Bluebonnet Animal Rescue Network

06/01/2025

Look at all these tasty nuggets! Our "Holiday Feast" puppies were born on November 13, 2024 and will be 8 weeks old this Wednesday. 3 boys + 3 girls with even color distribution -- 2 white + 1 badger of each s*x. Mom is Belladonna, a beautiful Anatolian Shepherd who has been a livestock guardian her whole life. (Belladonna is not available for adoption.) Dad is possibly Bentley or one of the other Akbash dogs remaining on the ranch in Central Texas where we are working to remove 40+ dogs and puppies. (Bentley IS available for adoption; he's one of the adults trapped and brought to Windsong Ranch in November.)

Puppies have been dewormed a couple times already and will be getting their first vaccinations this week. They are currently in the Austin area but will be moving to Windsong Ranch in North Texas later this month. Puppies will be added to our adoption website soon, but for now, feel free to complete the application and mention the puppy by name. Please understand, we rarely place two puppies from the same litter together in one home, and we require secure fencing regardless of whether you are looking for a future LGD or a house pet/companion pup. Our approval process for anyone wanting to adopt a puppy is very stringent. These puppies were lucky to be born in one of our foster homes just a few days after their pregnant mom was captured. So these puppies have had a wonderful start in life and we want to be sure they go to the best homes where they will be loved for the rest of their lives.

Bluebonnet is a very small organization and we generally do adoptions only in Texas and Oklahoma, usually within about a 3-hour drive of Dallas TX. Our website provides information about our adoption process. You can find a link to our website in the LinkTree in our bio.

In case you've missed previous posts about the ranch in Central Texas where puppy mom Belladonna lived before coming into rescue, this link takes you to a post that gives you a short summary of the history of this ongoing rescue effort:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1KEi1jJGmx/

MANY THANKS to Aubry Ramsey Photography for working with foster mom Molly to take these beautiful photos of our puppies!

06/01/2025

$5 New Member Shopping Bonus! Join now, when you make your first purchase within 30 days, we'll give you an extra $5 bonus for Bluebonnet Animal Rescue Network. https://www.iGive.com/BluebonnetAnimalRescueNetwork/?p=19992&jltest=1

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05/01/2025

Many thanks to our friends Donna and Tim for donating hay! With the forecast calling for an arctic blast keeping our temps near or below freezing for the week ahead, having plenty of fresh hay will help everyone stay well fed, and staying well fed helps keep them warm. They'll get extra portions of grain as well, and all our livestock have good barns and loafing sheds to keep them safe and warm.

Probably the worst thing about the freezing temps will be for the humans 🥶 who have to break the ice up every day. We have dozens of water tubs ranging from 5 gallons to 100 gallons, and most of them are too far from a power source for us to use deicers in the tanks. So when we have weather like this, Tim and I head out each day with a pickaxe to break up the ice in the large tanks, and buckets of warm water to refill the smaller tubs. It's always grueling work that makes us appreciate the fact that we usually only get one or two prolonged freezes each year. This one is forecast to last at least a week -- the cold front 🌬️has already moved in and our temps have dropped about 20 degrees since yesterday's high, with a further 20 degree drop expected overnight. 🥶BRRRR!

04/01/2025

Simon is such a handsome boy, and he's every bit as sweet as he is handsome. ❤ He's a tripod, about 2 years old and around 120 lbs. Simon's leg was amputated because it gave him constant pain from shrapnel, some of which appeared to have penetrated the bone without breaking it. It's both maddening and heartbreaking that people so often shoot dogs, often for no good reason.

Simon has good manners inside our home. He gets along with other dogs, and when he has been around cats (our barn cats and the clinic cats in our vet's office), he has not shown any prey drive toward them. He can be playful with certain dogs, and he ignores others, but he doesn't really seem to need another dog to play with in order to be happy. He really enjoys having the opportunity to go outside into an area of our property where he can run like the wind -- just Simon and a human that he can share the experience with.

If Simon sounds like the perfect match for you, please visit our website, read his bio, and consider completing the foster or adoption application.

https://www.bluebonnetrescue.org/animals/detail?AnimalID=20542937

04/01/2025

Update on Brinlee, one of our feral/completely unsocialized pups from the ranch in Central Texas that we have talked about so much this year.

Brinlee's foster mom Katie says:

"Not only has he not had an accident in the house, he very quickly learned the routine.
For potty breaks, I open his crate, prop open the baby gate and the back door, and get out of the way. He takes himself out and comes back in when he's ready.
This morning I did close the door, since we were prepping food and wanted to avoid any potential issues.

It was SO CUTE seeing him waiting by the door to be let in!

Routine and structure help so much when working with ferals. 💗"

I will add to Katie's thoughts -- Having well socialized, trusting, confident dogs ALSO helps. Brinlee watches them and takes cues from them. We're so grateful to Katie for taking on this challenge!

03/01/2025

385 lbs
$410.11
That will last about a week.

*xpensive

03/01/2025

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02/01/2025

I dropped Miss Bella off at All Heart Veterinary Center this morning for spay surgery. As a senior girl (10.5 years old), we did blood work to be sure she was healthy enough for surgery, but we weren't expecting to open her up and find that she had multiple mammary tumors. Her surgery included spay and mastectomy, both of which are important components in dealing with mammary cancer. Poor Bella was on the table much longer than the typical spay surgery and her incision is at least twice as large as a typical spay incision. Her recovery will be slow, but hopefully with good meds, we can keep her pain to a minimum.

I've posted about mammary tumors before, but sadly, engagement is much lower on educational posts than on posts with photos of cute puppies. This is an important topic, and I wish more vets discussed it with their clients who own female dogs.

In an article for the AKC, Dr. Marty Greer DVM writes "In contrast to humans, mammary tumors in dogs are nearly 100% preventable if owners would take one simple step – to spay female dogs prior to age 2 or younger. It’s common knowledge that spaying prevents heat cycles and pregnancy, but veterinarians have not always done as well to educate clients that spaying under the age of 2 prevents most mammary tumors, and that spaying before the first heat cycle protects nearly all dogs."

According to the Veterinary Society of Surgical Oncology, mammary tumors in female dogs account for 42% of all diagnosed tumors. That's 42% of all tumors in BOTH s*xes. About 50% of all mammary tumors are malignant, and of those that are malignant, about half are likely to metastasize (spread to other parts of the body). Surgical removal of the mammary gland, or in some cases, the entire mammary CHAIN, is the most common and effective treatment. Bella had a full mammary chain removal on one side, and removal of a single mammary gland on the other side. To think of it in human terms, it's a bit like having a radical mastectomy on one side and a lumpectomy on the other. All together, four tumors were removed from Bella.

As difficult as it is to consider this, the reality is that Bella was lucky she was surrendered to us by her family. Texas law requires rescue groups to spay/neuter all dogs (and cats) as long as they are healthy enough for the procedure. If we hadn't taken Bella in for spay surgery, her cancer probably wouldn't have been discovered until it was too late for any treatment or surgical intervention. Bella had a tough day today, and the next couple of weeks will be a hard recovery. But because of her surgery, her life expectancy is much better than it would have been otherwise. Research shows that dogs who had been spayed BEFORE the mammary tumor diagnosis had a median survival of 25 months after tumor removal. But dogs like Bella who were intact at the time of their cancer diagnosis survived an average of only 9.5 months after tumor removal. We don't have a crystal ball so we can't say how much time Bella will have to enjoy life, but we can say that based on all available research, her future looks MUCH better than it would have if she hadn't gone in for spay surgery today. One of the hashtags I use every week when I post about the importance of having your pets sterilized is . A case like Bella's proves just how true those words are.

02/01/2025

01/01/2025

P**p scooped, fresh shavings down to help with the mud in the open-air part of the dog run. Feral pup Bridger (left) and feral adult Bentley are just watching as I put down straw in the covered part of the run. These two boys are from the ranch in Central Texas that we’ve mentioned in other posts. They’re completely feral, and it will be slow work to get them socialized.

01/01/2025

Whitewright TX

It’s a beautiful, sunny day here at Windsong Ranch! We need more sun to dry the ground after having received about 5” of rain in the last 10 days or so. While I’m busy scooping p**p, pups MacIntosh and Sugar Pie are playing nearby. MacIntosh is a permanent resident, the next generation of LGDs for our livestock. Even now, at just over a year old, he is helping to mentor younger dogs like Sugar Pie, who is available for adoption to the right home. Sugar Pie was born in the pasture to working LGD parents on a ranch in Central Texas with a beautiful herd of Boer goats and way too many LGDs. Sugar Pie needs a home with secure fencing and a confident adult LGD to continue her development.

Apply on our website— link in our profile and Linktree.

01/01/2025

Today is the FIRST, so for many of us, that means it's the day for giving our dogs their monthly heartworm prevention. Don't let holiday celebrations cause you to forget this month!

01/01/2025

Happy New Year!

01/01/2025

On New Year's Eve or any other night, please don't drink and drive.

01/01/2025

For those of us with working livestock guardians, fireworks can be an issue, but bringing the dog inside the house is not always the best option, since some dogs get more anxious inside. Hopefully everyone has a barn or loafing shed to provide shelter for dogs and livestock. At Windsong Ranch, we typically bring all the house dogs inside on evenings when we expect fireworks, and the TV provides noise to help distract them. A few dogs benefit from Melatonin or Trazodone or Sileo to help keep them calm. For livestock and working dogs, we don't typically rely on drugs. Tim stays in the house while I spend the evening going from one barn to another, one pasture to another, basically just being a comforting presence so all the animals (regardless of species) know that the world probably isn't coming to an end even if that's what it sounds like. We've already had SOME fireworks this week -- not too much, thankfully, but I'm expecting there will be more tonight.

I hope all of you have a plan to keep your dogs safe and comforted.