♥ A BIG Bunny!

♥ Freedom and Jeff

By Jeff Guidry

Freedom and I have been together 10 years this summer. She came in as a baby in 1998 with two broken wings. Her left wing doesn't open all the way even after surgery, it was broken in 4 places. She's my baby.
 
When Freedom came in she could not stand.  Both wings were broken, her left wing in 4 places. She was emaciated and covered in lice. We made the decision to give her a chance at life, so I took her to the vet's office.  From then on, I was always around her. We had her in a huge dog carrier with the top off, and it was loaded up with shredded newspaper for her to lay in. I used to sit and talk to her, urging her to live, to fight; and she would lay there looking at me with those big brown eyes. We also had to tube feed her for weeks.

This went on for 4-6 weeks, and by then she still couldn't stand. It got to the point where the decision was made to euthanize her if she couldn't stand in a week. You know you don't want to cross that line between torture and rehab, and it looked like death was winning. She was going to be put down that Friday, and I was supposed to come in on that Thursday afternoon. I didn't want to go to the center that Thursday, because I couldn't bear the thought of her being euthanized; but I went anyway, and when I walked in everyone was grinning from ear to ear. I went immediately back to her dowl cage; and there she was, standing on her own, a big beautiful eagle.  She was ready to live. I was just about in tears by then. That was a very good day.

We knew she could never fly, so the director asked me to glove train her. I got her used to the glove, and then to jesses, and we started doing education programs for schools in western Washington . We wound up in the newspapers, radio (believe it or not) and some TV.  Miracle Pets even did a show about us.

In the spring of 2000, I was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. I had stage 3, which is not good (one major organ plus everywhere), so I wound up doing 8 months of chemo. Lost the hair - the whole bit. I missed a lot of work.  When I felt good enough, I would go to Sarvey and take Freedom out for walks. Freedom would also come to me in my dreams and help me fight the cancer.  This happened time and time again.

Fast forward to November 2000, the day after Thanksgiving, I went in for my last checkup. I was told that if the cancer was not all gone after 8 rounds of chemo, then my last option was a stem cell transplant.  Anyway, they did the tests; and I had to come back Monday for the results. I went in Monday, and I was told that all the cancer was gone.  Yahoo!

So the first thing I did was get up to Sarvey and take the big girl out for a walk. It was misty and cold. I went to her flight and jessed her up, and we went out front to the top of the hill. I hadn't said a word to Freedom, but somehow she knew. She looked at me and wrapped both her wings around me to where I could feel them pressing in on my back (I was engulfed in eagle wings), and she touched my nose with her beak and stared into my eyes, and we just stood there like that for I don't know how long. That was a magic moment. We have been soul mates ever since she came in. This is a very special bird.

On a side note:  I have had people who were sick come up to us when we are out, and Freedom has some kind of hold on them. I once had a guy who was terminal come up to us and I let him hold her. His knees just about buckled and he swore he could feel her power coarse through his body. I have so many stories like that.

I never forget the honor I have of being so close to such a magnificent spirit as Freedom's.

Hope you enjoy this.

Jeff

Jeff Guidry and Freedom are at Sarvey Wildlife Center

A Special Thanks to David for passing on this lovely story to us!

♥ Rory & Millie

Just like his Labrador friends, he wags his tail, Fetches sticks and rolls on his back to have his tummy tickled. But the hooves and mane give way his real identity - he's a SHETLAND PONY!

Eight-week old RORY picked up his canine traits after he was befriended by dogs at the Essex Horse and Pony Sanctuary in Pitsea.

Rory was rejected by his mother after he was born. After arriving at the sanctuary he became ill and spent all his time being nursed in the office - attracting the interest of Labradors Alfie and Millie - owned by stable manager Sam Edwards.   Rory lay in Sue's lap with his  little hooves sticking out and Alfie would come up and wash them.

When Rory was left with a white moustache after  drinking milk, Alfie would clean that too.

Rory fetching a stick.

Rory at play.

Despite all, Rory ended up being closer to Millie because she was nearer his size.

♥ My Hero

She is pregnant, he had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard, while he continued to fight the fire. When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest.

A photographer from the Charlotte, North Carolina newspaper, noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman.   He saw her walking straight toward the fireman and wondered what she was going to do.

As he raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had saved her life and the lives of her babies and kissed him just as the photographer snapped this photograph.

♥ A Man and his Bears

♥ An Alaskan Clydesdale

♥ Beautiful Little Powder

A man in Rhinelander, Wisconsin had a very special experience.  He saw this little animal run out in front of a car and thought it was a lost baby goat.  He stopped to save it and it turned out to be a very rare Albino Whitetail Deer, only a few hours old.  Being unable to find the mother, he took the deer home and he is doing fine.  The kids called him Powder and to quickly to a bottle and following the family around the house.  Taking the proper measures to ensure a healthy and happy life, they will release him to a rehab farm.  The cute little fellow has a snow white coat, pink eyes, ears, nose and hooves.  A tiny little thing, check out the guy's shoe next to Powder in the first picture. So adorable and only one in a million are born.

♥ A Surprising Catch

♥ Playmates in the Wild

♥ Fuzzy Wuzzy

A bear was walking across Rainbow Bridge (Old Hwy 40 at Donner Summit, Truckee, CA) on Saturday when two cars also crossing the bridge scared the bear into jumping over the edge of the bridge.  Somehow the bear caught the ledge and was able to pull itself to safety. Authorities decided that nothing could be done to help Saturday night so they returned Sunday morning to find the bear sound asleep on the ledge.  After securing a net under the bridge the bear was tranquilized, fell into the net, lowered, then woke up and walked out of the net. Kudos to the everyone in Truckee, CA who cared enough to help! Simply awesome!!

♥ Lily the Barbary

Lily is a Barbary, the largest in all the lion family. Only 40 exist in the world and all in captivity.  They are originally form North Africa where they are now extinct in the wild. Lily was born on June 3, 2007 at the Belfast Zoo and will grow to nearly 400 pounds. She was rejected by her mother, Fidda, and was taken in by zookeeper Linda Frew who raised little Lily at her home.  Her bed was an empty banana box with a heat lamp overhead which was located in Linda's bedroom and needed feeding every two hours by bottle.  Lily would sometimes sneak out of her bed and into bed with Linda and her partner.  Linda has three sons and Lily was like a family pet.

Upon gaining size and strength, Lily was returned to the zoo and lives in an enclosure with an Akita named Keepa which will help to teach her proper animal behavior. Miss Frew said: "I can hand rear Lily and keep her safe but I can't teach her the behavioral side of how an animal should act. Keepa is teaching her how to be submissive and how to be dominant and how to be a sociable, well-adjusted animal. She is so precious and so important to the future of Barbary lions."

♥ This Little Puppy has a Big Heart

Awwww, this is truly a little, bitty puppy with a great big heart! He's an adorable Chihuahua born with a perfectly shaped heart patch on its side. He is one and a half months old and was named Heartkun by its owner Emiko Sakurada of Japan. Heartkun was born in a large litter but was the only one have this special little marking.  The cute factor rating on this little guy is just through the roof!

♥ Giant Panda Gives Birth to Fourth Cub

Sixteen year old Giant Panda, Bai Yun gave birth to her fourth cub on Friday, August 3, 2007 after  2½ hours of labor, only the fourth time this has occurred in the United States.

The gender of the newborn Panda is unknown until the mother leaves its cub long enough for vets and zoo officials to do a quick check up. 

The father is another giant panda at the zoo, Gao Gao who mated with Bai Yun in April.  Bai Yun has three other offspring all born at the San Diego Zoo.  Hua Mei born in 1999, Mei Sheng in 2003 and Su Lin in 2005.  Hua Mei's birth was the first Panda born in captivity in the United States.  Panda are the world's most endangered species and births in captivity are very rare. Current estimates of the Panda population are 1,600 living in the wild and approximates 160 in captivity around the world.

China has a long history of giving the gift of the panda to other nations a goodwill gesture. It is its national animal.

♥ Dog Produces Milk to Feed a Kitten

Tahoe and Lillie hang out, nap and cuddle together. In the mornings, at night and following naps, Tahoe rolls over and feeds from Lillie, purring and pawing at his new mother's belly. Lilly lays still, content to be a mother again.

"She's a good dog," Beck, the veterinarian said. "Having Tahoe around induced a false pregnancy, a nursing response. It made the hormones needed to produce milk. Now, I'm sure the cat obviously had it in her mind the dog was her mother."

♥ Duck Born with Four Legs Falls in Love

Stumpy, the duck born with four legs had to have one amputated after catching one of his feet in chicken wire.  But the new three-legged Stumpy can move around much easier and faster than before. He can easily keep up with his new lady-love Alice when he's feeling frisky! It won't be long until a little batch of ducklings will follow!

Stumpy's Owners, Paul and Nicky Janaway operate a duck farm in Australia

and were surprised when he was born in February of 2007.  His condition is caused by a rare mutation in his genes. They had a similar duckling hatch several years ago but, unfortunately, it did not live. So when Stumpy survived until adulthood the Janaways were surprised and grateful.

♥ Eclyse, the Amazing Zorse

It looks as if someone tried to give a zebra a respray and then ran out of white paint halfway through the job. But, in reality, there is no artificial coloring on display here. This amazing natural coat belongs to Eclyse the zorse.  Her father is a zebra, while her mother is a horse. And she's walking proof of how a child inherits genes from both parents.

Eclyse has earned its stripes as one of the zoo's main attractions. For while most zebra-horse crossbreeds sport stripes across their entire body, Eclyse only has two such patches, on its face and rear. The one-year-old zorse was the accidental product of a holiday romance when her mother, Eclipse, was taken from her German safari park home to a ranch in Italy for a brief spell. There she was able to roam freely with other horses and a  number of zebras, including one called Ulysses who took a fancy to her.

When Eclipse returned home, she surprised her keepers by giving birth to the baby zorse whose mixed markings betray her colorful parentage. The foal was promptly given a name that is in itself a hybrid, of her parents' names.  Now she's become a major attraction at a safari park at Schloss Holte Stukenbrock, near the German border with Holland, where she has her own enclosure.

Udo Richter, spokesman for the park, said, "You can tell she is a mix just by looking at her. But in temperament she can also exhibit characteristics from each parent. "She is usually relatively tame like a horse but occasionally shows the fiery temperament of a zebra, leaping around like one." Horses and zebras are often crossbred in Africa and are used as trekking animals on Mount Kenya.

♥ Jake the Labrador - Sept 11 Hero dies

A black Labrador who became a national canine hero after burrowing through white-hot, smoking debris in search of survivors at the World Trade Center site died Wednesday after a battle with cancer.

Owner Mary Flood had Jake put to sleep Wednesday after a last stroll through the fields and a dip in the creek near their home in Oakley, Utah. He was in too much pain at the end, shaking with a 105-degree fever as he lay on the lawn.

No one can say whether the dog would have gotten sick if he hadn't been exposed to the smoky air at ground zero, but cancer in dogs Jake's age — he was 12 — is quite common.

Some rescue dog owners who worked at the World Trade Center site claim their animals have died because of their work at ground zero. But scientists who have spent years studying the health of Sept. 11 search-and-rescue have found no sign of major illness in the animals.

The results of an autopsy on Jake's cancer-riddled body will be part of a University of Pennsylvania medical study of Sept. 11 search-and-rescue dogs.

Flood had adopted Jake as a 10-month-old disabled puppy — abandoned on a street with a broken leg and a dislocated hip.

"But against all odds he became a world-class rescue dog," said Flood, a member of Utah Task Force 1, one of eight federal search-and-rescue teams that desperately looked for human remains at ground zero. Anguished New Yorkers honored the dogs.

On the evening of his team's arrival, Jake walked into a fancy Manhattan restaurant wearing his search-and-rescue vest and was promptly treated to a free steak dinner under a table.

Flood eventually trained Jake to become one of fewer than 200 U.S. government-certified rescue dogs — a muscular animal on 24-hour call to tackle disasters such as building collapses, earthquakes, hurricanes and avalanches.

After Hurricane Katrina, Flood and Jake drove 30 hours from Utah to Mississippi, where they searched through the rubble of flooded homes in search of survivors.

In recent years, Jake helped train younger dogs and their handlers across the country. Jake showed other dogs how to track scents, even in the snow and how to look up if the scent was in a tree. He also did therapy work with children at a Utah camp for burn victims and at senior homes and hospitals.

"He was a great morale booster wherever he went," says Flood. "He believed that his cup was always full, never half-full. He was always ready to work, eager to play — and a master at helping himself to any unattended food items."

Cynthia Otto of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, who is researching the health of September 11 dogs, expects Jake and the other animals being analyzed will serve as sentinels on possible long-term consequences stemming from 9/11.

Jake's ashes will be scattered "in places that were important to him," says Flood, like his Utah training grounds, the rivers and hills near home where he swam and roamed

Source Yahoo! News

♥ Cat Survives 3 Weeks without Food or Water

A cat whose owners thought was lost spent nearly three weeks crossing the Pacific Ocean in a shipping container with no food or water — and appears to be just fine. The voyage began after Pamela Escamilla lost sight of her 3-year-old calico, Spice, while packing a huge container with household goods in Waikoloa Village, Hawaii.

The container was shipped June 15 to Southern California.  Escamilla, 39, and her husband couldn't find the cat before taking their flight and asked neighbors in Hawaii to call if Spice returned. While the Escamillas feared the worst, Spice spent 18 days in the pitch-black container without food or water as it crossed the Pacific before arriving at the San Bernardino home of Escamilla's parents on Tuesday.

"We really thought that cat was going to be dead," said Edward Gardner, Escamilla's father. When Escamilla opened the container, she and family members huddled around her noticed fluffs of cat hair on the floor. They started removing items and Escamilla climbed into the container to search.

"I saw (Spice) poke her head out from behind some bicycles, and I started to scream," said Escamilla. She gently picked up the cat and went to the veterinarian, who said the feline's prognosis was good.

Spice's kidneys had shrunk and her bowels were backed up, but she managed to get some food and water down at the vet, Escamilla said. The vet gave the Escamillas a soup recipe for Spice made of chicken broth and marrow. "(The vet) said, 'That's a calico for you,"' Escamilla said. "They have a survival instinct."

Source: Yahoo! News

Awesome Animals - Pages: 1  2