Just another normal day at the shop... LOL...

Twice a month (every 2 weeks) we receive our water delivery and as we lined up the bottles yesterday for pick-up, I just had to grab a photo of this visual.  The line of empty bottles is longer than the 'Wall of Life' - small photos of the 875+ dogs we have saved in the past 3 years.

People have asked us why we pay for water (20 bottles @ $6 a bottle every two weeks and a $3100+ annual expense for us).  

And yes, that is all the TLC rescues drink at the shop.  

But many of the shelter dogs come out with parasites, intestinal issues that easily grow into diarrhea, nervousness as they recover from shelter shock, etc.  The more consistent and routine we can create in an environment, the easier their recovery from shelter trauma.

This means we provide them with a stable and nutritional diet with few changes, monitoring of their poop and addressing health issues as soon as we notice them. 

Municipal water sources are not monitored to the extent 'water for purchase' are --- it usually contains more chemicals and can even have excessive rust, depending upon the route it takes from generation to someone's tap.  Our experience has shown that the quicker you get to routine in their life, the faster these dogs recover from being dumped in a shelter.

Most dogs don't retain but throw off the 'B' vitamins they get in their diet when under stress.  And we also supplement their diets with probiotics as well.  It can take up to 6 months for a dog to recover from the shelter experience --- from losing their owner suddenly, new food and new people, maybe living on the streets for some time --- to the shelter environment with loud audio levels, a ton of unfamiliar smells and a whole new routine they might not be familiar with.

Most people don't realize this, but the audio level in a shelter are usually greater than 100 db (source).  To put this in perspective, 95 db is a subway train and 110 db is a jackhammer, so a shelter environment's sound level is right in the middle most of the day and sometimes into the night.  Another one of the reasons we work so hard on providing a serene and quiet environment for our rescues...

Changes of any kind can spark diarrhea in a dog, and for some of these dogs we pull, they are already underweight, might have been nervous and upset for some time, etc.  A bout of diarrhea can push their digestive system into overdrive and even dehydration and death!

This is why we use bottled water, recommend it to new adopters, supply a small portion of the kibble we have their new pup on during the adoption process and stress SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWW changes in diet.