Grace Rescue for Southern Paws, Inc.

15/02/2025

HOPE EACH OF YOU HAD A GREAT VALENTINE’S DAY!

15/02/2025

This just in from dad John:

“Sammy and his BFF Lucky at Doggy Day Care! He really loves everyone there! They are soooooooooooooo good with him and going there/making some doggy friends really helped him turn a new leaf!”

SAMMY had such an intolerable life before being rescued that his sociability with others has been slow coming. He immediately felt comfortable with John, thank goodness, when he drove to Mississippi from home in the Dallas area to meet Sammy, and John was all he wished for until just recently. Seeing Sammy now learning how to play and make friends with others is a Godsend. We are sooooo very grateful for John, his love and his patience.

Follow up message from John just now:
“He’s doing sooooooo good there! He’s already won them over to the point where ……If Sammy’s friends leave before I pick him up, they bring Sammy up front to the counter with them. He just runs around up front playing with them while waiting on me🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Little stinker wins over everyone so fast!”

14/02/2025

14/02/2025

It seems that Mal and I were thinking of each other at the same time. Mal is a graduate student in Fine Arts at Ole Miss and also has a teaching load each semester. She spends her summers usually with her mom in Chicago, where last summer she was an invited speaker to share some of her original poetry at the Smart Museum there in Chicago.

Mal is an extremely talented, responsible, bright young lady who just happened to be searching for a Beagle to adopt at just the same time that Shelia Clifton, LeAnn Gray and I worked together to rescue a little Beagle girl named SHILOH, who had just weaned a litter of pups while with her temporary foster mom Karen in Memphis for LeAnn. Of course, she needed all vetting now, inclusive of heartworm treatment. I was already vetting Mal’s adoption application, and Mal immediately came to mind that she would be a wonderful placement for Shiloh. Since I don’t allow my Beagles to be officially adopted until heartworm treatment is completed, Mal fostered Shiloh through heartworm treatment and all vetting required. In so doing, Mal proved to be such a vigilant caretaker. I told her never to hesitate to call me about anything that concerned her. She took me at my word, which was most sincere, and called me a couple of mornings around 2:00 a.m. I’m so thankful she did, because a trip to the vet was called for in both instances.

I wish to share Mal’s update re Shiloh, now Uma:

“Diana!! So lovely to hear from you. I was just scrolling thru Grace’s FB page the other day to see how you were doing ❤️❤️We are doing really well. Uma traveled all across the country this winter. We went to San Francisco and she saw the ocean for the first time, we drove thru the Grand Canyon and saw a herd of elk, and we played in the snow in Chicago! I’ll send you some pictures in a minute 🙂 I’m in my last semester of school at Ole Miss! So still in Oxford. I am graduating with an MFA (masters of fine arts). I think Uma is the great love of my twenties and I can’t imagine what I would do without her!!! And keep doing the amazing work you do! It’s truly inspiring how much you care for each and every one of your rescues 🥹❤️”

12/02/2025

We do believe Bunky will be a keeper! 💙🐶

Beth’s recent update:

“Bunky continues to do amazing! He and Larry are having so much fun together. Larry needed a playmate so much and he adores his little brother!!”

Can you find all three “brothers,” Larry, Ralph and hopefully Bunky, in one of the pictures? Look closely.

09/02/2025

Dr. Jamie Bishop sent me a “happy HOBBI” picture yesterday, and I am beyond thrilled to see his sweet self. Many thanks to rescue friend Kelli Tapp Jeffords for alerting me to this needy Beagle/Pit mix wandering aimlessly around the Sardis, MS area. Hobbi is definitely very different from the Beagles I regularly rescue, but something attracted me to him and I just knew he was meant for me to help. There were a couple of older teen boys in the area shooting him with pellet guns, just because they could, and terrorizing anyone who tried to stop them. The language they used toward one of the ladies trying to help him was absolutely obscene and disgusting! Begs the question WHERE ARE THE PARENTS????????

When we finally got him to safety and to the clinic for X-rays, it was found that these boys had shot him 11 times. Of course, he was heartworm positive, and the usual that goes along with neglect probably for most of his estimated 4 years of life. But, the most Beagle thing about him was his VERY LOVING and super sweet Beagle temperament. He got along with EVERY SINGLE DOG at the clinic and stole all of the human hearts. Those of you who have a Beagle know exactly what I’m talking about. Dr Jamie fell as much in love with him as I did and expressed an interest in adopting him herself.

I could go on forever and ever talking about the sweetness of this boy. Dr Jamie has had several Dachshunds, and she will have to tell you just how much he loved and loves his pack, each one of those little “weenie dogs.” To know Hobbi is to love him, for sure!!!!! Thank God we got him that day!!!!!!!

09/02/2025

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

06/02/2025

I intended to update BUNKY’s trial visit yesterday with sooo many sweet shared pictures from Beth, but I ended up at the vet clinic with one of my personal Beagle boys. The day just passed before I knew it.

Beth reports he and Larry are making the most of these almost springlike days. I’m just as happy for Larry as I am for Bunky, because Larry has missed his brother and play partner who recently passed away from cancer. Brother Ralph is 13 and not interested in as active play as much younger Larry, hence Beth’s and Bob’s interest in Bunky, who is all about play and zoomies. Apparently, they play hard and rest soundly except for Bunky snores. 🤣

03/02/2025

Today, foster mom Amy and I invite all of you to join us in celebrating a very special Beagle boy. Not only has BUNKY at last completed heartworm treatment and resumed a normal life of “Bunky Zoomies” but today he also had a greet and meet with a special Collierville family, including two doggie brothers Ralph and Larry. Even though we had our fingers crossed for good measure, it was not really a surprise to us that he made such a great impression that he was invited to go home with Beth and Bob to begin his trial visit.

Bunky has had no shortage of interest over the months he has been in Grace Rescue, but we go to great lengths to match our Beags to the right family and also match our potential adopters to the right dog. We feel that Bunky has found that “just right” family with Beth, Bob, Larry and Ralph. We are so happy for everyone and are hoping for the bestest trial visit ever for this drop dead handsome, precious, congenial, young Beagle boy!!! Stay tuned!

31/01/2025

It’s with mixed emotions that I re-introduce Miss BONNIE LEMON to our Grace Rescue family. She originally came into Grace Rescue in 2021 through our foster mom extraordinaire Barb Polen in Bruce, MS. Bonnie, as Barb named her, was found as a stray running down a county road near Bruce, MS and was taken to the shelter there in Bruce where she was vaccinated.

No one I know loves Beagles more than Barb, who has 3 beautiful Beagle girls of her own. She told Rose, the founder and director of the shelter in Bruce, that no Beagle is to be taken into the shelter without bringing it to her, Barb, to be fostered. Barb knows I will take any of her Beagle fosters into my care and find them the best of the best forever homes. And so, Bonnie’s new beginning began.

I always post my Beagles on Petfinder as soon as they come into rescue, even though vetting is just beginning. Especially during and just after all the COVID shutdowns, we started a program of “foster to adopt” with great success. Peggy in midtown Memphis was looking for a beagle to adopt and found Bonnie almost as soon as I posted her on Petfinder available for “foster to adopt.” Trish and Ed did our home visit, and Peggy renamed her “Lemon,” because she is a rare but highly sought “lemon Beagle.”

Bonnie Lemon was in very poor shape when Barb took her in. She was heartworm positive (what else is new with Beagle rescue), she had an obvious inguinal hernia. She had a cyst on her side needing removal, and she was in dire need of dental work with some extractions necessary, and she was not spayed. She was very thin from tapeworms zapping her strength. We ran bloodwork, took chest x-rays and abdominal x-rays. When she was healthy enough to have hernia surgery, Dr Jamie discovered that she had not just one inguinal hernia but had bilateral hernias 😢. Thank God she was found and thank God for Barb! I don’t think this little dumpling could have lived much longer on her own.

By God’s loving Grace, this little Beagle girl was slowly but surely put back together again and went on to live a wonderful life with Peggy until a week ago today, when Peggy brought her to me to surrender. Peggy is moving into a senior complex in Charlotte, NC near her daughter and could not take Bonnie Lemon with her. I am grateful that Peggy honored Lemon’s adoption contract to return Lemon to me should she no longer be able to care for her. It was a sad Friday for everyone last Friday.

I made Bonnie Lemon an appointment at Willow Bend Animal Clinic here in Holly Springs for this past Wednesday to have her cough checked out, and Dr. Pearce came down from Memphis, as he often does for regular vet clinics across north Mississippi, and he did both an EKG and a good grade ultrasound to determine that Bonnie Lemon’s cough is not heart associated but pulmonary. She is on steroids and her cough is already sooooo much better after just barely 2 days.

I cannot tell you just how precious this little Beagle girl is, now at age 10. She loves everyone and leaves a path of sugar everywhere she goes. She immediately fit right into my pack even though they haven’t seen one another since she was officially adopted in June, 2022 by Peggy. We wish Peggy well, and we will certainly take the bestest care of Lemon.

22/01/2025

Thank you, Kimberlee, for another sweet video of our precious ODIE. Ducky had to have been close by. They are inseparable!

22/01/2025

Michelle just sent us this video of our TIPPER/Clyde having the time of his life in their predicted 6 inches of snow in New Orleans—coastal blizzard all the way to Pensacola, FL. That big beautiful palm tree in the background stands as an oxymoron to all the snow. You can hear the wind in the video.

10/01/2025

Some of our Grace Rescue adopted babies making the most of Winter Storm 2025. We hope everyone has power and is safe. Please be careful if you venture out.

Feel free to share your storm pictures in the comment section. We would love seeing all of our babies.