FRIDAY JULY 16 2004

NOON UPDATE

Big Black comes home to Straydog last evening about six p.m.

     The clinic called late afternoon advising that Big Black's new arrivals checkup was finished and he was ready to be picked up. No heartworms, thank goodness, but he does have hook worms, which we have the meds to treat him for. The big old dog is about 10 years old, weighs 85 pounds and has very dirty ears, which we are to clean daily--no infection.

     We put Big Black in the barn kennel, the one Pat had stopped using years ago because it has common fences with both Sandy and Fritz's kennel, and these guys like to start fence wars whenever possible. And sure enough, these two rough fellas tried to provoke a fight as soon as Big Black was in his new kennel, but Big Black ignored the two younger dogs, which defused the potentially hostile situation almost immediately. This old Black Lab is so docile the others stopped their barking right away and just stared at him as if they were wondering what was wrong with him.

     This guy will be a great addition to a home like the Bollingers', who have already adopted three of our older dogs--Maggie, Dallas and Gretchen. Older dogs have a lot going for them, and they need someone to help get them through their old age.

We got an email thanking us for putting the link to the May 21, 2000 update announcing Old Sassy Katie's arrival at Straydog

     If you dig deep enough, you can find all these old links yourselves. We used to post an update only once a week on Sundays, and the following link takes you to a page with the Sunday headlines going all the way back to September 1999 and continuing through last Sunday. I went to this link and looked back till I found mention of Katie's arrival at Straydog.

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)

CURRENT WEEK

SUNDAY July 11 2004:

* Puppy Spring was adopted was adopted Saturday at our Saturday Adoption Day;

* No other adoptions Saturday [PHOTOS];

* Email from PayPal with message from Catherine M. regarding Toby's cart;

* Old Jed had emergency surgery Saturday morning [PHOTO];

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

* We will do what Pat would have done;

* Photos of Jackson's first visit to the park [PHOTOS].

MONDAY July 12 2004:

* My daily focus has to remain on fund raising to keep Pat's dream alive;

* Email from last week about flea control;

* Erin's reply to the flea-control email;

* Update on Patch.

TUESDAY July 13 2004:

* Molly does NOT have cancer [PHOTO];

* Kitty Oliver is doing fine and is ready for adoption [PHOTOS];

* Jana, Blind Chubs and Sister Cassie's mom, writes about euthanasia;

* Toby's cart has been ordered [PHOTOS FROM CATHERINE];

WEDNESDAY July 14 2004:

* Katie has crossed Rainbow Bridge.

* Link to May 21, 2000 update when Katie first arrived at Straydog [PHOTOS OF KATIE, SJ AND PAT].

THURSDAY July 15 2004:

* Hot! Hot! Hot! 100 degrees! [PHOTOS];

* Late morning rescue from neighbor woman whose husband was planning to shoot the dog if it wasn't gone by the time he got home from work today [PHOTOS].

 

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.