Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

FRIDAY MARCH 5 2004

Puppy Grace is a lot better while Puppy Holly continues to improve

     We gave Puppy Grace two and a half units of saline solution via her I.V. soon after we brought her in and put her in a hospital kennel yesterday a little before noon, because she would not eat and she had vomited once. As the afternoon wore on, Puppy Grace perked up and last evening her appetite was back, and she ate a good puppy meal, so it looks like she's on the mend along with her sister, Holly.

Puppy William is showing no signs of illness

     Puppy William continues to be a rambunctious little puppy, but we'll keep our eyes on him. We know Puppy Holly had parvo (though apparently a mild case), and we know all three pups were together for almost two whole days (Monday and part of Tuesday), so his exposure to parvo was possible (if not probable or almost certain). We're all keeping our fingers crossed.

The original mom of Ojay, Macky and Jeannie has died

     We just received a donation in memory of the woman who originally rescued these three dogs with the following note attached:

This donation is made in memory of Wilma Nowell, who died February 26, 2004. She rescued Ojay, Jeannie and Macky off the street, and you were kind enough to take them when she became ill. Thank you.

     As you know if you follow the daily updates on this website, Macky was adopted and is living happily ever after with Randy (one of our two overnight guys, who each work half of each week), and Ojay has had two successful calcified ear canal surgeries, and he's in the care of Gayle and Jim (who covered Ojay's medical expenses). Jeannie is still with us, spending most of her time in a hospital kennel, where she's recovering from heartworm treatment. Jeannie will be going to Adoption Day soon.

A reader of our print newsletters but not of our website updates writes:

Dear Relatives of Pat:

I found the article that was in the paper about Pat in my desk and just want to know if you still have the dogs! Please let me know.

     As I've said many times before, we know by the numbers (2,400 names of past contributors on our mailing list and a little fewer than 300 daily visitors to our website) that approximately 88% of our contributors never see the daily updates on this website. Hopefully the next mailer (which I'm frantically working on right now) will get everyone caught up. As I've said before, we are reluctant to send out mailers more frequently because of the postage expense. We just wish the other 2,100 contributors would somehow be able to see the daily updates here on www.straydog.org.

Today will be the sixth day that Becky's been wearing a bandage on her torn ear

     Last Sunday the emergency vet at Tyler Animal Emergency Clinic told us to keep the bandage on Becky's ear for a week, which week would end Saturday. But because our local vet, Dr. Morton, is (understandably) closed Saturdays and Sundays, we're going to take Becky to Morton Small Animal Clinic today to have the bandage removed and her wounded ear looked at. Hopefully Becky will be able to go back to her outside kennel with her kennel mate, Bear II. Becky has been rather fractious all week during her stay in our hospital trailer. I'm sure she'll be a lot happier back outside with her kennel mate.

     Just before post time Becky arrived back from the clinic with a new bandage. Dr. Morton said the wound hadn't healed yet, and he wrapped her back up, and she'll (unfortunately) have to stay inside our trailer hospital for another week.

Katie's still doing well

     With the warmer weather Katie has preferred to stay in her outside kennel for the past few days--until yesterday's rainstorm hit. We brought her in soaking wet, and she stayed in one of the hospital kennels all night (with several potty outings to the park, of course).

Bad storm hits Straydog right at the dogs' dinner hour

     We should have started feeding early since we knew the storm was coming, but we thought we'd be done before it hit. We thought wrong, and everybody got soaked. Some of the dogs understandably wouldn't come out of their shelters so we fed them later. Though it was a very bad storm with very strong winds, it lasted less than 30 minutes, after which it only drizzled off and on for the rest of the evening and night.