This New Year is starting with this new, rambling adventure down the Rescue Road, the old Blog Road.  I hope to post rescue activities and some old things I have written about rescue.

It has been a slow start, so far, the dogs referred to us were 1) not Cairn Terriers, 2) adopted from the shelter before we go to look at the dog,  or 3) kept by the owner who  wanted to be involved in the process.  I am sure the phone will ring soon, we average about 10-12 a year and it is zero so far.

Up front, we normally work with rescuing purebred Cairn Terriers.
“Only purebred?”, you ask.

I have 3 Cairns of my own and in a suburban tract, that is really the city limit.  Still we will bring in a Rescue dog and keep him until he is placed.  Typically, I hold the dog for at least 10 days to 2 weeks so I can evaluate him and then I start to work placing him.  This can take 2 days to 30 days for a purebred Cairn.  That means if I bring a rescue in, he will probably be here from 3 weeks  to 6 weeks.

Now, if I bring in a Cairn mix, he goes through the same process but then the bump in the process hits.  People who come looking for Cairns, for the most part, are looking for a Cairn and not a mix.  When I mention a mix, the response is usually, “thanks but no thanks”. As a result, Cairn mixes have stayed with us for about 6 months before I could get them placed. Since I want to keep that single slot available for the next rescue, I don’t want it occupied by a mix when there are cairns looking for a place to be fostered.  So, I don’t take in mixes anymore.  At some point, I will put up a link to pictures of  the various dogs that have been referred to me as Cairn terriers.  Some are close and some are simply a very bad guess about what a Cairn Terrier looks like.

That has been fixed, the pictures of non-Cairns are up, take a look at the bottom of the right hand sidebar.  All of those are dogs that have been referred to us as Cairn terriers.  We did place 3 of them, thanks to some people who were just looking for a dog.  Eddie stayed for almost 9 months before he got placed.  There are othe non-Cairns we get queried about but we never got a picture of them.