Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

MONDAY APRIL 26 2004

Melissa takes Beagle Pup home--officially adopted!

     You may remember that our Adoption Day Volunteer Melissa and her family had to move from Mesquite (a suburb of Dallas) to Crandall (a rural community about 25 miles southeast of Dallas) in order to be able to keep their eight family dogs. The City of Mesquite was going to force Melissa's family to give up all but two of their beloved dogs. (Here's the link to that February 24th Update about their situation: * Email from Adoption Day Volunteer Melissa about having to move out of Mesquite because of being over the Mesquite limit on dogs [PHOTO].)

     Melissa and her husband and children have determined that on their own they can maintain a sanctuary with a population of 10 rescued dogs, so when we rescued Beagle Pup this past week, Melissa said that she and her family would take this pup as their 10th and last rescue. (They had already rescued number nine after moving from Mesquite to Crandall.)

     When Melissa and her husband and one of their daughters arrived at Straydog yesterday afternoon to pick up Beagle Pup (whom they will give a real name to), I gave them the grand tour of our shelter and again advised them not to exceed their self-imposed limit of 10 dogs, take care of their 10 dogs themselves (without hired help and without having to raise money to pay the hired help and to pay for other expenses) and "live happily (and busily) ever after."

     Although they seemed very impressed with the size of our shelter and with our total operation, I think they realized that their own 10-dog sanctuary was going to be enough for any one family. Just think, if hundreds (or thousands) of families (or individuals) converted their homes into 10-dog sanctuaries, we could save thousands (or tens of thousands) more homeless dogs.

Conception Control via spay and neuter is still our main goal

     Let us never forget that no matter how many 10-dog sanctuaries are created and no matter how many 80-dog (or bigger) rescue "lifeboat"/sanctuaries (like Straydog) are created, we can completely solve the overpopulation problem only through STOPPING UNPLANNED CONCEPTION!

After three adoptions we do some mixing and matching to make kennel space

     With Puppy Grace adopted and living now in Plano we tried Puppy Holly first with Macy, which didn't work because Puppy Holly was very afraid of Macy's rambunctiousness. Then we tried Holly with Baby Girl, who had been kenneling with Jordan, who was adopted and is now living in Plano. Baby Girl shows little interest in playing with Holly, but she tolerates the puppy, so Holly moved in with Baby Girl, and this matchup is working fine.

     Copper, who had been in a temporary kennel, was then moved into Holly and Grace's former kennel.

     Beagle Pup stayed in a hospital during his brief stay here, so his departure didn't leave us any open kennel space.

Rocky visits with Ginger in the park

     Rocky's been home in a hospital kennel since Friday evening, but due to all the rain he and his kennel mate, Ginger, hadn't been able to visit in the park till this afternoon. They were glad to see each other.