walking, sniffling, wiggling and shopping!

Checkers is feeling GRRRREAT six weeks after his FHO surgery on his left hip. He is walking and moving and in another two to four weeks you won't even be able to notice that he ever had an injury! Checkers is young and active and is looking for his forever home now. He is a door dasher (we discovered this at his foster home) so that might explain how he ended up in the shelter with an injured hip. Who wants to adopt a cutie pie moppy headed cocker spaniel? A special heart felt thanks to The Hogan Foundation for their generous assistance with Checker's surgery. We couldn't have rescued him without their help!

Well, mommy dog Heidi picked up kennel cough while in the shelter and she passed an upper respiratory infection along to her babies. They are all on Clavamox right now and we are monitoring them to make sure their condition doesn't get worse. Their little noses are really conjested and when you hold them up to your ear you can hear how bad it is. But the good news is, Heidi is not sneezing as often and she is getting better and the puppies are stable, not getting worse. The pups are eating, sleeping and growing by the minute. We are feeding Heidi five to six home cooked meals a day plus she is eating dry food that is out for snacking in between meals. All those calories are getting lost nursing and she is still very thin. But she sure has an appetite and is eating up everything we offer her so that is great! When Heidi is done nursing her puppies, she will be getting spayed and put up for adoption first. She is a darling little girl, her temperament could not be sweeter. She has allowed visitors to come and see her puppies and she is very trusting of people. She is housetrained, knows how to use a doggie door and is dog friendly. She is such a nice girl and we hope to line up an amazing forever home for her so that she can begin to know what life can be like as a much loved pet and no more working dog. Heidi might be six to seven years old but she is such a sweetheart!

Did you know that if you do all of your Amazon shopping through the banner link on our website, we actually get a donation? It's true! And who doesn't shop on Amazon, especially when looking for good deals and for anything and EVERYTHING! For electronics purchases, the donation we receive is 4% of your purchase, for MP3 products 10%, Amazon Video on Demand 10%, even if you buy Gift Cards redeemable on the Amazon site, we get 6%! Wow! Thank you Amazon.com!

thank you for being a friend!

Look at what your donations are doing! GOOD FOR YOU! We are just doing our humble little rescue work, but it is you, the donors, who are the silent heroes of our rescue efforts. Please consider becoming a Friend of Camp Cocker and sign up to donate monthly, for as little as $3 a month, you can make a difference. And keep spreading the word to everyone you know and ask them to consider doing the same! Have a birthday coming up? an anniversary? a wedding? ask your loved ones to become a monthly donor in your honor! You can pass this message forward by clicking on the share link below, to email it or send out to your social networking site. Thank you so much for supporting our little rescue! We woof you! Much love, Cathy and the doggies of Camp Cocker Rescue. Click HERE to become a monthly donor or click on the paypal button below for a one time donation towards Jasper, Gerry, Owain, Wally and Goldie's medical and boarding.

our donors pay off our old vet debt and we rescue five new kids!

ahh . . . so it is not just Los Angeles shelters that are in crisis

We haven't been updating our blog in the last ten days because we got really busy, really fast. Our very generous donors, all of you, helped to bring us in to the home stretch and last week we were able to pay off both of our huge vet debts and pay off our June boarding bill that was long over due. We had been monitoring several of the thirty shelters that we cover for cockers, one shelter had 19, another had 9, and most of the others have an average of 3 to 6 cockers right now. We had to make some very tough decisions about who we could help next. It was not easy. Helping some dogs meant other dogs were not going to get saved. We went to the Bakersfield shelter intending to get a dog out that had severe mange and his mate, and we ended up leaving with five cockers that day. Not our original plan, but then again, nothing about animal rescue can be planned.

First row: Jasper with demodectic mange, his bonded mate Gerry with the matted ears. Second row: after a bath and hair cut, Jasper and Gerry happy to be together and out of the shelter. Older feller, Wally with the freckle face. Owain with the double cherry eyes (they are so old the tissue is no longer red, it is dark). Goldie the spaniel mix (sshh, don't tell anyone she isn't a cocker, she needs a home as much as anyone). If you double click on each picture, it will lead you to a video clip that is unedited, raw footage.

We are also working on some new changes for our website so that you, the friends of Camp Cocker, can become more involved on a day to day basis, follow what we are spending to rehab the dogs, see who is on the waiting list for medical next and to help spread the word to everyone you know that we need more friends. We understand that donations are down due to the economy. We are all just trying to get through it. The flip side is that because of the economy, more animals than ever, in the history of doing animal rescue, more animals are entering our shelter systems - and they are not getting out alive. Because of this crisis, we want to ask people if making just a very small monthly donation is do-able for you? The price of a coffee or of eating out lunch? Please consider becoming a Friend of Camp Cocker and sign up to donate monthly, for as little as $3 a month, you can make a difference. And keep spreading the word to everyone you know and ask them to consider doing the same! You can pass this message forward by clicking on the share link below, to email it or send out to your social networking site. Thank you so much for supporting our little rescue! We woof you! Much love, Cathy and the doggies of Camp Cocker Rescue. Click HERE to become a monthly donor or click on the paypal button below for a one time donation towards Jasper, Gerry, Owain, Wally and Goldie's medical and boarding.