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Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

THURSDAY JANUARY 29 2004

Jordan and Baby Girl are back from the clinic

     When we got to the vet clinic to pick them up, Baby Girl had again chewed at her stitches, stretching them, which meant the doctor had to anesthetize her again and fix the stitches, so Jordan came home first, and we had to make another trip later in the afternoon to get Baby Girl.

     Both of these sweet but ratty looking Black Labs are doing fine, though they'll have to remain in quarantine for a month. The clinic receptionist was mistaken when she told us two days ago that the dogs have demodectic mange--it's sarcoptic mange, which is very contagious to both dogs and humans.

Jordan, on the left, shows the effects of the mange more than his buddy, Baby Girl.

Juana walks Jordan and Baby Girl outside the fence. They can't go to the park for four weeks.

That a human being would let a dog get to this stage of illness is pathetic.

A neighbor's dog hit and killed by a car right out in front of their house

     A little after five o'clock yesterday afternoon as Mike, one of our employees, was driving up the hill away from Straydog on his way home, he came on a very sad scene. A dead dog lay in the middle of the road, and two other dogs were standing near the dead dog. Mike stopped and radioed back for help, and Susan went up to see what she could do. They were going to bury the dead dog when a lady came out of the house facing the road where the dog had been killed. She was calling to her dogs to come in.

     When she realized that there was a problem and saw Susan carrying the dead dog toward her, the woman began to cry. Susan asked her why she let the dogs run loose, and the woman said they always let them run loose when they have to go out to go potty. "You ought to build you a kennel for your dogs," Susan told the woman.

     This sort of "free dog" mentality never ceases to amaze me. The speed limit on the narrow country road we're on is 70 miles per hour. (It should be 45 miles per hour.) A car going 70 miles per hour (or faster) coming up the hill from either direction right at this person's driveway can see nothing over the top of the hill and would have no chance to avoid missing anything stopped in the middle of the road. These people have been living there for decades, and apparently this ever-present danger has never even occurred to them.

A woman called saying she might be able to get us a microscope for free

     This is great news, as the prices Dr. Reeves gave us were $450 for any one of three different microscopes. The woman will be looking into this and will call us again in a few days.