UPDATE 12/29/02 on the Montana Collies
Statement by AWCA President Jean Levitt
*Permission to crosspost*
We have two messages about Montana to share with you.
Dear AWCA Collie Rescue of America,
I want to thank the American Working Collie Association for the support AWCA Collie Rescue has given us during this ordeal. Without you we wouldn’t be able to do it.
Sincerely,
Ed Krectzfeld
Commander of Toole County Search and Rescue
The Toole County Search and Rescue has opened up their vehicles, their building, and their hearts to the animals. They transport in their vehicles the collies back and forth between SAR and Camp Collie for grooming. The pens containing the infirm collies, bitches with puppies, and cats have replaced the SAR vehicles in the garage section of their building. AWCA grooming equipment extensively occupies both bathrooms and shower areas. The SAR kitchen is piled with stainless steel for the animals housed there. Even the SAR refrigerator is full of our “stuff”: huge vegetable trays, cartons of boiled eggs, cheese, cold drinks, etc., for the groomers’ lunch. When vaccines and medications must be refrigerated, the cartons end up in SAR’s refrigerator. When Dawn Siefert, the pretty, petite woman with the jacket full of puppies I told you about, makes her rounds administering medications under the direction of the veterinarian, she is retrieving them from SAR’s refrigerator.
Endless towels, Nylabones, pooper scoopers, collars and leashes, cat nests, wire crates, books, educational materials, x-pens, are stored at SAR. And, SAR personnel rotate to maintain a 24-hour vigil at Camp Collie 1 mile away to guard and protect those they helped save.
And now we share AWCA member, Suzanne Schwab’s, impressions as a member of the AWCA Holiday Support Team.
Hello Jean,
I left Shelby yesterday afternoon around 3:30 and arrived home about 1 am. It was nice to collect my dogs from various pet sitters this morning and begin to resume “normal” life. You asked me to write my impressions of the experience for the AWCA web site so here are some of my thoughts:
Of course, many of the images that I brought back after spending a few days at “Camp Collie” are of the dogs themselves. There were some particularly exuberant and happy ones that stand out as a testimony to the resilience of their spirit in the face of amazing adversity. Others, not blessed with quite such indomitable optimism, I remember hovering in the backs of their pens, reluctant to trust their “walker d’jour,” but then happily prancing around the walking area once they were coaxed outside. And there were the youngsters, whose short puppy memories had apparently already erased their ordeal, bouncing and happy and cuddly. One of the more gratifying images was of rows of recently fed and exercised collies sprawled out and snoozing contentedly in their cleaned pens.
Like most dog people, if you put me in a group of strangers with a bunch of dogs, within a short time I know the dogs by name and have an impression of each canine personality, while the humans are just an amorphous blur to me. But by far my most intense impressions from Camp Collie are of the people who have taken on the task of caring for these canine victims. I remember a young woman sitting in the dirt outside the pen of a dog still too traumatized to voluntarily approach a human. A half-hour of patience later, the dog had reached forward enough to nibble a cookie from her fingers. I remember an older woman too arthritic to walk dogs doing her part by cooking Christmas turkey with all the trimmings for the out of town volunteers. I remember a young college student taking a couple dogs at a time out to the roughly 150 ft long exercise enclosure, and then running up and down the length of the pen enticing the collies to romp after her. When one pair of dogs was panting and happy, she’d return them to their quarters and take out another pair. She did this all day long, day after day. I remember thinking that the turnout of volunteers for early morning feeding on Christmas would be low, and seeing over 30 people already starting to distribute food bowls and clean water buckets within minutes of the building being opened. I remember thinking that surely the day after Christmas would be short of volunteers after the huge turnout on Christmas. Over 50 people showed up that day. I remember a Canadian auto dealer stranded in Shelby over the weekend because the border was closed to importing vehicles until Monday. He heard about Camp Collie at the restaurant, and on Sunday was walking dogs from 9 am until the building closed after dark.
With the bounty of dog-walkers on Thursday, several volunteers decided to take advantage of the abundance of empty pens to give each enclosure a thorough cleaning. The 3-ft-high pens are covered with panels to keep dogs from escaping, so all cleaning requires lots of bending. The old bedding has to be raked out and shoveled into a wheelbarrow to be dumped outside, the more soiled pens are lightly limed, then fresh bedding is shoveled in from another wheelbarrow. Wherever we spotted a vacant pen, we worked pretty intensely to get this all done before the occupants were returned to their quarters. It was very tiring work. By about 1:30 or so we had six of the ten rows of pens finished. I felt like it was a great accomplishment, and was ready to quit, but one older woman who had been at the task all morning just moved on to the next row. I couldn’t let her out-do me so the two of us plus some new recruits continued on through a couple more rows. I was leaving that day and I worried about getting my 240,000+ mile automobile over the most remote mountain pass long after dark. So, by 3:30 I conceded that my day-long partner had bested me and left, with her still there to finish one last row of pens. I remember her raking old bedding into a pile as I closed the door behind me for the last time.
Oddly, my most vivid image is one that I didn’t witness directly. On my third evening at Camp Collie I was helping clean food pans when my steel trap of a mind suddenly grasped the significance of the fact that it had taken about a week for the donated water buckets and pans to be delivered after the dogs were first rescued. I asked one of my fellow dishwashers how on earth they had managed to feed and water all those dogs those first few days. She told me that they had gotten by on the buckets, pails, bowls, and Tupperware containers that area residents had managed to come up with. “It was as if everyone in Shelby just rummaged through their garages, barns, and kitchen cupboards and gave whatever they had,” she said. In comparison to the months of unending work, bowls and buckets are a small thing. But that’s the most lasting impression I have.
One of my all-time favorite movies is one from the mid ‘80’s called “Witness.” In the climactic scene, a young farm boy whose family is under siege manages to escape to the front porch where he begins clanging a loud bell meant to summon neighbors in times of emergency. The camera shows neighbor after neighbor hearing the bell and instantly stopping whatever they are doing to run to assist. Soon the horizon surrounding the farm is filled with approaching neighbors, some not even having taken the time to drop whatever tool was in their hand when they answered the alarm. That’s the picture of Shelby that stays in my mind – a community of people who heard a call for help and answered it – armed with buckets and pails and bowls.
Thank you, Suzanne, for representing AWCA in Shelby for the holidays.
Calmly,
Jean Levitt, President AWCA
Lisa King, AWCA Director AWCA Rescue
Officers and Members of AWCA