w w w . S t r a y d o g. o r g U p d a t e
POSTED EVERY DAY AT NOON CENTRAL TIME U.S.A.
Straydog Inc., The Late Pat Arnold's Happy Home for Strays, a No-Kill Dog Shelter
P.O. Box 1465, Gun Barrel City, Texas 75147 * (903) 479-3497 * EMAIL: straydog@straydog.org

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

TUESDAY MAY 11 2004

Joe visited Rocky late yesterday afternoon, and Rocky ate for Joe

      Again Rocky was very glad to see Joe, and he ate a jar of baby food "chicken sticks" that Joe put on a plate for him. Other than gaining a bit of an appetite again, Rocky was about the same.

      We'll be seeing Rocky again today during our visit to Dr. Reeves' clinic with Toby, Katie and others.

Rocky ate even better this morning, but he's still not a "happy camper"

      We called Dr. Reeves this morning to check on Rocky and to see how many dogs we can bring to his clinic this afternoon. Dr. Reeves said that Rocky ate almost an entire can of dog food this morning, but still is not interested in going on walks after his potty breaks. We'll find out more during our visit this afternoon.

 

Woman rescues dogfight losers

Erin received a call from a 63-year-old rescuer of dogfight losers (among other dogs) who's in dire straights

      Another woman (this one only 63 compared to Jesse, the woman rescuer we reported on Sunday who's 73) who lives in West Dallas gave us a call. This woman needs help. She currently has 30 dogs crated inside her house, and quite a few more dogs in her yard. I don't know if I heard her correctly, but it might be more than 100 dogs total that she is caring for! There have been two articles written about her in the Dallas newspaper, the last one being four years ago, but she didn't have the resources to follow up with a newsletter to a mailing list of contributors, so there have been very few repeat donations.

      "How can we help you?" I asked. "What specific things can we try to do for you?"

      "Well, I bought this sweet Pit bull for three dollars," the woman said. "The owner was going to shoot the dog. He wouldn't just let me have the dog, so I gave him three dollars. That was enough money to buy him some drugs here in this neighborhood, you know. Anyway, the poor dog has something very bad the matter with his hind legs. I just brought the dog home from the vet, and they will get some estimates with surgeons on what it will cost to fix the dog's problem. He can't walk without dragging his bottom on the ground. His testicles are raw from the dragging. Of course, the dog will be neutered during the surgery too.

      "I wish this owner had fixed the problem when the puppy was younger," the woman went on to say. "This white dog named Patch is about two years old now."

      [Later the woman called again, and the estimate from two vets is $1,000 for the surgery].

Patch, trying to walk

Patch maneuvers himself to the water bucket. This little guy needs a $1,000 surgery on his hind end.

     "I use my social security check to buy comfortable and more humane collars for the many, many dogs chained up around in my neighborhood. I go around and change out the collars. People donate dog food to me, but I don't receive many other donations at this time.

      "Another thing you could help me with is that we need to find a place for a lovely, sweet, brindle Pit Bull named Tiger. Tiger is at a home now, being cared for by a dad who's son is coming home from prison less than two weeks from now, and the dad has given me permission to find another home for Tiger, because the dad is afraid his son will fight the dog. There is a lot of money in dogfighting, and it goes on all the time in my neighborhood. I've been threatened often to stay out of it, or something will happen to my dogs.

Tiger needs to find a home before his owner gets out of prison and starts entering the poor dog in dogfights.

Tiger is a beautiful dog.

      "What I do, though, is go around after the dogfights and pick up the dogs who have lost the fights. Their (monster) owners always abandon the losers and leave them to die. I take the injured dogs to the vet to get help. If they are suffering too much, the vet will put them down for me. If the vet can repair a dog's injuries, he does and adds the expense to my vet bill.

      "Anyway, we need to get Tiger to a safe place before the son gets home from prison."

      "What else could we help you with," I asked, heart-broken over this new information about dogfighting that I just wished wasn't true.

      "Well, I am taking in quite a few new puppies. Ten black lab puppies that are 10 or 11 weeks old, and five others. If you could help me with these puppies, that would be very good. I won't give them away to anyone in my neighborhood. The pups would probably end up being used for bait in the training of the fighting Pits. I always tell my neighbors that my puppies already have homes they are going to soon. So, I need help in getting them out of this neighborhood."

A couple of the puppies the woman has just rescued.

      "Okay," I said, overwhelmed by all I had just heard. "Tiger, Patch and the 15 puppies. We will try to help you with that. Send us pictures. I will send them on to Holly, my friend with the internet Animal Loop of rescuer/friends, and we'll write about this on our daily website update."

      Let's send prayers to the two dog rescuers we've mentioned in the past few days, and let's see what we can do to help them.

Number of calls is increasing asking us to take puppies

      Several other folks have called us about taking in puppies they've rescued this week too. What can we do? What can we do?