Bluebonnet Animal Rescue Network

Bluebonnet Animal Rescue Network Volunteers working to make life better for dogs and the humans who love them. Bluebonnet Animal Rescue Network is based at Windsong Ranch in Whitewright, Texas.

We specialize in working livestock guardian dogs, including breeds such as Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepherd, Akbash, and mixes of these and other LGD breeds. We are not breed-specific, but our experience and expertise is limited to a few breeds who have a centuries-long history of living and working on farms and ranches, in fields and mountains. We rescue many Great Pyrenees, Anatolian Shepherds

, Akbash, and mixes of these with other breeds. We have rescued a few Australian Shepherds, and are open to rescuing any dog that we think might be a good addition to life on a farm, ranch, or homestead. We test our foster dogs with our livestock, and place them in homes according to the things we learn about each dog through our testing. We work hard to evaluate a dog's temperament and behavior, and try to discern the kind of life each dog would prefer, whether that's living in the house as a pampered pet, in the pasture as a noble working dog, or some combination. You can find information about our adoption procedures on our website at www.bluebonnetrescue.org.

Today is the International Day of Charity, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. The primary purpo...
09/05/2026

Today is the International Day of Charity, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. The primary purpose of the International Day of Charity is to raise awareness and encourage social responsibility and public support for charity and charity-related activities worldwide.

Since this date falls during our annual fundraiser, it gives us another opportunity to encourage you to donate in support of our work. There are so many great organizations whose work you could support, but we hope that today, you'll choose Bluebonnet Animal Rescue.

If your budget has any wiggle room, and if you believe in the work that Bluebonnet does, please consider making a donation for this International Day of Charity. You can use the DONATE button on this post, or you can donate in any of these ways:

On our North Texas Giving Day page: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

PayPal -- [email protected]
Venmo -- (last 4 digits 3276 if it asks)
Zelle -- [email protected]

Checks can be mailed to:

Bluebonnet Animal Rescue
P. O. Box 964
Whitewright TX 75491

We understand that personal budgets are stretched too thin for many people, and if that's the case for you, we would appreciate your sharing our post to help us reach a wider audience.

THANK YOU!

Saturday - Please share!An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Even though several factors contribute to pet...
09/05/2026

Saturday - Please share!

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Even though several factors contribute to pet overpopulation, our first priority must be to reduce birth rates. Since 15 dogs and 45 cats are born for every human born, we cannot overcome the problem by rescuing them one at a time.

Top 3 Reasons to Spay and Neuter

1️⃣ Longer, healthier lives. Altering your canine friend will increase his life an average of 1 to 3 years; felines, 3 to 5 years. It helps reduce companion animal overpopulation and gives every pet a better chance at a full life.

2️⃣ Reduced cancer risk. Altered animals have very low to no risk of mammary gland tumors, prostate cancer, perianal tumors, pyometra, and uterine, ovarian, and testicular cancers.

3️⃣ Better, safer behavior. Sterilizing your cat or dog makes them a better pet, reducing the urge to roam and decreasing the risk of contracting diseases or getting hurt. Surveys indicate that as many as 85% of dogs hit by cars are unaltered.

Spay/Neuter Facts - The Numbers Are Staggering

🐩 Only 4 out of 50 dogs will be in homes that last their lifetime.

🏡 Only 1 in 9 cats and dogs born in the US will find a home at all. The rest will be euthanized because nobody wants them, or they will live and die on their own, abandoned and suffering.

🐈 90% of the millions of cats killed on our roads each year were not spayed or neutered.

🐕 80% of dogs hit by vehicles each year are un-neutered males.

🐾 One female and one male dog and their offspring can produce 512 puppies in just 3 years — and 67,000 in 6 years.

➡️ "The capture, impoundment and eventual destruction of unwanted animals costs taxpayers and private humanitarian agencies over a billion dollars each year. As a potential source of rabies and other less serious diseases, they can be a public health hazard." — The American Veterinary Medical Association

Adapted from the website of People For Animals, an all-volunteer non-profit whose primary mission is to provide spay/neuter assistance to qualified pet owners in Middle TN.

https://www.peopleforanimals.net/why-spay-neuter.html

This is an excellent post by our rescue friend Amy Lynn McKamey of Hands Helping Paws Rescue. Whether your dog is a work...
09/05/2026

This is an excellent post by our rescue friend Amy Lynn McKamey of Hands Helping Paws Rescue. Whether your dog is a working LGD or a family pet, resource guarding is almost always an issue ONLY because of the failure of humans to properly manage the situation. Please read this carefully and consider whether you are unintentionally setting your dog/s up for failure.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18xxeyF9by/

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescueIf you're looking for the perfect companion to snuggle on the sofa w...
09/04/2026

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

If you're looking for the perfect companion to snuggle on the sofa with you at the end of your work day, consider one of our amazing couch potato dogs! These are just a few of the many wonderful dogs we have available for adoption. Featured here (Top Row/Left to Right) are June Carter Cash, Scout, and Lady Pink, plus (Bottom Row/Left to Right) Tracer and Vader. All are house/potty-trained, good with other dogs, and walk pretty well on-leash. June, Lady Pink, and Tracer are known to be good with cats. We're not sure about Scout or Vader but can test them with our barn cats if needed. Vader IS known to be good with our chickens, so with proper introductions, he could be a great addition to a home with a backyard flock.

Taking care of so many dogs gets expensive! Our largest ongoing expenses are veterinary care; dog food; and monthly preventives for heartworms, fleas, and ticks. But there are many other expenses -- crates, toys, collars, leashes, puppy pads, and more. Your support during helps us continue to do this work and help more dogs. Please click on the link to make a donation today!

Gravy is not the kind of dog you expect to see wearing a Bluebonnet tag! But she is a super sweet girl who recently met ...
09/04/2026

Gravy is not the kind of dog you expect to see wearing a Bluebonnet tag! But she is a super sweet girl who recently met her match in a dog fight, and she did NOT come out on top!

We pulled Gravy and her sister Biscuits from a shelter in rural Oklahoma back in 2019 on the very day they were scheduled for euthanasia. Both girls were adopted, and Gravy has been the only female dog in her home for a few years. When her family adopted another female dog, Gravy was slow to warm up, but as time went by and the dogs settled in to a routine, it seemed like everything was copacetic. Until it wasn't.

Last week, the girls got into a fight and both needed a few sutures. Nothing major, but obviously not the kind of relationship you want your dogs to have. Then this week, they got into another fight that sent both of them back to the vet. Together, the adopters and I decided that Gravy should come back to Bluebonnet. The adopters love her and want her to be safe and happy, and we think it will be better all around if we find a new home for her where she can once again be the queen of her household.

Gravy is an easy dog -- house/potty-trained, crate-trained, leash-trained. She doesn't like for other dogs to be around while she's eating, but since she's the smallest dog in her most recent pack, she probably just felt a little intimidated. Given the recent stress in her life, we are keeping Gravy in our Infirmary so she has time and space to decompress. Currently, her only "roommates" in the Infirmary are our youngest puppies, who are confined to an X-pen so can't get close enough to annoy Gravy. (More on the puppies soon!)

Gravy is about 8 years old and weighs 54 lbs. DNA results show her to be an interesting Doodle mix.

If you have a nice, quiet home and would appreciate the company of a dog who has matured past all the nonsense of puppy behavior, maybe Gravy is the right dog for you to foster or adopt. We'll get her added to our website soon, but if you want to start a conversation, send a PM to the page, or send e-mail to [email protected].

Please note: First two photos are from yesterday and the others are from 2019. She really hasn’t changed much at all!

Between the long string of 100+ degree days plus a flu bug I'm fighting, this is very much how I feel. Except I haven't...
09/04/2026



Between the long string of 100+ degree days plus a flu bug I'm fighting, this is very much how I feel. Except I haven't had the opportunity to nap -- on the sofa or floor or anywhere else. How about you -- is the heat getting to you? Here at Windsong Ranch, we are really looking forward to cooler temperatures.

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescueWHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?😊😊😊Well this was good timing! 👏👏👏In one o...
09/04/2026

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

WHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?

😊😊😊Well this was good timing! 👏👏👏

In one of my posts yesterday, I mentioned that monthly preventives take a big chunk of our budget every month. We just received our latest order of heartworm/flea/tick meds, and this is an excellent opportunity to show you how expensive it is to do right by our dogs. We use Simparica Trio for most of the puppies and dogs in our care, to be sure they are protected against heartworms, fleas, ticks, and intestinal parasites. We use the sizes for large and extra large dogs most frequently, but we also buy sizes for small and medium, because we almost always have puppies whose weight changes every week. This most recent order cost $2,268.22, and we have spent $7,489.11 year-to-date. We're on track to end the year with a total expense of about $11K for this one line item. That seems expensive until you realize that we are typically providing preventives to more than 70 dogs and puppies each month. At typical retail prices, we would be spending twice as much, so we're grateful to be able to buy our products at a significant discount.

Taking proper care of our dogs is expensive. But NOT using monthly preventives simply isn't an option. We have rescued too many dogs infected with heartworms or Ehrlichia, so we know that PREVENTION is always less expensive than TREATMENT.

We hope you'll consider a donation for to support our work and help us keep our dogs healthy and happy!

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescueWHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?When you have as many dogs as we have, yo...
09/03/2026

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

WHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?

When you have as many dogs as we have, you spend a lot of time (and money!) at the vet clinic. Some days are harder than others, like today.

If you have been following us very long, you surely have seen posts about the NUMEROUS dogs we have rescued from one single ranch in Gatesville TX. An elderly veteran retired, bought land and goats, and put several LGDs on the property to protect them from predators. Like many people, he had the wrong-headed notion that a dog needs their hormones to be a good guardian. (I'll make a post about this soon, but spoiler alert -- they are actually BETTER guardians if they are not distracted by their hormones.) The natural result of having multiple intact LGDs was breeding. LOTS and LOTS of breeding. In the past 2.5 years, we have trapped and rescued 62 dogs and puppies from his ranch.

Slinky is one of them. He's a very sweet boy who has learned a routine and goes into a kennel for every meal. But getting him to walk on a leash is a non-starter, so it was a real rodeo to get him into the van this morning for our trip to All Heart Veterinary Center. Thankfully, Dr. Meier and her staff are very patient and experienced, so they didn't hesitate when I asked them to sedate Slinky while he was in the crate, still in the van. Once he was sedated, we carried the crate inside, and Dr. Meier examined him. She drew blood for a heartworm test (all negative, thank goodness!) and for a CBC and Chem Panel. Slinky was losing weight earlier this summer and we wanted to be sure there were no underlying health problems. We adjusted his diet in July and he started putting weight on again, but we didn't want to just assume everything was OK. His bloodwork was all good, so we can stay the course with his diet and check in again next year.

Visits like this are more expensive than a regular annual check-up, and we have numerous feral dogs who require sedation for every trip to the vet. But this is the commitment we make to every dog -- to give them the best veterinary care and good quality of life in spite of the challenges they present.

We hope you'll consider a donation to our fundraiser to support our work with livestock guardian dogs.

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescueWHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?Month after month, our biggest expenses a...
09/03/2026

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

WHERE DO YOUR DONATIONS GO?

Month after month, our biggest expenses are for veterinary care. So far this year, we've been lucky that we haven't had any orthopedic or other specialty surgeries. But we have two dogs who will need pricey TPLO surgery in the coming months. We also have 13 puppies who will need spay/neuter surgery at the appropriate age, as required by Texas law.

Food and hay comprise the second largest expense, as we typically have about 100 animals of multiple species, including dogs, cats, chickens, goats, and donkeys. We've been lucky this year and have been able to make 8 trips to the Rescue Bank to purchase food by the pallet for just the cost of transport, which is pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of the food. We're also very grateful to our friends/adopters Donna and Tim who cut hay on their property and donate many bales to us for our rescued farm animals.

Monthly preventives to protect against heartworms, fleas, ticks, and intestinal parasites are another big expense. This is a no-brainer in terms of keeping our dogs healthy.

These three categories make up 88% of our total expenditures so far this year. The remaining 12% includes expenses like ordinary supplies (microchips, collars, leashes, tags, bowls, crates, etc), gas & insurance for our van, technology fees (subscriptions for our adoption website, Microsoft Office, and graphics programs), and platform fees such as PayPal and Venmo charges on donations and adoption fees.

You'll notice there are no fees for rent or other facilities/overhead charges. That's because Bluebonnet is based at Windsong Ranch, which is our HOME. We don't reimburse ourselves for the cost of utilities or other expenses which might be allowed by tax law, but which we prefer to cover ourselves so that YOUR donations are going directly for the care of the animals we rescue.

We hope you'll consider a donation for to support the animals of Bluebonnet.

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue - Please Share!Since our founding in 2013, Bluebonnet Animal Rescu...
09/02/2026

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/BluebonnetRescue

- Please Share!

Since our founding in 2013, Bluebonnet Animal Rescue has taken in goats, donkeys, and chickens, as well as dogs and puppies, and as many feral cats as our barns can house without any spats over territory. Farm animals and barn cats live with us at Windsong Ranch for the rest of their lives. Most dogs and puppies are made available for adoption, but some end up becoming sanctuary animals due to special needs or unusual circumstances that make them less adoptable.

Taking care of all these animals gets expensive, so we hope you'll consider donating to our North Texas Giving Day fundraiser, presented by Communities Foundation of Texas from now through September 17. This is one of our most important fundraisers of the year and we need your support, so for the duration of the fundraiser we'll be making daily posts to show you where your donations go.

If you prefer not to make a donation online, we are always happy to receive checks, which may be sent to:

Bluebonnet Animal Rescue
P. O. Box 964
Whitewright TX 75491

We understand that personal budgets are stretched too thin for many people, and if that's the case for you, we would appreciate you sharing our post to help us reach a wider audience.

THANK YOU!


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