Straydog UPDATE posted MONDAY 12/9/02 at 8:30 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

MONDAY DECEMBER 9 2002

Eight little puppies are left motherless

     This was a horribly sad story to hear. The mother dog of eight, four-week-old little puppies had been shot, and lay wounded for several days, until she died. (We can't go into the story of why this happened, but unfortunately this sort of thing happens all the time.)

     Now her eight little puppies were without their mother. Luckily a kind-hearted soul stepped in to try to help the pups and was trying to find either individual people to take the pups or a no-kill shelter. All of her efforts had failed and then she heard of Straydog and called us.

     Our shelter is full too (even with our recent adoptions), so I suggested the name of another shelter for the woman to try, and in the meantime I said that I would try calling several people too to see if they could take care of the pups, even tho I knew they were most likely also overloaded with rescued animals, which turned out to be the case.

     When the woman called me back, she had gotten a wrong number for the shelter I had referred her to, so I called that no-kill shelter and received the "We'll call you back If we have room for the dog" type message. I wasn't surprised when I didn't hear back from them. All no-kill shelters are overloaded with pups and dogs almost constantly. As soon as one dog or pup is adopted out, there's always another stray just waiting for a spot. I tried another animal rescue person, whose shelter was full, and she gave me yet another number to try. This person will call back if she can help.

We hurriedly get the kennel ready for the puppies

     We know we cannot save all the homeless dogs and puppies in the world, and we know we have to stay within our limits, but with a little rearranging of kennels we could make room for these needy little pups in order to save their lives. So the plan to bring them to our shelter went into action.

     We moved three-month-old Jimmy (and his frequent visiting playmate, Leo, who is remaining with his blind mother to give her a companion) into Helen and Sweetie's empty kennel so we could put the new pups into Jimmy's puppy kennel, which was constructed especially for puppies. Randy had to make a few changes to Jimmy's puppy shelter to puppy-proof it for these tiny puppies because they are much smaller than Jimmy was when he arrived. We added fresh hay to the two dog houses inside the shelter, and the heat lamp was turned on to make it nice and warm when the pups arrived.

I pick up the puppies at our vet clinic

     The woman with the puppies met me at our vet clinic and handed me the big box of adorable little puppies. She was very thankful that we would take them. A friend of hers had taken one of the puppies and the remaining seven pups all looked healthy.

The puppies get their first puppy examinations

     During the puppies' examinations one of the vet techs fell in love with the multi-colored pup and wanted to take this cutie, so now we were left with six little pups.

     The doctor said they are about four weeks old and are maybe Shepherd mix. He gave them their first set of puppy vaccinations (he thought it best to get them started right away), and then they were treated for the infestation of ticks and fleas and given a wormer medicine to take care of the worms all homeless puppies seem to have.

Home I came with six little hungry pups

     While Tina got the puppies settled in their new "puppy quarters," I warmed puppy food and blended it into a soupy mush. The puppies loved it, and to our surprise they ate the whole big pan full of the warm pureed puppy food mush.

Vet bill

     The vet bill for these six puppies will be tremendous for their series of puppy vaccinations, checkups and spay and neuter surgery, when that time comes. Giving proper medical attention and necessary vaccinations to the many dogs and pups at our shelter is one of our biggest expenses.

     If you would like to help us with our sky-rocketing vet bill, donations can be made either to:

Straydog Inc., P.O. Box 1465, Gun Barrel City, Tx. 75147

or to:

Morton Small Animal Clinic, 1404 E. Tyler St. Athens, Tx. 75751

     If sending donations to our vet clinic, please make a note on the check
that it is to be applied to the Straydog account.

     We thank you very much for your help