Straydog UPDATE posted FRIDAY 6/13/03 at ~9:30 p.m. CT

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

FRIDAY JUNE 13 2003

[Thanks to Erin for writing and emailing to me the first draft of today's update as I had to be in Dallas most of the afternoon checking in on and visiting with my 94-year-old father.]

Thunder, lightning and heavy rains continue

     When the rain and lightning get too bad, the kennel team members are told to go inside, and dog walks pause temporarily. This morning the rain was so hard we had to suspend operations for about an hour. When the crew finally got back to work, they had to work really hard to build up the sandy dirt that had washed away from the baselines of the kennel fences.

Alice did very well with the thunder today, but Big Boy showed his fear of the storm

     As we've reported before, Alice is very frightened of storms, but she didn't get freaky today. She didn't bite the fence, howl, whine or dig. Her only unusual behavior was that she stuck like glue against the caregivers' legs when they tried to leave her kennel. Poor Alice needs an inside home.

     Big Boy, on the other hand, ran in circles barking at the lightning during his turn in the park today, which reminded us that we are never to go inside a fearful dog's shelter during a thunderstorm as they could become so panicked that they might react violently not even realizing what they are doing.

For the first time Nikki takes a biscuit from Guy's hand

     Nikki is getting more and more comfortable all the time with her situation here. She's been out of her shelter a lot today (whenever the rain would stop for a while) playing with little Rex. Joel has been spending a lot of extra time petting Nikki, and today was the first time that Nikki took a biscuit from Guy's hand!

Jed and Julie's eyes look great!

     Both Jed and Julie's eyes are responding well to their new medicines from Dr. Paulsen (who, by the way, sent a beautiful flower arrangement to Straydog today--they hadn't heard about Pat's death until after Bill and Shannon arrived at the Animal Eye Clinic in Arlington with Jed and Julie this past Monday). Both dogs' eyes are clear, and there in no drainage. Also, there hasn't been any bad reaction to the meds.

Emily did more range-of-motion exercises today

     Wednesday and Thursday we did only single five-minute sessions of range-of-motion exercises (in addition to her many outings on leash in the the big play yard). But today we had two sessions of range-of-motion exercises, and one of the exercise periods lasted a full 10 minutes. Good girl, Emily! She's tolerating these exercises a little better each day.

More tragic news

     Will, one of our newest Kennel Team Member/Caregivers, called with this very sad news this afternoon: his wife lost their unborn baby today--the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby child's neck. We are so sorry, Will, so very, very sorry.