We would also be very grateful for any donations made directly to either of our regular vets. Please be sure to tell them that the donations are to be credited to our Straydog Inc. account:

     People used to call all the time asking where they could find photos of certain dogs whose names they knew either from our daily stories about the dogs or from having seen certain dogs on Petfinder.org, and we would always have to tell them that they had to search "by hand" back through all our daily pages to find photos of the dog(s) they might be interested in.

     Now, thanks to longtime Saturday Adoption Day Volunteer, Angela, who found (and showed me in an email how to install) our Search Engine, all you have to do is type in the box above any dog's name and click on "Find."

SUNDAY JULY 25 2004

7:00 P.M. UPDATE

"Cold front" brings temperatures down to the lower 90s

     Nice 90-degree wind blowing from the north. It's kind of like those extra-hot days people in the northern U.S. experience occasionally. Here we call it a cold front. The dogs are grateful for the respite, but the "furnace" will be burning again tomorrow.

In addition to running the daily "show" on Juana's day off, I've spent the day working on this past week's photos and on the upcoming August newsletter

     I've added several Adoption Day photos to the Saturday Update, and here's a link to other photos taken this past week:

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 18 2004:

* Yesterday's Adoption Day was slow--no adoptions [PHOTOS];

* The Leslies, who live in a nearby town, offer to bring us several bales of hay [PHOTOS];

* Email about a lost dog [PHOTO].

MONDAY July 19 2004:

* Nikki and Rex swap kennels with Russell [LOTS OF PHOTOS];

* Garrett Rhodes, a new temporary summer helper joins us [PHOTOS];

TUESDAY July 20 2004:

* We've got to do something to raise enough money to hire enough people;

* The tremendous amount of office work is what's not getting done;

* People call in and email in suggestions all the time;

WEDNESDAY July 21 2004:

* Puppies Autumn and Winter, Indy, Julie and Bobby see the vet;

* Yesterday's vet expenses at Reeves' Veterinary Clinic, paid for with a check written on our ever-dwindling Operating Fund, which is our only fund, came to $858.20;

* Response to my "treatise" yesterday about not having enough time;

* I'm going to try posting the Straydog Update at 7:00 P.M (at least for a while).

THURSDAY July 22 2004:

* The Share Cards from Kroger and Tom Thumb are starting to pay off!

* Ticks are overrunning us! [PHOTOS]

* The excessive heat is calling for more shade areas in some kennels [PHOTO]

FRIDAY July 23 2004:

* New kennel helper accidentally severs waterline with shovel in Old Pup and Angel's kennel [PHOTOS];

* Response to yesterday's story on our tick problems.

SATURDAY July 24 2004:

* No adoptions today [PHOTOS];

* Return to Straydog [PHOTOS].

 

PREVIOUS WEEKS (TABLE OF CONTENTS of Previous Daily Updates)

PREVIOUS SUNDAY UPDATES: Headlines Linking to the Last 255 Consecutive Sunday Updates of our Straydog website, which is also updated daily at 7:00 p.m. Central Time U.S.A.

      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.