Tina is now Sabrina...

Tina Turner, a rescue Maltese, has been adopted along with her daughter in the image. Their new mom already has a daughter named Tina so our Tina will now be called Sabrina. The names are close enough that she is already answering to Sabrina...



Sabrina's smallest boy is in the process of being adopted...



Her other daughter is also in the adoption process...



This has been a very good week for our rescue Maltese. Of course, we are not always fortunate in having cute rescue puppies. Many of our rescues are older and have special needs...

Hey Richard,

This has been a very good week for our rescue Maltese. Of course, we are not always fortunate in having cute rescue puppies. Many of our rescues are older and have special needs...

Keep them coming of these guys. Having said that, you bring up an interesting point. Not all of the rescues are so pretty. What tactics do you use to get them adopted?

James

awww.. they're just beautiful! So happy they have good homes now!

Quote:

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Hey Richard,

This has been a very good week for our rescue Maltese. Of course, we are not always fortunate in having cute rescue puppies. Many of our rescues are older and have special needs...

Keep them coming of these guys. Having said that, you bring up an interesting point. Not all of the rescues are so pretty. What tactics do you use to get them adopted?

James

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James,

We have received dogs whom I never thought would find a home... The very first thing we do is to spruce up the dog as much as possible. Sometimes this takes quite a while.

Sweety came to us in a horrible shape. She was wandering the streets of a local city and was covered with scabs, sores and fleas and was also pregnant...



After a lot of cleaning and TLC, Sweetie looked a lot better..



Porsche came to us after a bout with testicular cancer. Hormonal imbalances caused him to lose most of his hair...



Time and TLC helped grow back his hair but, hair was still very sparse on his chest...

I shot him with a neckerchief to disguise that lack of hair. We described the lack in his story on petfinder.com but, it was still better to shoot with the neckerchief.



Good pictures are essential (life saving) to rescue dogs. Showing them in the most positive way (as opposed to a raggedy dog in the back of a kennel) will result in a lot more hits.

Girly came to us with her coat in such terrible shape that she needed to be shaved down. I shot this image using the coat to disguise the lack of hair. Again, we told any prospective foster about her temporary lack of hair but, didn't need to shock them with a picture of a bald dog. It was after Girly that we decided to shoot the "before" pictures as soon as the dog arrived. These weren't meant to be photographic masterpieces, simply a baseline for us to judge the improvement.



Girly had another problem. She was deaf. We taught her some simple dog sign language and a donor paid for a collar which vibrated when a remote transmitter was pressed. We trained her to look around for hand signals whenever she felt the vibration. She is now a little boy's absolute best friend.

We belong to the American Maltese Association and our rescue efforts are aimed at that breed, which luckily are easier to place than many other breeds. Still, good pictures mean a lot. Another American Maltese Association member had a Maltese on www.petfinder.com for weeks with no hits. I shot an improved image to be posted and the hits began happening and the dog was adopted several weeks later.

We are extremely fortunate that our rescue dog vet bills are paid for through the American Maltese Association and that our vet gives us a good discount on any medical care for our rescue dogs. We could not afford to do this without the medical reimbursement.

We like to tell the story in the dog's own words... "I am Porsche, a four year old loving and happy maltese. I had testicular cancer but, the doctor tells me that he removed all of it...." and so on.

We use www.petfinder.com as the greatest resource out there. It is free and easy to use. It also has great visibility. You need to belong to an authorized rescue organization to post on petfinder.

We also have our own web site that will feature the dogs we have available and will tell the prospective adopter about us and make an application available...

www.julemaltese.com

We have also printed out business cards on our inkjet printer and have letter size posters up in various vets and dog grooming sites.