Straydog UPDATE posted SUNDAY 6/8/03 at ~9:44 p.m. CT

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

SUNDAY JUNE 8 2003

Today our youngest son, Joe, is 38 years old

     Joe has been staying here at the house with me since Pat died. His sister, Erin, has stayed several nights also, and our other two children, Bill, Jr. and Stacey, are spending as much time here as they can. I must say once again that the amount of work Pat was doing is overwhelming, but we are streamlining her processes as much as we can (something she was sometimes very reluctant to let us help her with) without changing the results of the work.

     This evening we're going to have a birthday dinner for Joe and talk about his mom and all the wonderful times we had during Joe's previous 37 birthdays.

     My two sons, in an attempt to get me to take a break from Straydog, invited me to go on a boat ride at Cedar Creek Lake this afternoon in the boat of a friend of Bill, Jr's. I tried to get out of it, since there's so much work to do here, INCLUDING doing a big Sunday Update, but they insisted.

     We rode around the lake for a couple of hours while our other children along with Guy Lucas, our General Manager, and the kennel crew made sure everything ran perfectly at Straydog. As I remembered back to the 1980s when Pat and I had only two (former stray) dogs and a pontoon boat, we would go out on Cedar Creek Lake to one of the uninhabited islands and let the dogs run and play (as there were no other animals on the island). (We have photos or videos of these "excursions," which we'll find and publish someday.)

     We were normal, regular people once with normal, regular lives.

     When Pat brought the first stray named Happy home in 1992, I said to her, "We cannot ourselves alone fix the problem. It will be solved by population control through SPAY and NEUTER, and that's it." But she said, "But what about THIS dog?" And I had to agree, even though I knew what lay before us. But Pat was right. If we all said, "But what about THIS dog?" and we all demanded that something be done, we would soon solve the problem. It really boils down to the unfortunate fact that there are a lot of human beings who do not really agree with us in our attempt to save and control the population of all dogs (and cats). It's not that they're mean or cruel or evil. They just don't know about the horrific situation and don't understand that dogs (and cats) are beings worth doing something about.

Julie and her kennel mate, Big Jed, are both going to the eye specialist in Arlington, Texas early tomorrow morning

     Since we have to be there by 8:30 a.m., we're going to have to leave here by 6:45 a.m. to make the 90-mile trip. We'll report tomorrow night on the doctor's findings.

Lassie has another mild seizure

     Doctor Morton's instructions were to give Lassie honey, and we did this morning, and she snapped out of the seizure immediately and was fine all day. We'll keep you posted on this doggie's progress.

Emily is doing fine a week after her knee surgery

     Emily's cast came off a few days ago. (See photos to come.) She wants to chew her stitches, so she has to wear an E-collar except during walks or when someone is watching her closely. Emily is staying in the kitchen kennel (except for her walks to the big play yard), and she's eating well and beginning to put some pressure on her leg.

     More tomorrow. ...