Straydog UPDATE posted FRIDAY 3/7/03 at ~6:30 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

FRIDAY MARCH 7 2003

Snowflake is sick

      Today I took little old Granny Dog Snowflake to the vet clinic to see if the doctor could figure out what could be causing her recent bouts of vomiting on a fairly regular basis this past week. On the days she hasn't been sick, she has appeared to feel just fine, eating and enjoying her time outside in the park. But the upset stomach seemed to be forming a pattern: sick one day, not eating the next, okay the third day, then sick again, and this has gone on too many times. Now we needed to find out why.

      After a thorough examination, which included x-rays, and the doctor said that there is a possibility Snowflake may need to have an ultrasound done at a later date. Dr. Morton suggested we administer subcutaneous fluids to her every 24 hours to see if this helps. (These are fluids given beneath the skin, and we can do this ourselves at home). The doctor gave Snowflake the first fluids while we were at the clinic, and sent along home with me everything we'd need for the next several days.

Snow has been fine all afternoon

      Snowflake seemed to feel good this afternoon, and around 5:00 this evening Guy helped me give Snowflake another IV. We'll follow the doctor's instructions over the weekend and hope she recovers from this illness soon.

Update on the two remaining Tenison Golf Course Strays

      At this time the two remaining stray dogs at the golf course have not been rescued. We feel that our attempt to rescue the injured father and sibling yesterday afternoon failed because animal control did not show up to help out with the tranquilizer gun as per the plans. This left Guy and Joel (from Straydog) and Pam Mitchell as the only three people there with no tranquilizer gun.

      Pam, Guy and Joel waited for over an hour for animal control officers to show up. The dogs were in plain sight and appeared to be "easily catchable" if animal control had been there with the tranquilizer gun. But then, not hearing from animal control at all, the small "rescue group" finally realized they only had a short amount of time left for their attempted rescue with in-food sedatives, and even tho there wasn't much time to go ahead with the sedative rescue, the three decided to give it a try anyway, since both dogs were nearby and in plain sight.

      Guy said that the dogs know Pam well, and she managed to feed the eight-month-old pup (Jesse-Bear's sibling) the food with the sedative in it. Pam, Guy and Joel were prepared to "wait it out" and stay close to the dogs for as long as it took until hopefully Jesse-Bear's sibling became tired. The father dog stayed in sight but at a distance. They followed the pup for hours, but she never became tired and by 6:30 the sun was setting and it was beginning to get dark, and it was getting too late to continue the search. They were all very disappointed that their rescue mission had once again failed. All of us just cannot get out of our minds the pain and suffering the father dog must be going through.

We will keep trying to save the dogs

      Straydog has a kennel (and the rest of their family) waiting for them here, and our wonderful doctor knows these dogs may be coming to him at any time, and he assured us he will be on hand to see the dogs, day or night, to give them immediate medical attention.