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 into the box above any dog's name and click on "Find."

Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

SUNDAY AUGUST 8 2004

7:00 P.M. UPDATE

Four dogs adopted at our Saturday Adoption Day yesterday

   Tina's report ...

     Puppies Autumn and Winter were adopted by two separate families. Winter has two other doggie companions and two rabbit "companions," whom Winter didn't pay any attention to. Autumn has two guinea pig "companions." Both families were very nice, and we're quite sure both pups will be very happy in their new homes.

     Kerry went to a wonderful home that already had a male dog, who will be a companion for Kerry. By the end of the home visit both dogs were playing front paws down and hind ends in the air. Kerry even took a nap while we were there. It really looks like Kerry's going to have a great life with this family.

     Big Black has sparked a lot of interest in a family who came to see him again Saturday at PetsMart, and they've scheduled a home visit on the 21st. The family brought along their male dog (who's name happens to be Colby), and Big Black and Colby got along fine.

     Angie (the 63-year-old rescue person from West Dallas) adopted out a dog also during our Adoption Day session, and we're glad to be able to help her out

Starving puppy rescued by our overnight man, Randy Hopkins

     I took over the hospital dogs at 6:30 this morning so that Randy, who'd been here for over 12 hours, could go home and get some sleep. About an hour later Randy called saying he'd found a starving puppy near his home when he arrived there after work. No one in his neighborhood knew where the pup had come from, and Randy already has more dogs than he can handle, so he asked me what he should do with the pup. Pat spoke for me (through me): "Take the puppy to Dr. Morton in the morning for its New Arrivals Checkup."

Upcoming surgeries

     A few people have offered to help with our long list of surgeries needed for dogs with bad hips and bad knees.

     We thank you all very much! Because of your pledges we can get started right away.

   Fritz

     We will start with Fritz: femoral head removal, one leg at a time. We have Ollie's hospital kennel available now, so Fritz has a "hospital bed" ready for him when he comes back from surgery.

   Patch

     Will see Dr. Turner at the end of the month for x-rays and consultation about the second leg operation.

   Trixie

     ACL operation. Trixie is probably in chronic pain, but it's not as bad as Susie's pain seems to be. Sometimes Trixie will run really hard and long, as if her knee doesn't hurt her, but then she begins limping again.

   Nikki

     Femoral head removal at some point soon. She doesn't seem to be in pain, but the doctor says that the x-rays look very bad and we should
do this operation sooner rather than later. Nikki runs a lot and doesn't limp in the summer time. The Synflex (Glucosomine/chondroitin supplement) seems to be helping her a lot.

   Susie

     Two hip replacements. X-rays are being sent to Dr. McDonald at the DVSC (surgical center) for a second opinion. Susie is in pain.

   Bobby

     Two hip replacements and a knee operation. X-rays being sent to Dr. McDonald for a second opinion. Good old Bobby is probably in pain too, but he never complains.

   Teddy

     ACL, but he may be too old for surgery. The Adequan shots he's getting seem to really help.

Cost estimates on surgeries

     We have general estimates on all the operations except for the hip replacements, which Dr. Morton does not do. We will talk to Dr. Turner also about the hip replacements. DVSC (the surgical center) is very expensive, and I am wondering if Dr. Turner does hip replacements regularly and what he would charge.

     *The femoral head removal operations will each be $400 +

     *The ACL operations $600 +

     *Patch's second operation: not sure yet, but Dr. Arnold said Dr. Turner could do it for around $500-$600 +

     *Susie's and Bobby's operations: we don't know yet.

     We thank the wonderful folks who have pledged toward these operations and are making it possible for us to get started with them!

     Everyone at Straydog is very grateful for this!

     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 (which makes your donation tax deductible):

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 August 1 2004:

* Toby's Sunday "drive" in the park [PHOTOS];

* An additional report (from Erin) on yesterday's Adoption Day [PHOTOS].

MONDAY August 2 2004:

* NOT! UPPER NINETIES AND HUMID!

* Old Happy, Pat's first Straydog rescue back in '92, was moved into the hospital trailer today to get her out of the heat [PHOTOS];

* What about the rest of the old timers?

* And what about Malamute Mandy, who, if she got loose, would head straight north and wouldn't stop till she reached Alaska?

* "Please consider adopting Mandy" [PHOTOS];

TUESDAY August 3 2004:

* Puppies Autumn and Winter move in with Rover [PHOTOS];

* Both Ol' Pup (who kennels with Angel) and Susie (who kennels with Anthony) have been limping the past couple of days [PHOTOS];

* BAD NEWS for both dogs;

* Our list of dogs lined up for surgery is getting pretty long.

WEDNESDAY August 4 2004:

* Kitten Oliver is adopted! [PHOTOS]

* Erin is delivering Oliver to his new home this evening;

* To try to beat the heat we've made some changes in our daily schedule.

THURSDAY August 5 2004:

* Operating Fund rises a little, and we're receiving pledges to take care of surgeries;

* Update on Kitten Oliver's adoption [PHOTO OF OLIVER];

* Upcoming August Straydog Newsletter in the works.

FRIDAY August 6 2004:

* IDA (In Defense of Animals) condemns cruel poisoning of 50,000 stray dogs prior to Olympic Games in Athens;

* Email about health insurance for dogs.

SATURDAY August 7 2004:

* Kerry, Puppy Autumn and Puppy Winter were adopted today at our Saturday Adoption Day at PetsMart in Plano (Texas) [PHOTOS] (Tina's report to come in the Sunday Update.

 

PREVIOUS WEEKS (TABLE OF CONTENTS of Previous Daily Updates)

PREVIOUS SUNDAY UPDATES: Headlines Linking to the Last 257 Consecutive Sunday Updates of our Straydog website, which is also updated daily at 7:00 p.m. Central Time U.S.A.

How about an air-conditioned home for Malamute Mandy, who, if she got loose, would head straight north and wouldn't stop till she reached Alaska?

     We've been running the following "ad" regarding Mandy for several weeks (if not months) now, and only one person, who happened to be from out of state) called about Mandy, and just recently two others emailed us about Mandy. The woman from out of state and her husband made a special trip from somewhere in Louisiana with their current dog to visit with and hopefully adopt Mandy, but Mandy didn't get along with their dog. (This event was so disappointing that I didn't even report on it here in our Daily Dog Log.) Erin is in the process of corresponding with the two people who emailed us, and hopefully something will come of this.

      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 almost 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 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