Georgia Lab Rescue

Please excuse any clutter left over from the old site. If you see anything out of the ordinary, please don't hesitate to contact us. Please note that the 'Contact Us' link is more for general contact information and not for alerting us about labs that need rescuing.

Welcome Back, GLR!

   Written 2008-06-26 15:53:23 by ian douglas

Hi everyone,

Sorry for our recent hosting issues. GLR is now hosted on my own personal server where iandouglas.com lives, and Email should stop bouncing. It might take a while to sort out some of the logistics, and get everything transferred to the way it used to be, but we'll get there. Thanks for your patience.

Also, since GLR isn't really in the business of actual 'rescue' any longer, we might be shutting down the forums and just posting a few static pages on the site and links to our old calendar contest, etc. If enough of you *really* want to keep the forums active, let us know by commenting on this message or posting in the forums, and we'll keep them alive if there's enough interest. Thanks for your support on this.

Ian Douglas
GLR Webmaster

Note from Ian Douglas, GLR Webmaster

   Written 2007-10-11 02:25:51 by ian douglas

Hi everyone,

While I do what I can to help out GLR on a regular basis, we haven't posted any news here in ages -- our last article wished everyone a happy new year, yikes! Even though I'm on the "other" coast (I live in Los Angeles, California), I wanted to pass along a few thoughts about GLR and handling hundreds of Emails coming in every day.

The last I spoke with Kim on the phone, over a month ago, her computer was completely unusable. She currently has about FOUR THOUSAND Emails backlogged waiting for her whenever she does get online. In the meantime, she's asked that I help sort through the messages and keep important notes, and so on.

Generally, anyone sending Kim an Email about a dog that needs a rescue, I point them to the "Labs in Need of Homes" forum to post a message. For people that have sadly lost their dog for whatever circumstance, I point them to the "Homes in Need of Labs" forum to post a message. Last time I checked, everyone has been VERY good about not posting their phone numbers in forum messages, which is very important with Internet security -- since we are indexed daily by Google, MSN and Yahoo, having your phone number in a forum message would make it world-wide public knowledge.

For those that have recently Emailed GLR offering to help volunteer, first off THANK YOU!!!, and secondly, I need to get Kim on the phone and ask her how to reply to these people. I'm certain that there's work that could be done, but I'm not sure, given Kim's health, how much needs to be done yet. To those still sending in donations, words cannot express the gratitude Kim feels for this -- running a rescue group often puts enormous financial strain on an individual, or group of people, and your donations are helping to offset (last I heard) over $20,000 of leftover debt from when GLR was last running full-swing. Every penny helps.

To those asking about a 2008 Calendar (our 2006 Calendar was a HUGE hit!), Kim and I have some neat stuff we've talked about and hope to get something launched online before the end of the year.

From my own personal experiences lately, I'd like to share a quick reminder to PLEASE (!!!!!) keep your dog's vaccinations up to date. We left our Lab-mix in a kennel for a 4-day trip and despite getting her a kennel cough vaccine, Dakota contracted the disease, which appears to have lowered her immune system enough that she caught a very nasty strain of Parvo going around southern California lately. You can read about it here and here. What we found out through some investigation is that the rescue group here in California who got Dakota as a young puppy got the first three rounds of vaccinations (of 4) done in a timely manner, but the family who adopted her from the rescue group didn't get the 4th round of vaccines done -- instead they turned around and claimed they'd only had Dakota for 2 weeks and adopted Dakota to Elizabeth and I, and told us Dakota was a month younger than she really was. So when we got her 4th round of vaccines done the day after we brought her home, we thought we were right on time, when well over a month had passed since her previous vaccinations. Perhaps this lapse in vaccinations is what contributed to Dakota getting Parvo, we don't know. After spending the first $1500 in emergency bills for Dakota, I had left a tearful message on Kim's answering machine that we had some bad news, that a previous Parvo-negative diagnosis had a week later turned into a Parvo-positive diagnosis. That got us thinking we were going to lose Dakota to such an awful disease, but we decided this puppy was worth the expense to us, and in total spent about $2500 to make Dakota her happy self again, though she's still quarantined from being around other dogs for a few weeks yet until we redo the ENTIRE vaccine panel.

I know from personal conversations with Kim that GLR was always extremely careful to be timely about vaccines, and would always spay/neuter dogs that were rescued. GLR, and just about every reputable vet clinic also recommends getting your pet microchipped. If you aren't sure when you're due for vaccinations or boosters, please don't put it off -- call your vet today and ask about annual vaccinations, heartworm prevention, ad take care of your furry friends.

Much love,
Ian Douglas, GLR Webmaster

Happy New Year!

   Written 2007-01-04 18:13:43 by Georgia Lab Rescue

Happy New Year from Georgia Lab Rescue!!

We are absolutely thrilled that we've gained such an overwhelming response to the new content management system, and that you folks are registering accounts and using the forums to help each other out with fostering and finding new homes/puppies for one another!! Woohoo! This is exactly the sense of community that we were hoping to build with the new site!

We'd like to take a moment though to give a quick update on our status as an organization, and something urgent that we need your help with.

For starters, Ian will be contacting previous adopters through this month and next via Email and setting up registered accounts for them if they don't already have one, and will be posting as many DogBlogs as he can find. We hope to also start an e-Newsletter at some point which we will send out on a regular basis.

Since we launched the new site in November, we've had a lot of people using the 'Contact Us' page to bring to our attention things like urgent rescues needed, strays they've found but cannot keep, or asking questions about where they can find a new dog to join their family.

We'd like to reiterate that, at this time, in its current capacity, Georgia Lab Rescue is unable to assist with most rescue requests without more financial assistance and more volunteers. We have very limited resources at the moment and while we get back into the process of having volunteers come on board, we simply don't have the funds available to help everyone at the rate the requests are coming in.

Make no mistake - we care about every Lab that needs help and would love to help everyone.

We need your help in four ways:

First and foremost, we'd like to ask that for the present time, please continue to use the forums for dogs that need new homes and homes that need new dogs. One forum is for posting messages about stray Labs that have been found or need of rescue or that you simply cannot keep any longer, and do not wish to take the dog to a shelter which may not be a No-Kill shelter. The other forum is for people who would like to adopt a new dog but are unsure of where they can find one. You will need to be a registered user before you can post in the forums though, to cut down on automated scripts that spam forums like ours. We really appreciate the users who are currently active in conversastion in these forums, helping one another out. Keep it up!

Secondly, please consider making a financial donation to GLR. Your donations are tax-deductable (we are a registered charitable organization), and with each donation we are closer to being back in full force, screening dogs, getting vet care, finding foster homes, working with families to match them to compatible dogs, holding events for everyone to meet, etc. Simply put, without finances, GLR cannot operate.

Thirdly, consider donating some of your time and volunteer with GLR. "Many hands make light work," as the saying goes, and we could use whatever time you can offer us. You can contact Kim directly at kim@georgialabrescue.com for more information on what is needed most. You can make a difference!

And finally, please use the 'Contact Us' form only for general contact or questions or for alerting us that you'd like extra access within the forums, that sort of thing, as the Contact Us form actually gets sent to our webmaster. The Contact Us page is not the appropriate place to alert us to rescue help or requests for a Lab. Sending us urgent messages through the 'Contact Us' form will actually slow down a response from GLR, as the messages actually get sent to our Webmaster. We will modify the Contact Us page to make this more clear in the near future.

Thanks so much for your understanding. We hope for all the best for you and your families, and your furry little friends too, in 2007!

GLR

Updates to the DogBlogs Forum

   Written 2006-12-08 13:43:34 by Georgia Lab Rescue

Hi everyone, Happy Friday!

We've started going through the many messages that we've been sent in 2006 with updates and photos of the dogs you've adopted, and have started adding them to the DogBlogs forum.

If you've already registered a user account with the new GLR site, we can give you access to add your own DogBlog updates. Currently, we are manually adding updates in no particular order, but if you Contact Us and let us know your account name here and which dog(s) you've adopted, we'll verify your details and add your dog(s) to the DogBlogs and give your account access as a priority.

If you haven't registered already, please take a moment to do so. You will receive an Email confirmation, and once that's complete, we can keep in touch with everyone with newsletters and notices about upcoming events. Ian will be working over the few months to automatically add any other families that have adopted dogs through GLR, and send them a special Email with a user account and password. He'll be doing the same for all of our donators too, so they can post messages in our special Donators forum.

Have a super weekend!

Intake forum split into two forums

   Written 2006-12-05 09:50:52 by ian douglas

To keep management a little easier, Kim asked that the Intake forum be split into two separate forums, one for Labs in Need of Homes, and one for Homes in Need of Labs. Please use these forums (you must be a registered member to post a message) to let us know of Labs that need help/rescuing, and to let us know if you'd like to adopt a new Lab into your home.

You can read an article by Kim, or as the first forum posting in each of the two new forums.