Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 19 2004

Katie made a comeback in the nice weather yesterday

     She's walking a little better again, she's eating, and she enjoyed her trips to the park yesterday. She's just not quite ready to give up yet. We'll see how she does today.

Eye specialist confirms Molly is blind in her left eye and thinks she probably has been for some time

     Dr. Paulsen did a thorough examination of both eyes and said that although her good eye is beginning to form a cataract, it could be a long, long time before she loses her vision in that right eye. The doctor also said that although the cataract in her blind eye had just formed recently, Molly had probably been blind in that eye for quite a while. One thing that puzzled Dr. Paulsen was that when he shined the light in Molly's blind eye, the pupil (the outer edges of which he could see around the cataract) did not contract, but when he shined the light in her good eye, both pupils contracted. This could mean there's something going on behind the blind eye, the doctor said--a remote possibility being a tumor. But the doctor said we should do nothing right now. We are to wait and check Molly again in six months. There was also a little redness in her bad eye, caused by the cataract, and he prescribed and supplied us with some medicine for this, a tiny bottle of which cost $40.

Did we rescue the wrong abandoned mother and pups?

     We haven't been able to reach the woman who first called. We need to find out why she thought there were six pups. When our rescue crew (Michael and Susan) got to the house they thought was the right place, there was just a mother (a Chow), the father (an Akita) and two tiny black pups--not the six pups the caller had told us about. Our employee, Michael, lives in the same neighborhood, and he knew about this family of dogs, so we all assumed these were the dogs the woman had called about. Michael had been urging us to rescue these dogs anyway, so the rescue team took the mother and her pups to Dr. Morton's clinic, where they got there new arrivals checkups. Michael will feed and care for the Akita until we have room for him.

     At about five p.m. we went to the clinic and picked up the mother (who has heartworms and some mange) and her two pups (who are very healthy except for the usual "puppy worms" and some mange), and they are now in the temporary puppy kennel near the hospital trailer door.

     We will continue to try to get ahold of the woman who first called about the abandoned dogs to see if there's yet another family of dogs needing help--though I don't know what we would be able to do with them. We are once again bursting at the seams!