Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

FRIDAY MARCH 12 2004

Becky takes her bandage off herself five minutes ahead of schedule

     We were getting the camera out and getting ready to go take Becky's bandage off, when Juana discovered Becky was in the process of taking the bandage off herself at that moment. The wounds are all healed but are still scabby, and Becky immediately tried to scratch the ear with her hind paw, so we immediately put the E-collar back on. It looks like she'll have to stay in the hospital a while longer until we're sure she'll leave the healed ear alone.

Our hospital trailer is full and busy

   Becky

     Although she's in the last kennel in the big hospital ward and has sheets and blankets hanging on the fence sections of her kennel, Becky has been quite fractious every time she hears any of the other hospital dogs being taken out to the park for a potty break. We're all hoping her ear has healed (which we'll find out about this afternoon) so she can go back to her outside kennel with her buddy and kennel mate, Bear II. [LATER: As you can see above, Becky will have to spend some more time in her hospital kennel. Her kennel mate, Bear II, would have a great time helping Becky tear off the E-collar.]

   Holly and Grace, the parvo pups

     These two are doing fine, as we've continued to report. They're in small kennels in the same "hospital ward" as Becky, and their kennels are also covered with blankets so that they can't see each other or Becky.

   Foxy Yatzee

     Foxy is still recovering from her heartworm treatment and now seems actually to prefer her hospital kennel to an outside spot. Whenever she goes to the park for an outing, she immediately takes care of business and then stands by the gate waiting to come back inside.

   Rudy

     Rudy would prefer to stay in his and Rosie's kennel outside, but as we've said many times before, we cannot stop him from running and running and running while he's outside, and even with multiple meals throughout the day the fella can lose a few pounds so easily we have to keep bringing him in for as long as he will put up with it throughout the day.

   Katie

     Katie also prefers to be outside, but we bring her in for as long as she'll tolerate it as often as possible, especially when the weather's bad.

   Julie

     Julie (our diabetic dog) spends all her time inside except for her many outings in the park, which she enjoys periodically throughout the day. We monitor her blood glucose level every few hours, and have all vowed not to allow Julie to have a seizure without an immediate response on the part of our hospital attendant.

Volunteer trainers to come to Straydog this coming Sunday, March 14th, from 11:00 a.m. till 3:00 p.m.

     Volunteer Petsmart trainers are scheduled to come out and work with our doggies, caregivers and any of our Adoption Day volunteers who want to participate. Trainers Kristi and Wanda have been explaining to us the things they'd like to share with us and how they'd like to work with the dogs. We'll change the normal routine for some of our dogs this Sunday so that our caregivers can participate too. Hopefully we'll learn some good things that we can continue to work on. Someday we may be ready for a Straydog fund raising "Mutt Show"!

     Four Petsmart trainers, three Adoption Day volunteers (so far, as we haven't been able to tell many folks yet), Chubs and Cassie's guardians, and four or five Straydog caregivers will be on hand to work with our doggies. It will be a different kind of day for the dogs--interesting, noisy and a lot of fun!

     We should have a lot of photos of this event on the five o'clock update Sunday evening.