Blind Mommhy Freckles and her kids spent a couple of hours in a temporary kennel while the "Puppy Kennel" is getting renovated.
(1) Rainy day; pups eating solid food; pups moving to "Puppy Kennel"
Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log
SUNDAY OCTOBER 13 2002
No dogs adopted yesterday, but ...
... But we'd like to thank the woman who stopped by Canine Commissary to visit our group so she could leave a very generous donation for our Happy Home for Strays. How very nice of her!
Freckles and her puppies move from the "Nursery Kennel" to the "Puppy Kennel"
Freckles' three-week-old puppies are getting too big to stay in the nursery kennel. Now that they are all walking around and tumbling playfully all over each other, they need more room to romp, so it's time to move them to the "custom designed" puppy kennel that Randy made especially for Millie and her five puppies when they came to us last winter. This puppy kennel has a tall, people-size, six-foot-high, wooden shelter in it (which height makes it very easy for us to get into and out of when cleaning the shelter), and it has a heat lamp attached to the ceiling to keep the pups and their mom warm on cold days and nights. This puppy kennel also has a nice, level play yard area with plenty of room for pups to run and play in.
Saturday morning Randy was busy fixing the little doggie door on the shelter to make it suitable for a blind dog (Mommy Freckles), and Bobby laid a tarp on the wood floor of the shelter before moving in the big dog house. (We learned from Millie's puppies that a "tarped" floor is much easier to keep clean than the wood floor.) The puppy Igloo house was scrubbed all clean and dried, and another one of the many new warm fleece blankets that Sara had donated to our Happy Home for Strays was fluffed up inside the house, and then the house was placed inside the shelter.
When everything was ready, we moved the mom and kids into their nice new home
How cute the little rolly-poly pups (Lucy, Louie, Leo and Luke) were as they investigated their new surroundings, and Freckles really surprised us by getting along very well too in the new surroundings. She felt her way in and out of the doggie door of the shelter with no problem, found her water containers with no problem, and dug several big scoopy holes in the nice, level lawn! We're all glad that Freckles can have her family in the bigger kennel now, and she has settled in beautifully!
We've found something to take the place of Misty's cumbersome E-Collar
We're
trying a Greyhound type muzzle on Misty now to take the place
of the cumbersome E-Collar, and with this type of muzzle (which
is worn over her
muzzle and not her whole head like the E-collar) dogs can see
clearly and they can drink water with no problem. You'll remember
that we had to stop Misty from chewing at her sore paw, which
she feels the constant urge to do because of allergies. So far
this new muzzle appears to be a perfect solution for her problem
while her paw heals. Hopefully in another few weeks she won't
itch at all (as her allergy medicines kick in), and the muzzle
can come off permanently.
If she doesn't try to get this new muzzle off, she will be able to go back in the kennel with her companion, Fritz. Until we know for sure, that she won't mess with her sore, we'll keep her in the kennel by our house so I can keep a close watch on her, and she can go to play with her bud during the day without the muzzle on while we are with the two of them.
Winterizing of the dog shelters continues
After Randy finished preparing the puppy kennel, he and Bobby continued putting more of the front panels (the "dog doors") on the other dog shelters in preparation for the upcoming winter weather. All the houses have hay in them now, and even tho the weather is still very pleasant outside during the day, at night the dogs love the fresh hay and all of them snuggle up in their houses.
Kennel companions Shepherd mix, Penny, and Black mix, Scooter, love fresh hay too, but they love to play with it, and as fast as Bobby could put the hay in their houses, the two dogs would pull it out and drag big bunches of it all over their yard, and then they'd hurry back to grab more! This is the usual routine for these two dogs during the haying of the houses, but in a day or two the fun of scattering the hay all over their yard will wear off, and they will leave it in their houses. Until then, we keep scooping it up and stuffing it back, or adding more as needed.
Email response to my question to Darla Fort asking her how they found Straydog, our Happy Home for Strays, and Helen
We had known about Petfinder.org and had been checking this site every now and then to see if anything caught our eye ...(and hearts). The other day Neal typed in "Great Dane" for the breed and our zip code, and up came a list of dogs. He clicked on the one with a heart next to it out of curiosity. Neal read to me about this dog, and I said, "Neal, we should name her Helen for Helen Keller," and Neal said, "Don't laugh but her name IS Helen!" We knew at that moment that this was meant to be! I don't even know what made Neal type in Great Dane? Really Helen will look like a Chihuahua next to Neal. It just all fell into place perfectly. Take Care, Darla
P.S. I'm so impressed with all that you do. With how full your hands are, it's amazing. Just know we are thinking of Helen everyday. We will talk as it gets closer to us leaving Canada. My husband already printed off a map from Montreal to Gun Barrel City, Texas, so we are ready to roll.
Thanks a lot for your response, Darla
And I'm always glad to hear from you and will hope to hear from you regularly after you pick up Helen. The stories will be great!
And Bill's been trying to figure out how to get tomorrow's game between Montreal and Edmonton on TV so we can see Neal play! [Next day I (Bill) did stop by a Satellite store and sat watching the entire second quarter of the Montreal/Edmonton game on "Fox Sports World" (while the sales woman tried to sell me satellite service), but I couldn't make out who was who, so I don't know if I saw Neal or not.]
*Our Dogs for Adoption listed on Petfinder.org
*Our Dogs for Adoption - Volunteer Shannon's page
*Pat's Daily Dog Log - LAST WEEK - October 6 - 12, 2002
*Photo Pages - LAST WEEK - October 6 - 12, 2002
(1) Rainy day; pups eating solid food; pups moving to "Puppy Kennel"
*Photo Pages - WEEK BEFORE LAST - 9/22 - 10/5/2002
(1) All four pups with their eyes open
Luke's got a hold of his brother, Louie.
*Pat's Daily Dog Log - Previous Weeks
A Note from Pat ...
Please help us spread the word about Straydog, our Happy Home for Strays. This will be of help in raising the much needed funds to keep our shelter going--not growing, just going.
If you would like us to send you a stack of our recent newsletters for you to place at your vet clinic, or your place of business, or for you to hand out to your dog-loving friends, we'd be happy to get them to you right away. (All this printing was donated to Straydog Inc., and we've got a box of extras.) Or you could print (or have printed) a bunch of copies as per Bill's note immediately below:
PDF of our September 2002 Newsletter:
If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer, you may click on the link immediately below to see the entire newsletter in paginated form with all the photos in color. (If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download the software for free from www.adobe.com.)
We encourage everyone to print out several copies of our newsletter (it looks especially nice printed out on a color printer) and distribute copies to your animal-loving friends and acquaintances. (At least print out a copy for yourself, please.) We began the mailing of the 32-page, black and white, printed booklets (the printing of which the company Bill works for donates to Straydog Inc.) to our totally-free-of-obligation mailing list (which list anyone can get on by just asking us) on Wednesday, September 25, 2002.
Please be aware that PDFs (Portable Data Files) can be gigantic (this PDF of our current newsletter is 3.6 MB), and if you are accessing the Internet via a dial-up modem, it may take 20 - 30 minutes (or longer) to download the newsletter onto your computer. If you have a fast connection (DSL or cable modem), it should take less than a minute to download the PDF file of our newsletter.
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