I've noticed a trend in this blog of mine…I have been focused on Great Danes that come to us with serious issues (like Amy) or the Great Danes that come to us with two paws in the grave (Ruby and Oscar). Don’t get me wrong, it is important for all of you to hear their stories – because their stories must be told. But there are just as many perfectly healthy, well-mannered, no-issue Great Danes in our program that deserve some attention too.

note - click "read more" to view the rest of the story and click any word in blue for links to additional information

I want you to meet Amy - an exceptional dog, but not in the traditional way. She will never be one of those search and rescue dogs featured on national news and it is not likely she will win awards in confirmation or agility trials any time soon, but Amy has won our hearts and we are so proud of all she has accomplished.

Amy’s story starts off like so many other dogs: born for the sole purpose of breeding, she was one of nine Great Danes we pulled from a bad situation southeast of Dallas.

As I mentioned in Ruby's post, you need a really hard shell to do rescue work. If not, then the constant barrage of unwanted animals would suck your soul dry.

With the transition of the web site to a new platform there have been many challenges getting the conversion just right. The old site was home-grown and we were able to customize it on the fly to make it do backflips or what ever we wanted. The problem was that all this work was being done by one person, Tammy. It was a lot of work for one person.

We take the naming of our danes very seriously around here. Naming rights are given to the volunteer who picks the dog up from the kill shelter and escorts it to one of our rescue vets. Shelter-to-vet transports are tough because you never know what you are going to get: a crazy, bucking bronco of a dane; a dirty, filthy, stinky, vomiting dane; a dane that looks as if it is ready to give birth…and then does…in the backseat of an SUV doing 70MPH down a highway; a dane with bleeding tumors or open sores - almost all are covered in fleas and almost all are a mess.

The theme of the web site has been updated. The new look is a little more compact. The menu bar at the top has more room and there is a second level to it. Now there is room for links to "My Account" and "Log out". This should be the last of the dramatic look changes. From now on I will be able to focus on content and structure.

Happy New Year. I have thrown the switch on the web site conversion. In order to save some expense I am converting from ASP to PHP technology and consolidating onto a newer server. This means that the old ASP box will be shut down very shortly. I have converted 10 years of pictures, postings and 1200 dane profiles to the new site.

The forums cannot be easily converted to the new technology. Snitz was a dead end. I have converted the user profiles from Snitz. Users will need to reset their passwords to login. The new side forums will start fresh.