Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log
SUNDAY JUNE 20 2004
NOON UPDATE
Bad storm hit us yesterday afternoon just before last feeding
The strong winds from the west (with gusts somewhere between 50 and 100 miles per hour) blew apart a big tin shed on our neighbor's property (we think) about 500 yards from Straydog, and it carried several huge pieces of the shed onto our property. Luckily nothing was damaged and no one was hit by the flying debris. There was no other damage, but for a few minutes everyone here was afraid the whole place was going to blow away. "It was very, very bad!" Juana told me when I got back from Dallas about an hour after the storm had passed.
The storm lasted less than a half hour, and afterwards several of the dogs were still so scared that they wouldn't eat. But the weather turned nice for the rest of the evening.
The main phone line barely works due to the storm, and we cannot get anyone at the phone company (Sprint) to come out and fix it on Saturday or Sunday. It's too bad you can't deduct from your phone bill the days the phone's down. When the electric power is down, the electric company comes out immediately to fix it, because they don't make any money if their customers' power is down, but the phone company could care less because they continue to charge us whether the phone works or not!
Gretchen was adopted by Pam and Gary Bollinger yesterday
The Bollingers had already adopted two older dogs from Straydog some time ago--first Maggie and then later Dallas, two of our older dogs who probably wouldn't have ever been adopted if it hadn't been for the Bollingers.
Apparently Gretchen fit right in with the other two older dogs. Erin was at the home visit and adoption, and I'm waiting for a full report via email some time today. Erin told me when she brought Patch back to Straydog last night that she had taken a lot of photos of Gretchen's adoption, and here they are:
Patch is back in his hospital kennel at Straydog
Erin and her husband, Dana, brought Patch back last evening. Patch is still limping slightly, but he seems okay. He was his usual rambunctious self as he walked right into our hospital trailer and went straight to his kennel. Patch is such a good boy--most of the time.
No other adoptions yesterday
Kerry went on a home visit, but it didn't work out.
Previous Daily Updates
Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS UPDATES
(Click on any day below to see the update of that day)
LAST WEEK
Erin's Adoption Day Report ...
* Puppy Thelma was adopted again, this time by Pat Seward's neighbor!
* Two of Angie's lab puppies went to good homes today;
* Whiskers died suddenly Sunday evening for no apparent reason;
* Email message concerning Whiskers and Rocky;
* Erin Reports on a phone conversation with Angie about Whiskers;
* Whoever "dropped the ball" is not important now;
* Neighbor's dog hit and killed in the road in front of our shelter;
* Patch's leg is probably okay, says the vet;
10:00 p.m. report from Erin's house in plano ...
Erin's report of 10:00 Thursday night ...
* Patch is putting weight on his repaired leg again;
Erin's Friday morning report ...
* Patch is doing okay but still limping;
* Gretchen will be going to Pam and Gary Bollinger's for a home visit Saturday morning;
WEEK BEFORE LAST
Erin's Adoption Day Report ...
* Email from Ann Story, Sam and Baxter's mom, who's still looking for a job (Can anyone help Ann?)
* Rocky's not producing his own platelets, which are needed for the blood to coagulate;
* Thanks to all of you for your thoughts and condolences!
* Yesterday's vet visit to Dr. Reeves' clinic [LOTS OF PHOTOS];
* Email from Jana, mom of Blind Chubs and Sister Cassie [PHOTO];
* Katie once again says, "Not Yet!" [PHOTOS];
* The latest rescued litter of four abandoned Lab pups is doing fine [PHOTOS];
* Two very nice email messages from Brenda McCullough.
3 WEEKS AGO
* Erin's Adoption Day Report ...
* No Straydoggers adopted, but two of Angie's pups were adopted;
* Two skinny pups were found living under a bus stop bench in West Dallas [PHOTOS TO COME];
* Email from Lana Isom concerning 73-year-old rescuer, Jesse Evens;
* Patch and Whiskers are doing fine;
* Both Lucy and Gordo (two of General Manager Juana's kids) came to help their mom today [PHOTOS]
* A year ago today at noon, with my consent, the hospital took Pat off life support;
* Thank you, Cher, for the following very kind email message you sent to us yesterday;
* Would Pat be proud of us and happy with how we've continued her mission?
* Thanks to everyone for your continuing support over the past year.
* Rocky continues to improve, though he hates taking his meds [PHOTO];
* Erin and Tina are at Dr. Reeves' clinic in Tyler with six dogs this morning;
* Thelma (who became Coco for a short while) is being returned;
* Do we need a new adoption form?
* Email report on Sassy from her new dad;
* Thelma has been picked up and is now at Pat Seward's home;
* We just got Pat Seward's email a little after eleven o'clock this morning;
* Puppy Thelma is back at Straydog and moves in with Scooby [PHOTOS];
Mandy is one of our long-haired dogs who would rather be in Canada or Alaska than here in Texas! She would love a home where she could be inside the air-conditioning and on a loving guardian's bed! Mandy is very sweet and playful. She's is approximately seven years old and gets stressed out going to Adoption Days, so we don't take her often. Occasionally (but not often enough) we feature Mandy here on our update to give her another chance at someone seeing her who might want to adopt her. Some folks have written in about her, and contacted us, but no potential adoptions have worked out so far. Sometimes Mandy is picky about being friends with other dogs! Right now Mandy has a loving kennel-mate named Bear, so she isn't too lonely here at Straydog. But it's just not the same as being an inside member of a family that would be able to spend a lot of quality time with Mandy. Does anyone know of a nice home for Mandy? You can read more about Mandy via "Our Dogs for Adoption" link above, which takes you to our Straydog pages on Petfinder.org.
Spanna, Degenerative Myelopathy
help and information: Spanna
(has good cart links)
Doggon' Wheels - Wheelchairs for pets, dog carts: Doggon'
Wheels
Dog Mobility - boots, harnesses, equiwrap: Dog
Mobility
WHEELCHAIRS FOR DOGS: providing mobility for dogs with hind leg
disabilities: Wheelchairs
for Dogs
Ty-Lift Enterprises® - Specializing in Patented Animal Transport
Units On Wheels: Ty-Lift
Dog Cat and Handicapped Pet Care Products Services Support and
Classifieds: Handicapped
Pet Care
Thanks very much to those who have printed out even just one copy of the above three pieces of our newsletter and have passed the newsletter on to (or mailed it to) a potential Straydog supporter. If you can, please print out two or three copies (or five or 10 copies) and distribute them to potential supporters. If all 300 of our daily readers printed out and distributed just one copy, Straydog would be exposed to 300 new people. If all 300 of you printed out and distributed 10 copies, we would reach 3,000 new people!
First email from a reader who printed out and mailed out copies of our newsletter
Thanks a lot to longtime supporters Deana and Jim Hanson, who followed my suggestion to make copies of and mail out to friends the PDF files of our newsletter--with color photos too!
It probably won't happen anytime soon, but the technology is here to do away with mass printing and mass mailing altogether. It's already possible to read and print out entire books on the Internet.
We encourage others to do what Deana and Jim have done:
Bill,
We printed newsletters, and Jim put them in the mail today. Good luck! Please let us hear from you if your shelter runs short on anything. We'll try and help.
Happy Easter,
Deana and Jim
If you have a big enough list of people to pass out (or mail out) our newsletter to, you can simply call your local copy center (a Kinko's, for example) and tell them to go to this website (www.Straydog.org) and print out as many copies as you want of the three PDF files via the above three links. Then you can have the copy shop deliver the copies to you or you can go pick them up and do your own mailing of our three-piece newsletter. (And please never worry about the copyrights to our website materials. We want as many people as possible to make copies and distribute them!)
Expanding (or growing) our list of contributors will be our salvation
If a mailing list of 2,500 people can sustain our operation as it has, just think what a mailing list of 3,000 or 3,500 contributors could do.
Before the first article about Straydog was published in The Dallas Morning News (on March 13, 1997) we didn't know there was anyone else in the world who felt the way Pat and I felt about homeless dogs, and we had never asked anyone to help support our shelter. We believed that most people thought we were crazy. (And indeed many humans did and still do.) During 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and the first quarter of 1997, we (with no donations from anyone) paid all the expenses of taking care of all our rescues--a total population of eight rescued dogs in 1992 which had increased to 24 dogs at the time of the publication of The Dallas Morning News article in 1997. Pat and I always felt tremendous appreciation for the financial and moral support we began receiving from our supporters after that first article appeared in the newspaper. Six hundred people contributed more than $40,000 to Straydog (or the original "Arnold Stray Dog Fund") in March 1997, and from that point we continued to grow and grow and grow until we finally (two years ago) put a limit on ourselves of 65 dogs, which population has since swelled to 80+ dogs, which total population we are finally controlling here at Straydog by taking in a new dog only after we adopt at least one dog out.
Thanks so much to all of our contributors! We couldn't keep this operation going without you. Pat always said you all would continue to support us, and you have. And we at Straydog continue to rescue, care for and adopt out homeless dogs exactly the way Pat would have wanted. Thank you so much for your continuing support! ... Bill Arnold