Straydog UPDATE posted THURSDAY 10/16/03 at ~8:30 p.m. CT
Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log
THURSDAY OCTOBER 16 2003
The rescue of Henry
Yesterday we received a call from a woman who lives about 15 miles from our shelter. She said that there was a dog next door to her who belonged to an 83-year-old lady who wasn't caring for the dog and that the dog was sick and might have been hit by a car.
Not since the days last March when we were sending out rescue teams to a golf course in Dallas to rescue several dogs (including Jesse and Laura, Sally and Alice, and others) have we been able to afford sending employees on such missions. (We couldn't afford it then either, but somehow we did it, and we're glad we were able to help [and to continue to help] those dogs!)
But now we're too short-handed to spare anyone during the day, so three of our dedicated and devoted employees took it upon themselves to volunteer to go after work to try to rescue the desperate dog.
Tina, Tamara and Juany left Straydog at about six p.m., and they got over to one of the less fancy subdivisions that border Cedar Creek Lake at about six-thirty.
Tina's account of what happened, hand-written in the daily log ...
Juany, Tamara and I didn't see a dog when we got there, so we walked around talking with neighbors, and then we saw Henry (a name I didn't give to him till later) and assumed this was the dog we were looking for.
We chased Henry up one street and down another. Then we came to a house with kids playing in the front yard. Evidently Henry likes kids, 'cause he went over to one boy, and Juany tried to put the leash on Henry, but the dog slipped away. We asked the kids to help us catch Henry, but one kid said, "Nope." I guess the kid was shy. Next Henry ran up on the porch, and Juany slipped on the leash, and I opened the can of dog food we had with us, and Henry gobbled it all up.
But then Henry didn't want to move. He was really scared, so I carried him all the way back to Juany's truck, which was still parked in front of the original house. Then we found out that Henry was the wrong dog! The neighbors said that Henry wasn't the dog we were looking for. Henry had belonged to an elderly man across the street who had died recently, and his family had abandoned the dog at the now vacant house. The neighbors told us that Henry had gotten hit by a car a week ago. He really didn't look like he was in very good condition: he's skinny, has a swollen jaw and a bloody right ear. We couldn't just leave Henry. So we called Bill and told him the story.
So now we've got two new dogs coming (both males)
Pat always said that the mixing and matching we have to do to keep compatible kennel mates is one of the hardest tasks we have to accomplish, and it can happen at least a couple different ways: (1) A dog is adopted, leaving his kennel mate a single in a double kennel; (2) a dog dies, as happened to two of our kennel mates, and now the two surviving dogs, Scotti and Sandy, are having a hard time accepting another kennel mate.
And since tomorrow's two incoming dogs are both males, our only chance is to try them (individually, of course) with the three single females we have: Krissy, Tipper and Dixie. If none of them is compatible with either one of these two new guys, we'll have to try one with amigo and put the other in the recently vacated kennel that Henry spent the night in last night.
The golden-tan Pit/Lab mix will be dropped off at Morton Small Animal Clinic tomorrow; the other new dog, Henry, will probably be released to come home tomorrow
Henry's probably got a broken jaw. Dr. Morton said he'd do x-rays later in the day, but he never called us, so they might not have gotten to it. We'll check in the morning.
