Lest Ye Judge

Well it's been about a year since my last blog. I took a break from being Big Nate and attended to some things that were long since calling for my attention.

Now I'm back in full swing working with the Poooh Busters crew again to promote responsible pet guardianship, pet care and the general well being of our most beloved creatures.

My first blog upon returning is being sparked by a couple of pictures I posted on our Facebook page. I wanted to show the world what a great thing we were doing cleaning up a new client's winter long poop build up. We get many, many calls from folks who don't get a chance to make it out to the yard or the dog run to scoop the poop throughout our crazy, Calgary winters. In the spring, the snow melts and reveals a rather overwhelming mess.

Most folks realize they let it get out of hand and call us to come help. We are always glad to do so. After all, without these situations we certainly wouldn't have the client base we do!

After posting the before and after pics of a an initial cleaning we did for a dog run, many of our fans expressed a passionate response to what they saw. The original intent of the posting was to show any potential clients who come to visit our page what we can do! We can take a poooh-filled dog run and make it look beautiful again. We just wanted to show a transformation and certainly did not want to put our client's situation on display for public chastisation (is that even a word?).

Now our team sees this kind of thing all the time and to us this was not even close to the worst of what we have seen. Trust me, this particular job took next to no time to do and generated 5 or 6 bags of waste. We go to some places where the massive amounts of poooh has been stepped in because there simply is not any visible ground to walk on! We walk out of some yards 2 or 3 hours later with 20 bags of waste.

To us, this job and all the others we do every Spring was just business as usual (no pun intended). We posted pictures of this particular job because it had a dramatic before and after effect.

So all I ask is please do not judge, we certainly don't. We know that scooping the poop is not something we think about on a regular basis. It's out of sight and out of mind. Simply put, people have so much going on in their lives that it is easy to let it go. Then one day you go out and BAM! The sheer amount of the poop build-up catches you off guard. Hey even the Poooh Busters team can be guilty of not staying on top of their own dog run that is shared by four very large pooches.

Mrs. Big Nate and I rely heavily on the team to come clean our yard every Monday too. If it weren't for them, our yard would have tons of little bombs everywhere from a winter of neglect.

Let he who has never sinned cast the first stone!

What About Dad?

Father's Day is this Sunday, so there's still time to find a thoughtful gift for your the dog dad in your life, and here are just a few ideas:

1. Honor dad's generous spirit with a donation to the Calgary Humane Society or his favourite rescue organization in his name.
2. Give a dog dad the gift of time: wrap up a custom-made coupon for dog washes or grooming, dog walking, or even a photo shoot.
3. Celebrate the love of a pup with a framed photo - perfect for the mantle or a dog dad's desk.
4. Surprise a dog dad with a photo mug or keychain featuring his best friend. Find a website with photo gifts, upload a photo and you're set.
5. How about a gift certificate from an awesome online pet boutique? Sometimes dad likes to pamper his best friend!
6. Plan a special outing (you, dad and dog), pack a picnic and enjoy an outdoor day of summer fun.

So don't forget the doggie loving dad's this weekend. They aren't always just about big screen TVs and Surround Sound Systems. Well maybe just a little...

Happy Father's Day! Woof!

Why Can’t We Be More Like Dogs?

Dogs are always true to themselves. They do what they want, live in each and every moment and are completely happy with whom they are.

We as humans however, trudge off to work everyday and face the unbearable monotony of our boring and unfulfilling work day. Why do we do this? In order to achieve all the things we are told we want. House, car, nice clothes, vacations and so on. We work 40, 50 or 60 hours each week to make the money we need to buy these things and most of us are unhappy in the jobs we do. And once we buy all this stuff, most of us are still unhappy and we continue to only see the things that we don’t have. It’s a vicious circle and we spend our lives existing instead of actually living.

Dogs however, take each moment as it comes. Although many dogs experience extreme sadness and despair through neglect, abuse, starvation and loneliness, they still find the good in everything and experience extreme joy once all that hardship passes.

Most dogs living within good families sit at home day after day waiting for us to return and as boring as it may get for them, they are completely happy doing so. They wait patiently for us to return which is the highlight of their day. They really only have one desire, to be our friend and companion. They only want to love and be loved in return. Everything else is either an annoyance or a bonus.

How simple would life be for us if all we cared about was being someone’s friend and wanting to be loved by those closest to us?

This old dog could certainly stand to learn a new trick.

Even Feral Dogs Deserve A Chance

I have a friend named Patty who recently moved to the Okotoks area and lives in a house with good sized yard. A perfect set up for someone who loves dogs and cats!

After moving there she quickly found an awesome rescue organization based in Okotoks called Pound Rescue. Believing in what they do, Patty ended up fostering a loveable little pup named Charlie who had met with some very bad luck early in his life. Due to his injuries, Charlie ended up losing one of his rear legs. The three-legged dog soon made his way into Patty’s heart and she went from fostering him to adopting him. I always meant to blog on this story because Patty’s dedication to Charlie was amazing as she nursed him back to health, created a loving home for him to feel safe in and eventually making him into the confident, fully functioning dog he is today.

Yesterday, Patty sent me a note on a new Pound Rescue foster she has dedicated her time to, a feral puppy she named Bear. She received this puppy only a week ago, he is only three months old and is believed to have never interacted or even been touched by human hands. He and his siblings were found on April 18th covered in porcupine quills.

Below is an email update she recently sent to Pound Rescue to let them know how Bear is progressing with his rehab into a home filled with love, food and a safe environment. Keep in mind, Bear is a wild puppy and has never known life with humans.

“I picked up the puppy on Thursday, April 21st in the AM, feeling sorry for him from the start when the vet picked him up and he defecated all over himself because he was so terrified. I got him home and into the kennel where he cowered into the corner.

I spent most of Thursday leaving him alone; Charlie and the cats spent lots of time in his room checking him out, I would walk in the room occasionally and just talk to him. Thursday evening I was able hand feed and he even let me crawl into the kennel to spend the night petting and scratching!

Friday I picked up an X-pen, which I set up in the living room by the TV (for people noise), in front of the window (for viewing) and right where he could see the other animals and myself all the time. This allowed me to also sit in the pen with him and Charlie while watching TV and I could pet Bear for hours!

Saturday we progressed to outside in the yard, I felt like the poor guy needed a stretch! I left a leash on him but let him run in the yard and just be a puppy. He came running to me on the deck with Charlie when I held out a treat and called. After that he started to come up to me over and over again to see if and whenI had any more to hand out. Turns out Bear loves the squeaky toys, and runs after this one special dog ball I have in the yard. Saturday night was spent in the pen again, all three of us, getting pets and loving!

Sunday was the best! We went in the yard again, Bear ran and played with toys and with Charlie, and even remember to come running to me to check my hand for treats again. My friend Chris came by with his dog, Bailey. They all three played and played, Chris could not believe his eyes! Sunday night in the pen again (need a bigger pen), Bear enjoyed getting pets until he fell asleep.

Monday I left him in his pen with Charlie roaming free in the house. While I’m at work, they have the window to look out and each other for company and when I get home we'll go outside for more play time.

If you can believe it, he's even started using the dog training, pee pads! Whew!”

This is just the beginning for Patty, Bear, three-legged Charlie and the cats. Patty’s goal is to be able to trust the newly rehabilitated Bear and Charlie with the run of the house in about a month. This is another example of people’s dedication and love for the unwanted and unfortunate. What would we do without folks like Patty and the people who run rescue organizations like Pound Rescue?

Keep it up Patty, we’re rooting for you and Bear! I think she’s actually thinking of renaming him from Bear to Teddy.

For more information on Pound Rescue visit their website at http://www.poundrescue.com/ or "Like" them on their Facebook fan page.

Forget the dog, beware of owner!

I just can't sit back and let this go by.

On Wednesday, April 20th someone decided to post an ad on Kijiji completely slamming our company, our service rep and our owner, Roland Pearson.

I feel the need to defend ourselves and I’m going to choose to do it here on my blog. I hate to make this public and I’ll apologize upfront when I start getting personal. Because I will…

The ad posted on Kijiji, April 20, 2011 is as follows:

"i just caught an employee of poooh busters going through my mail box not just placing somthing in but rummaging through

apparently this is ok with poooh busters because the owner roland hung up several times when confronted on this issue. he then called my sister and harrased her that he would sue if i posted about this lol here you go Roland Pearson fill your boots thief...

take this for what it is worth... but i cannot recomend Poooh busters

403-462-4351 Roland Pearson @ poooh busters

http://www.pooohbusters.com/guarantee.htm

how about you guarantee me your employees are bonded

a guaranteed piece of SH$# is still a piece of #@&*

Edit thank you for all your replies. yes pooh busters was hired to do two family yards, all accounts are prepaid address is clear and there was no reason to be in mailbox. yes we have contacted police and canada post.

April 21, 2011…yesterdays post got 96 hits and i received many emails of support . You are right we do need posts like this to warn others of shady practices, word of mouth good or bad will have a great impact on people like these..."

As you can see the post was very well written *insert sarcasm here*. Additionally, I have to say the view of this incident from the author’s point of view is completely twisted, much like the author himself.

Our side of the story:

Our long time, faithful and hard working service representative, Shaun visited a brand new client's yard for the first time. She happens to be the mother of another client of ours. She liked the idea of Poooh Busters coming to clean her daughter’s yard so much; she decided to hire us as well for her own yard. You see she has a 30-something, lazy son living a glorious life filled with X-Box and Chitos dwelling in her basement. He seems to think that owning his own dog and living with his mother negates his responsibility to clean up after his own dog. Because his mother doesn’t want to clean up her son’s dog’s crap herself, she’s hired us to do it for him. Unfortunately for her, she’s paying for it. Surprise, surprise…

Shaun arrived at this house for the very first visit, dropped our door hanger in the mailbox and started to follow his normal routine of cleaning the yard. Inside the house Shaun could hear the family dog going crazy because like most dogs we encounter every day, it didn’t like seeing a stranger roaming around its backyard territory. Funny thing is, dogs don’t know any better, and humans do. Most sane people would ask why this person is in the yard. Not this guy.

I assume he was immediately put into a bad mood because with his dog going crazy he was forced to hit the pause button on his very important game to see what the commotion was all about (I have to wonder as a side note, why wasn’t this dude at work?). He had emerged from the basement ready for a confrontation with Shaun. He was immediately very angry and threatening and even threatened to release his dog on Shaun.

Of course Shaun decided this was a good time to leave the backyard and went out the gate to the front. Shaun decided it might be best to check his door hanger card to see if he was maybe at the wrong address. Why was this guy so upset? Shaun went to the client's mailbox to pull out the door hanger card in hopes of confirming he had the correct address. I guess this is where we are accused of “rummaging” through our client’s mailbox.

After it was over and Shaun left, the angry son must have immediately hopped onto our website and grabbed some information off of it, including Roland’s contact information. He called Roland and began yelling and screaming at him, threatening and belittling Roland and our staff. Roland as most people would do hung up on him as it was not a productive conversation. Not to mention he wasn’t even our client, his mother hired us. This maniac barraged Roland’s phone with at least 10 more calls, leaving messages that would make a sailor blush.

Roland could not get a hold of our client so he went to the next person on the file, her daughter, our other client. Roland wondered if there was anything she could to do help us with the situation that was started by her brother. This is where we are accused of “harassing” her. Note: I can spell the word harassed.

We eventually did get a hold of our client and let her know what had happened. We have yet to come to some sort of resolve on the issue and when we do I’ll be sure to place an update to this blog.

It may be unprofessional of me to post this to our public via my blog but we are a hard working, family owned company. I especially work very hard at creating the image of a fun, family-oriented culture for Poooh Busters, so I am taking this attack somewhat personally.

I mean come on, we pick up dog crap for a living, there shouldn’t be this much drama in what we do. Please accept my apologies for the rant but I wanted to make sure our side of the story was heard. We have made mistakes in the past and hope we did our best to correct them. If we were wrong in this case, we'd sit and take our lumps.

We were just doing what we were hired to do. Unfortunately for Shaun, he just happened to come across a gap-toothed, basement dwelling troll who got mad because he actually had to get out of bed before noon.

A Positive Message

As many of us experience on Facebook, we inevitably find people we've lost touch with over the years. In one case I stumbled across Allison, someone I dated for a few years back in the early 90's. We eventually parted ways.

Some 15 years later Facebook comes along and reunites us in a virtual world. She is happily married and living in Iowa. Back when we dated, I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know her Moms. They were a couple of quirky, happy-go-lucky ladies who travelled the country in their huge RV, and every now and then they would blow into town and stay with us for a few days. One of the things I remember fondly about these wonderful ladies was their love for all animals, particularly dogs. They used to always travel with their dog Jessie, a medium sized mix breed who looked a little like a German Sheppard. I recall Jessie was an incredibly friendly and well-behaved dog. Not knowing much about dogs back then, I did know that this dog was an above average, good and loyal dog with a huge heart...much like their guardians. Jessie has since passed on but the Moms always found room in their hearts and family to care for more dogs since.

Allison recently posted a note about her Moms and their latest experience with another one of their lovable pooches. I was at first saddened to read this story but I soon found it was written with a sanguine message despite the tragedy. With the unfortunate events that sometimes fall upon us as pet parents, it's nice to see that we can take those same events and turn them into something positive.

This is Allison’s note:

“To begin, my moms are the Mother Theresas of the pet kingdom - they have always had multitudes of cats and dogs that have been discarded or mistreated by the masses. The day before yesterday my mom was doing her usual park excursion with their current two pups. During that walk, their eldest dog, Emma, was accosted by a couple young brutish canines. The large alphas were muzzled, which my mother was most thankful for, but the excitement was still too much for Emma to handle. By the time they returned to the van, Emma was in great distress and went into horrific convulsions, biting and swollowing her tongue and suffered a heart attack. My wee little mom (4'10"-71 yrs) had to wrestle this extremely large animal, who had just died before her, into her van. Her other dog, Camilla, watching on in bug-eyed horror. She did it--she always gets done what needs to be done. When she arrived home, shaking still, she popped on Skype to tell me the sad news.

So what is the moral or point of this story? There is no one to hate or be angry with. No injustice to scream about. There is no other outcome to wish for. (Secretly, I will always carry the wish for all living creatures to pass miraculously in their sleep.) She is sad, she is rattled (a diet-breaking vodka was in order), but she is thankful. Emma had become so old and so crippled. She was suffering with the pain of her age -- and in a quick, unexpected moment it was over. Emma is at rest. My moms were saved the heartwrenching decision lurking in the near future to have her put to sleep and out of her daily misery. Those big dogs that made a fuss and went after her--they did not intend to cause her to die. It just happened that way. Life. Life takes over.

But my moms--it is terribly cliche but they are my heroes. Little old ladies kicking life's ass and taking names. Tough as nails. Not falling to pieces when a crisis rears it's head. And yet so giving, such open and welcoming hearts. Emma was alive still because of them. She, and countless wonderful animals before her, had long, well-fed, warm and happy lives because of them. And for as long as they live, any animal in need or distress that crosses their path will get nothing less. Love. Love takes over.”

Allison tells me Emma has been placed in a special place in the country to rest beside her past siblings including our beloved Jessie. Thank you for sharing this story Allison.

Western Canada Weight Pulling

It’s been a while since I last blogged. This is definitely a crazy time of year for Poooh Busters, the snow melts uncovering layer upon layer of that dreaded doggie doo. People call us desperate for help and want us to come immediately and we try our best to accommodate!

On top of our crazy season we try to fit in a bunch of other things as well. One of the biggies coming up for us is the Calgary Pet Expo. We are attending with our booth next weekend on March 26th and 27th. We can’t wait and are very excited as always to be part of such a great event. Please be sure to come down and look around. If you bring a donation for the Calgary Humane Society, you’ll get $2.00 off your admission!

The other thing we worked hard to fit in between initial cleans was to attend the Western Canada Weight Pulling event that took place on March 12th and 13th. Poooh Busters sponsored the final event. We also sponsored one of the awards that were given to the top weight pulling dogs. Sleep Rover Doggie Hotel & Daycare sponsored the other one.

This was an incredible and unique experience to say the least. Being a part of the pet industry, we get exposed to a lot of different activities and events for pets but this was certainly one of the coolest ones I’ve seen!

Basically, dogs are fixed to a pulling harness and compete to pull the most weight in the quickest time. Let me tell you, these dogs LOVE their job! They work hard to pull that cart of cement blocks across the finish line and are begging to do it again.

The event we attended was the final one of the season and the top dogs were there competing to be the best. The Poooh Busters team, including Mrs. Big Nate were there cheering on the dogs.

It’s a little known sport and the attendance for each event is up and down. It’s too bad, because I can see this being a really fun and exciting competition for competitors and spectators alike.

To help bring about more awareness, Poooh Busters will be working with organizer, Sean Hammell again for next year’s pulling season. We really hope to help him grow the audience and participation in the future so the dogs who are working hard and competing get the applause and cheers they deserve!

If you want more information on this dog weight pulling sport in Canada, be sure to visit the International Weight Pulling Association (IWPA) website. This is the organization that Sean Hammell’s events are registered through. They have the events listed, the results for the season and the champions. There is some really great stuff to check out.