See the little guy in the picture? His name is Stout, he is seven or eight years old, and when he walks, he sometimes tips over, but he gets right up again! He was sitting patiently at the Animal Harbor in Belvidere, a no-kill animal shelter operated by the Franklin County Humane Society, way down in southern Tennessee, waiting for Santa Claus to come get him, when a shelter worker fetched him out of his kennel, polished him up, and took him on an hour long car ride from the shelter to a pre-arranged rendezvous at a hotel in Chatanooga, Tennessee. And there they waited. And waited. And waited.

It wasn’t Santa Claus coming down from Maryland, fighting his way through heavy traffic and watching the hours roll by, through Virginia, and all the way through Tennessee to that hotel in Chatanooga, just to pick up little Stout. It was one of our FBVillage volunteers, together with a very good friend, and a little foster French Bulldog bouncing happily along in the crate in the back of the car, on the road since 5 AM until past 6 PM, over 600 miles, just to fetch a new hopeful into FBVillage foster care. Stout looks like he might be more than a little bit Boston Terrier, but we’ll just say that Santa Claus thought he needed a shiny new family for 2010, and who better to help him than the French Bulldog Village?

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, Stout will be riding along in a crate, surrounded by his new friends, and – if he could sing – we just know we would be hearing a doggie chorus of “99 bottles of beer on the wall” or some such suitable traveling tune. Our first K-Kid of 2010. Everybody say hello to Stout!  (Update – his new name is Busby!)

It’s been a tough 2009, as the FBVillage dealt with growth in the number of homeless dogs, loss of a key player, organizational growing pains, and a terrible economy that resulted in a drop in contributions… but we made it, and there are a number of very happy dogs that would say thank you, if they only could…

We placed 43 K-Kids (up from 27 in 2008) in new homes this year. We found new homes for 13 breeder retirees, older puppies, and handicapped dogs. We found new homes for 4 dogs whose owners could not keep them. We even found a home for a little old blind Pug with no prospects – Tonka says thank you for the wonderful home!

We still have 21 K-Kids waiting in the wings. We already have our hands full on this second day of 2010!

With the departure of our webmaster and co-founder, Rebecca Sazegar, at the beginning of 2009, we almost had to shut down right there, but Carol Gravestock, of Frog Dog Blog fame, saved the day by converting our entire website into a blog in a matter of days, so that multiple folks could work on the updates without having to be programmers. The rescue owes her an enormous debt of gratitude!

Thank goodness, with the generosity and support of our virtual French Bulldog family, all those wonderful folks out in cyberspace and in person at our community events, who have donated even in these awful economic times, we were able to make it through 2009 alive. We are so grateful.

We brought in $29,202.21 in contributions, adoption fees, and sales in 2009 – averages mean nothing here, since in our worst month, we brought in nothing, and in our best month we brought in $6,664.71 – but if you want an average, it was $2,433.52 per month.

We paid out $34,198.22 in 2009, most of that in veterinary bills – our best month for expenses was $1,279.85, and our worst was $4,812.04 – an average of $2,849.85. We had some terribly needy French Bulldogs this year, but we stepped up and took care of them. We didn’t ask whether they were too sick or too old to bother. We just took care of them. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making that possible.

We currently have $15,176.13 in the bank, $653.23 in our PayPal account, $87.00 in cash, and $1,688.18 in checks to be deposited – for a total of $17,604.54 – to get us started on 2010. 21 K-Kids asleep in their beds. And little Stout, tucked safely away in a hotel room in southern Tennessee.

Support rescue. It matters. It doesn’t even have to be the FBVillage, although we do need your contributions to carry on, it can be the cat shelter down the street calling for blankets and litter, or a mixed breed rescue desperately trying to make room for yet another homeless friendly hound. We ALL need your help.

May 2010 be a better year for everyone!