Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log
THURSDAY APRIL 1 2004
An email from our Adoption Day volunteer, Renate, who's concerned with would-be adopters not being aware of the almost certain change in the personalities of Thelma and Louise as they grow into adulthood:
Hello Bill,
I am noticing in your daily
updates that a lot of people are interested in adopting these
cute little pups who look like bear cubs. I hope that all these
people do their research on both breeds that these pups are mixed
with (Chow and Akita). Thelma and Louise are cute now and get
along with each other and every other dog. They just want to play.
But as they grow up, they may not like other dogs anymore, etc.
The white Akita I found (she is going to Kansas this weekend to
the Akita rescue there) was probably a cute little white Cotton
puff as a puppy, but somehow when she grew up, she ended up being
a chain dog, and then she was dumped altogether! I would hate
to see that happen to these cute pups. They deserve better.
Chows as well as Akitas are awesome dogs, but there are certain things people need to know before committing to these breeds. I know that Straydog does a good job with the placement of dogs in the proper homes. I just want potential adopters to do their homework and not go by looks alone.
Renate
Thanks, Renate, for the very important advice, which has to do with why our adoption policies are so strict
As you mentioned above, "Straydog does [or strives to do] a good job with the placement of dogs in the proper homes." And every time a dog is returned to Straydog because the adoption (for whatever reason) doesn't work out, we redefine a little more strictly our adoption policies.
To use the "lifeboat" analogy, we've never understood the inclination of some of the critics of our strict adoption policies to want us to pull rescued dogs in one side of the lifeboat and then as quickly as possible dump them over the other side of the lifeboat back into the water again. If we followed the suggestions of these critics, we could "rescue" and "adopt out" hundreds of dogs a month, most of whom would probably be homeless again shortly after having been rescued.
Also to "rotate" that many homeless dogs in and out of our shelter would cost Straydog thousands of dollars more every month just for the new arrivals checkups and all the rehabilitation expenses that those new arrivals checkups often include plus the expense of the spay and neuter surgeries.
When a dog from Straydog goes to her or his forever home, we try to be 99.9999% sure that that new home indeed will be the dog's forever home.
Right now Thelma and Louise have many, many homes for us to choose from (as there are currently about 10 names on the list of potential adopters for these two pups with more people calling about them almost every day), and we will be as careful as possible to be sure that the home(s) Thelma and Louise do go to will be their forever home(s).
I want to thank Renate again for reminding us that when Thelma and Louise grow up, they aren't going to be like a couple of Labs or Goldens and that we must make sure that potential adopters are fully aware of this.
Old Man Rocky's not doing well again
Rocky woke me twice in the middle of the night to go out into my fenced yard. The first time was at 3:30 a.m., and after about five minutes he came back to the door, and I got up and let him back in. A half hour later he woke me again breathing heavily. I let him out again, and I waited for him for about 10 minutes, but he never came back to the door, so I had to get dressed and go out to see what he was doing. I found him walking around the yard looking very sick. I also found a big pile of bloody poop. Hoping that Rocky's problem is worm infestation rather than something quite worse, we gave him another dose of Panacur (a wormer), and we're hoping this cures Rocky and that he snaps out of his illness. Otherwise things don't look good for the old fella, as Dr. Reeves told us a couple of weeks ago after he had examined Rocky and had gotten back the results on Rocky's blood test.