have to be fully vetted since we have no idea of their previous medical records & it looks like both will need to be spayed. As always if you can find it in your heart to help support these deserving girls please email us at opedanimalrescue@gmail.com & ask about a tax deductible donation.

As always a HUGE thank you to our fantastic volunteers today, Cayte, Beth, Cathy, Carry & all the others I can’t remember (don’t take it personally its 11pm). We truly could not do this without you. Hope everyone stays safe & dry throughout this severe weather in Middle Tennessee.