SUNDAY JULY 11 2004

10:47 A.M. UPDATE

Erin's Adoption Day Report ...

Puppy Spring was adopted Saturday at our PetsMart Adoption Day

     Puppy Spring has a new home in the country with a Chocolate Lab and a kitty cat! Her new mom will send us pictures soon. Spring played with Rico, the Lab, and sniffed the kitty. The large Lab really wanted to tussle, but Puppy Spring lay on her back because she is too small to play rough just yet! The family will keep a close eye on the dogs when they are together so the puppy won't get hurt.

     The mom got out a baby gate and put it up so that Puppy Spring would remain in the kitchen while we talked and filled out the adoption paper work, and Rico stayed on the other side. When Puppy Spring gets a little bit bigger (not too long from now), the dogs will be able to be together without such close monitoring!

     Congratulations Puppy Spring on finding your forever home!

No other adoptions Saturday

     While I (Erin) was on the home visit with Puppy Spring, Dad stopped by PetsMart and took some pictures of the dogs and volunteers:

Email from Pay Pal including message from Catherine M. regarding Toby's cart

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:39:05 -0700
From: Catherine M. via message from PayPal
To: straydog@straydog.org

You've Got Cash!
Dear Straydog Inc.,

Catherine M. just sent you money via PayPal.

Catherine's message:

It was so fun to see our email included with your Saturday posting! Isn't it amazing how technology can connect us this way?!

We are sending you $300.00 as a "down-payment" for Toby's cart. We anticipate that there will be other costs associated with the cart, and we want to cover all the costs -- so please let us know the balance. As i stated in my first email, it feels like a gift to us to be able to support you in this way.

As a final note, my husband grew up in Bethany, Oklahoma so we were excited to see that Straydog is not all that far away from his home. We are newly married and we live and work in New York City. We have two dogs, Lucas and Sooner. As I type this, they are lying outside, sunning their full bellies and dreaming about chasing rabbits and stealing socks from the hamper!

Warmly,

Catherine and Randy (and Sooner and Lucas too!)

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

And many thanks to Catherine and Randy from the Straydog Team!

Old Jed had emergency surgery early Saturday morning

From: Larry Buckman
To: billarnold147@yahoo.com
Subject: Jed
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:05:06 -0500

Bill, I just stopped by Petsmart to give Erin some news about Jed, and she asked me to email you about it. First, and most important, we believe he is going to be ok.

A little before 1:00 this morning, Jed began pacing around and couldn't seem to get comfortable. I was concerned immediately because this isn't normal behavior for him. A few minutes later he began making terrible wailing sounds (which I hope I never hear again) and started foaming at the mouth. I took him straight to the Emergency Animal Clinic here in Plano (which is just a few blocks from my house) where he was diagnosed with 'turned stomach'.

This is a very serious condition and required surgery to correct. It was all done by 3:00 AM and he came through in pretty good shape. The doctor was able to staple the stomach back in place and said there was minimal bruising caused by its displacement. He'll be at the clinic until at least Sunday as they monitor him for a possible relapse and keep him on fluids via IV. They'll start to give him a little real food before I can bring him home.

Please wish old Jed luck. I'll keep you updated as he recovers.

Regards,

Larry

Email from a 62-year-old woman who's ill and is worried about what will happen to her dog

From: Marymrgr@aol.com
Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 12:35:50 EDT
Subject: Peace of Mind
To: straydog@straydog.org

This may or may not be something StrayDog has encountered before. I am a 62-year-old lady with some health problems. I have a 7-year-old male Golden/Chow Mix. I am looking for some type of organization that I could pay in advance to come to my home and take Montie to their no-kill shelter. I need to have a place for him to go if I am hospitalized or have a long recovery period or die. This has been worrying me a lot, and I hate the thought of what would happen to Montie if something happened to me. If you have any thoughts or suggestions I would very much appreciate your help. I live alone (renting) and the landlord would call the pound to have my dog picked up. I'm sure you know the kill numbers in the Dallas City pound. Also I have no friends. I've always been a loner, and now I'm paying the price in a way I never expected.

Thank You,

Mary Garrett (marymrgr@aol.com)

We will do what Pat would have done

     I've said before that Pat always responded to these types of near desperate (and desperate) pleas for help, and Erin is already contacting Mary, and we will do something so that she can have "Peace of Mind" (as Mary wrote in her subject line above).

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

SUNDAY July 4 2004:

* For some reason there weren't as many fireworks shooters Saturday night;

* Stray Black Lab rescued from road near Straydog;

* For the first year since we've been at our current Straydog location (October 1994 to the present), ticks are becoming a big challenge.

MONDAY July 5 2004:

* Fireworks ended about 11:00 last night;

* The newly rescued Black Lab, whom the crew has named "Indy" (short for "Independence Day"), is doing okay and will go to the vet tomorrow;

* Speaking of Labs, we recently received another email from Jana about Blind Chubs and Sister Cassie (PHOTOS).

TUESDAY July 6 2004:

* Indy, the newly rescued Black Lab, will go to see Dr. Reeves this afternoon;

* Email from England regarding dog cart link we posted near the bottom of this page;

* I'm as nervous as can be about checking our P.O. box today after I post this update - hopefully early contributions will have arrived.

WEDNESDAY July 7 2004:

* Old Sassy Katie is not doing well;

Erin's report on Tuesday's vet visit ...

* Blackie, Misty, Anthony, Leo, Toby and Indy made the trip to Tyler;

* Our P.O. Box contained 21 letters with contributions yesterday.

THURSDAY July 8 2004:

* Erin gives Katie a reprieve [PHOTOS];

* Toby is measured for a cart that will allow him to move freely around the park [PHOTOS];

* Gretchen's getting along okay living with Maggie and Dallas at the Bollinger's, but some bad news came from her new vet;

* Molly had three suspicious tumors removed yesterday [PHOTO].

FRIDAY July 9 2004:

* Katie's still with us and back in her daily routine;

Erin's report on yesterday's visit with Dr. Reeves;

* Email from Erin with her thoughts about Katie;

* Emailed suggestion for people without Internet access at home;

* Contributions are beginning to come in via mail and phone-in (and emailed in) credit card donations;

* Tomorrow's Adoption Day Roster.

SATURDAY July 10 2004:

* Email from a couple in New York offer to pay for Toby's cart;

* Messages like the above make me sit down and cry;

* More photos of Toby being measured for his cart;

* Larry Powell's column today in The Dallas Morning News is entitled "These old dogs are in need of some new humans to love"

 

PREVIOUS WEEKS (TABLE OF CONTENTS of Previous Updates)

      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 April 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.

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 first article about our shelter in The Dallas Morning News in March 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