Straydog UPDATE posted FRIDAY 10/24/20-03 at ~9:00 p.m. CT

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log - www.straydog.org

FRIDAY OCTOBER 24 2003

Several people emailed offering to help out with fund raising after yesterday's big, bold, blue headlines, which were inspired by my own panic

     I usually try not to let it show. I've been keeping a pretty good lid on my constant state of panic for over nine years now, since Straydog moved onto its present site in October of 1994. When we moved here we had eleven dogs, and the income from my financial printing customer service job at Merrill Corporation in Dallas paid for everything--dog food, vet bills, kennel building materials, etc., etc. In 1995 we added several more homeless dogs, and I still funded everything. Pat had too much to do taking care of the dogs all by herself to work an outside job. In 1996 we added several more stray dogs, and Pat hired some high school students to help her in the afternoons after they got out of school. I continued to pay all expenses including the wages of the part-time kids. Then in March of 1997 (with our shelter population at 24 dogs) The Dallas Morning News published a feature article on us in the old TODAY section of the paper. We asked them to print our mailing address and to include a little blurb about how we would sure appreciate contributions. We really didn't expect more than a couple of hundred dollars max, but the next day more than $26,000 was donated to us, and by the end of the week we had received more than $40,000.

     For a short period of time (a few months) our panic was gone, and we were able to breath more easily, but we also felt we had to use the money to help more dogs, so we started to expand at a much faster rate than we had been expanding. Our contributors had sent us $40,000 to take care of homeless dogs, so we couldn't just let the money sit in the bank and try to make it last forever. It was then that we decided that we would never use any of the contributed money for our personal benefit, and we have not wavered from that rule. The real deal was (and still is) (tho it was never verbalized and written down) that Pat and I (and now just I) will work for free if you all will pay the expenses of running Straydog, Inc. (And I include in that "you all" entities that give grants, which we are also constantly pursuing.)

     Our mailing list of contributors after the March '97 article contained a total of a little over 600 names, and in May of 1997, we sent out our first newsletter to those 600 people. About 300 of the original 600 stuck with us and continued to contribute, and our mailing list of contributors was always expanding just barely enough to keep up with our continuing expansion.

     So we expand and our contributors continue to send in money. We adopt out and lower our numbers a little, and then we are hit with several "rescue-me" phone calls within a day or two after the adoptions, and we expand again, and our contributors send in more money.

     Our part's kind of locked in. Tomorrow, for example, I relieve Jason at six a.m. as hospital attendant. I'm driving a van full of dogs to PetsMart on Central at Parker in Plano (Texas). I'll stay there for a little while, then go have lunch with my 94-year-old dad while Erin, Susan Devers and other helpful volunteers continue to run Adoption Day. Then I'll be picking up the unadopted dogs in the afternoon. We'll pick up a lot of good dog food and bring the dogs the 90-minute drive back home. I'll check on the hospital dogs, my dog Frosty, check with Juana about the day's activities and do the update before my 9:00 p.m. bedtime.

     We appreciate your ongoing support. Please continue to help us.