Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

FRIDAY December 1 2006

Posted by Midnight

Bill reports ...

     I don't know how dogs can stand it sleeping in unheated dog houses (which are at least stuffed with hay) in unheated shelters (which at least block the wind), but they do stand it. They survive. Several of our older dogs are now living inside the hospital trailer, and the other old fellas have heat lamps hanging over them inside their shelters. We would really like to start a campaign to raise enough funding to build a kennel building, but it's already a tremendous challenge to raise enough funds to keep our daily operating account at the bank (which is our only account) in the black. But we must move in the direction of someday building a kennel building.

     We've been thinking about a simple insulated steel building on a cement slab that would hold 94 crates lined up in rows. We would bring the dogs inside only during very bad weather. We still believe in Pat Arnold's original idea of keeping dogs two to a kennel in kennels that are about the size of an average back yard, where they've always got room to run and romp and play. And we've thought of building individually heated (and air conditioned) shelters (or dog houses), but we're thinking that that would be much more expensive than one big, plain steel building. (Steel buildings can also withstand high winds.)

     Here are some photos taken this morning when it was between 25 and 30 degrees outside:

Juana reports ...

Ground frozen this morning

     The ground at Straydog was frozen solid this morning. We couldn't really do our kennel work as we normally would. So our doggies got extra caregiving starting this morning after picking up all the poop. We started to caregive everybody as we changed out water buckets and picked up poop, in addition to doing our regular walks of each set of dogs to the park. Some of the water hoses were frozen (even though we thought we had thoroughly drained them) and also all the water buckets had an inch of ice on them. Some of our doggies love to eat and lick the ice. We got a photo of Natalie eating the ice.

Ten more bales of hay

     Our local feed store delivered more hay for us this morning. I had ordered 10 more bales of hay last week, and today they delivered them. We should have plenty of hay now to make it thru the winter. We really didn't need more hay at the moment as every dog house is now stuffed full of hay, but 10 bales in the barn will really keep us ahead in case we need it later on.

We did some weed-eating on this bright sunshiny (tho cool) day

     During the day we got time to do some weed-eating around some of the kennels where the grass has kept on growing. We brought Freckles inside because of the noise, and we put Freckles' son, Leo, in with his buddies, Rudy and Spice, and then Leo went with them (as always) to the park during their turn.

We're draining the hoses even better for tonight

     We're draining our water hoses early, as soon as we are done using them today. It's supposed to freeze again tonight (and for the next several nights). Last night a couple of the "drained" hoses still froze, but I showed everyone again how Pat Arnold taught me to drain hoses, and we shouldn't have any more problems.

A lot of doctoring today

   Skipper

     Skipper's incision looked a little scabby, so I cleaned it good and applied Animax to it.

   Ginger

     Ginger has had a mole that looked like a pregnant tick on the side of her head between her ear and her eye, and somehow it got half torn off, and she has now been scratching it hard by rubbing her head on the ground and she's making it bleed. I cleaned it and applied Animax. I also called Dr. Terry, and she told me that we probably need to remove it, so I set up an appointment for this coming Monday. The doctors will look at it, and they will probably burn what's left of it off so it won't bother her anymore.

Jack & Skipper to go get stitches removed

     Also set up an appointment for this coming Monday for Jack and Skipper's stitches to be removed. I do want the doctor to recheck Jack's eye before his stitches come out. Otherwise I could remove them myself as I did for Jackson and as I am going to do for Colby, which Dr. Terry said would be okay for me to do. It's hard to believe that today it's already been two weeks since Colby got his knee surgery done. And thank goodness Colby is doing very well.