We had a great time at the 5th Annual
Pat Arnold Memorial/Donor Appreciation Day Sunday, May 29, 2016!
Pat Arnold Memorial/Donor Appreciation Day Sunday, May 29, 2016!
| Co-Founder Bill Arnold gave a short talk about what a struggle it constantly is trying to raise the necessary funding to keep Straydog going, and Bill suggested that at least one of the presidential candidates should promise in his/her platform that he/she would address the overpopulation problem (of dogs and cats) and solve it through a massive SPAY/NEUTER campaign immediately upon taking office. |  |
 | Linda Arnold gave a short talk announcing that pro golfer Fuzzy Zeller is endorsing Straydog's 6th Annual Golf Tournament coming up in October 2016, and Linda also announced that the 1st Annual Straydog Gala will be held on April 1, 2017. (Much more info to come on this major fundraising event.) |
| The Arnold Family Band (now called "Gimme Shelter Band") performed several original "dog songs." |  |
 | Dr. James Morton of Morton Small Animal Clinic gave a short talk. |
| And everyone enjoyed the delicious desserts Stacey Arnold, Pat Arnold's sister Penny, Cathy Blanton and others helped prepare. |  |
We recorded the last three quarters of the event, which can be listened to by clicking here.
(Unfortunately, our recorder malfunctioned for the very first part of the event
and the recording starts in the middle of Linda Arnold's announcements.)
5th Annual Pat Arnold Memorial/Donor Appreciation
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Sunday, May 29, 2016
LINDA ARNOLD: This year one of our supporters has reached out to -- and I don’t know how many of you will know this name -- it’s Fuzzy Zoeller. Some people know who he is. He is a big-time senior golfer and he is going to endorse the golf tournament for us. He is lending his name. Even if you are not a golfer, you are invited to come out to Twin Lakes on October 21st. Please share a lunch with us. Some of our sponsors are here. We do a great day. We have lunch and we have dessert and we have a lot of fun and a couple of our rescues are there all day long. It’s just a beautiful setting. It’s a 1,000-acre tree farm. You can wander around and have fun. That’s what we do! Thank you everybody for your golf tournament participation. It means so much to us.
Then the big news! This year 2017, well not this year, on April 1st Straydog is going to host its first ever Annual Gala. We are going to have a silent auction, a live auction, a dinner and a dance. It’s going to be held at the Frontier of Flight Museum out at Love Field. If you have ever been out there, you know that it’s a great venue. The people there are so nice and helpful. We have already kick started this event. We have some of the wine donated for the event. We have a band, which has donated time for the event. Desserts have been donated. Flowers have been donated. Silent auction items are already starting to be pledged. This is going to be fun. We are going to need your help to make it even more successful and to keep me from having a nervous breakdown. We are going to have a meeting on Sunday, June 12 at the Frontier of Flight Museum to talk about all of the volunteer opportunities and what we need from everybody and your participation and how you can help Straydog. I hope you can all make it. The website will be posted with that information tomorrow. The meeting will be from2:00 to 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. I don’t know that I can have all of the desserts that Stacey has done here, but we will have some cookies. How about that? I hope that you can understand the importance, as Bill addressed, that this money come in, that we try to find other venues and that we try to introduce more people to the Straydog mission. If we accomplish that, then we can take care of that many more dogs. Thank you for being here today.
ERIN ARNOLD JOHNSON: Hi, I’m Erin. I just wanted to say another quick thank you for your participation today. It seems that we are growing and growing every year that we have this event and it’s special. We love that you feel the same way that we do about dogs -- our companion animals. We are so blessed by your support, so that we continue helping them and saving lives. We also make many humans happy too, when we adopt the dogs out and that’s nice. We want to give a special thank you to Dr. James Morton, Dr. Dumeyer, Dr. Shirey, Dr. John Morton and all of the staff at Morton Small Animal Clinic. They also share in our mission and give us wonderful support for the dogs and wonderful care. I would like to introduce you to Dr. James Morton. He’s here today. He’s been caring for our dogs at Morton Small Animal Clinic for many years. We appreciate him very much and we look forward to working with Morton Small Animal Clinic for many years to come. Here is Dr. James Morton.
Dr. JAMES MORTON: Thank you all for being here and we really appreciate being a part of such a wonderful group. I can tell you that there is no other group out there that compares to Straydog. I’ve been doing this for a little bit. I don’t have as much gray hair as my dad. Maybe in 40 years, I will. I will tell you that I see other groups come in and they talk a big game, but nobody walks it like Straydog. I can tell you that there’s care not given, but at Straydog there is care given. There’s complete care from the beginning to the end – with no hesitation. It doesn’t always exist in other groups. You hear people talk about other groups. They say, “This group, they care for the animal.” It’s not the same. You are comparing two different things. Straydog is unique and they are the only ones doing it and I will tell you, it’s a special group. The one thing to remember from today is, and you heard me say it a second ago, and I will repeat it. I hope you like it. It is --- unmatched care from beginning to end with no hesitation. Unmatched care from beginning to end with no hesitation period. I promise you. It’s the truth. Thank you all for letting me be a part of it.
BILL ARNOLD: We were going to do a slide show, but Juana couldn’t get here early. She had to go to her grandson’s first birthday party. She’s on her way now. Anyway, we were going to do a slide show, as we’ve done in the past but, if you look at the website and the newsletters, you can see the pictures all of the time. We decided to bring The Arnold Family Band out of retirement. Actually Erin plays the guitar and Bill Jr. play drums, but we didn’t bring the drums today. He’s going to sing with us. We’ve got three members of the old Arnold Family Band, which we’ve now begun to call, “The Gimme Shelter Band.” We are glomming off The Rolling Stones. Hopefully, they will either support us, if they ever here about us, or they’ll sue us. A lawyer friend of mine said, “Hopefully they’ll sue you and then you will become famous.” But we are glomming off of them, because now if you search for the words, “Gimme Shelter,” it will bring you to The Rolling Stones and The Arnold Family Band.” Anyway, we thought we would bring our equipment up here. We’ve been practicing quite a bit in the last few months. We did an actual, regular gig two weeks ago at a local club, The Coconut Island, down on Cedar Creek Lake. We had a lot of fun and we brought some other members of other bands that my boy Bill has played with in the past and I have played with them too at times. They came and we had a tremendous night and a lot of fun. We were going to try and turn it into a fundraiser, but we ran out of time. We didn’t even put a tip jar out. We were so focused on trying to play some good music that night and we put all of our emphasis on that. Anyway, it was event number one for The Gimme Shelter Band. Now we are going to have event number two and play a few dog songs. Let me preface this, before we start. Over the years, I’ve written a whole lot of songs from the late 60s through the 70s and 80s. When we started the dog shelter project/mission, I started writing songs about dogs with dog lyrics. We’ve got three of them that we are going to do right now, plus our version of The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter.” One of the dog songs is called, “Looking for My Old Friend Rocco.” I wrote it in 1988, the day after Rocco passed on. He was quite a dog. At that point in time, Pat and I were just starting to learn about the macrobiotic diet. Some of you might have heard of it. It has a lot of value. It is supposed to be an anti-cancer and cancer-curing diet. There have been many books written about it. Anyway, we got started on that. We still eat brown rice and steamed vegetables every day, so we at least do that much. I haven’t told Dr. Morton this story yet, so he might find it interesting. A year before Rocco passed away in 1988, he came up lame on his left front leg. He had an osteosarcoma on his wrist, if that’s the word for wrists in dogs. Dr. Steven at Lakeside Clinic said that he had a very fast-growing and aggressive cancer and he would probably only live for maybe six weeks. We had just started macrobiotics and we said, “Why don’t we feed him brown rice and beans and all kinds of steamed vegetables.” We did and he didn’t die in six weeks or a year. He lived 15 months and 11 days and he didn’t die of cancer. He died of a twisted stomach. About halfway through our treatment, he had to have his leg removed, because the tumor started to grow. I remember the night we took him in and Dr. Steven met us at their clinic. He realized it was a twisted stomach, but he was very interested as to why this diet had worked so well and prolonged his life. He asked if he could do an autopsy and see if he still had cancer. Unfortunately, he had a few some small tumors in his lungs, so he wasn’t going to live forever. It did prolong his life. If you count a dog year, it would be seven years for humans. It does work, but I am not here to promote that. In fact, it is so difficult. You couldn’t eat any of this stuff or go to restaurants. You have to take your food, if you go to friends’ houses to eat. We used to carry everything and eat our own food. After a while, we realized it is so hard to do it. There are people, who bring up their children on the macrobiotic diet and they never get sick. They can’t go to birthday parties and eat cake and ice cream. They learn to love the food, but they can’t have the fun that they could have. I am not recommending it, but it works. It is very difficult and they learn to love the food, but it is difficult. I have been eating that diet for about 25 years now. Going back to the first song, Rocco died and I wrote, “Looking for My Old Friend Rocco.” The second dog song is a song called, “Straydog,” which I wrote a while ago. The last song is called, “Angel.” She died on March 31, 2006. I wrote that the night she died. We are going to do these three or four songs for you right now and hope you enjoy them.
We will start out with our version of The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter.” The original lyrics are very simple. There are only two verses and it was written around 1968 or 1969 about the Vietnam Conflict or about war in general. The first verse fits for homeless dogs as well. The original verse is, “The storm is threatening my very life today, if I don’t find some shelter, I’m going to fade away.” That’s the first verse and that is true for dogs. The second original verse is, “The fire is sweeping my very street today, burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost his way.” We start here with, and in a minute Junior is going to sing it, “instead of the fire is sweeping,” “the dog catcher is sweeping my very street today, if I don’t find a no-kill shelter, dog catcher gonna sweep me away.” That’s the lyrics. Anyway here we go . . .
Then the big news! This year 2017, well not this year, on April 1st Straydog is going to host its first ever Annual Gala. We are going to have a silent auction, a live auction, a dinner and a dance. It’s going to be held at the Frontier of Flight Museum out at Love Field. If you have ever been out there, you know that it’s a great venue. The people there are so nice and helpful. We have already kick started this event. We have some of the wine donated for the event. We have a band, which has donated time for the event. Desserts have been donated. Flowers have been donated. Silent auction items are already starting to be pledged. This is going to be fun. We are going to need your help to make it even more successful and to keep me from having a nervous breakdown. We are going to have a meeting on Sunday, June 12 at the Frontier of Flight Museum to talk about all of the volunteer opportunities and what we need from everybody and your participation and how you can help Straydog. I hope you can all make it. The website will be posted with that information tomorrow. The meeting will be from2:00 to 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. I don’t know that I can have all of the desserts that Stacey has done here, but we will have some cookies. How about that? I hope that you can understand the importance, as Bill addressed, that this money come in, that we try to find other venues and that we try to introduce more people to the Straydog mission. If we accomplish that, then we can take care of that many more dogs. Thank you for being here today.
ERIN ARNOLD JOHNSON: Hi, I’m Erin. I just wanted to say another quick thank you for your participation today. It seems that we are growing and growing every year that we have this event and it’s special. We love that you feel the same way that we do about dogs -- our companion animals. We are so blessed by your support, so that we continue helping them and saving lives. We also make many humans happy too, when we adopt the dogs out and that’s nice. We want to give a special thank you to Dr. James Morton, Dr. Dumeyer, Dr. Shirey, Dr. John Morton and all of the staff at Morton Small Animal Clinic. They also share in our mission and give us wonderful support for the dogs and wonderful care. I would like to introduce you to Dr. James Morton. He’s here today. He’s been caring for our dogs at Morton Small Animal Clinic for many years. We appreciate him very much and we look forward to working with Morton Small Animal Clinic for many years to come. Here is Dr. James Morton.
Dr. JAMES MORTON: Thank you all for being here and we really appreciate being a part of such a wonderful group. I can tell you that there is no other group out there that compares to Straydog. I’ve been doing this for a little bit. I don’t have as much gray hair as my dad. Maybe in 40 years, I will. I will tell you that I see other groups come in and they talk a big game, but nobody walks it like Straydog. I can tell you that there’s care not given, but at Straydog there is care given. There’s complete care from the beginning to the end – with no hesitation. It doesn’t always exist in other groups. You hear people talk about other groups. They say, “This group, they care for the animal.” It’s not the same. You are comparing two different things. Straydog is unique and they are the only ones doing it and I will tell you, it’s a special group. The one thing to remember from today is, and you heard me say it a second ago, and I will repeat it. I hope you like it. It is --- unmatched care from beginning to end with no hesitation. Unmatched care from beginning to end with no hesitation period. I promise you. It’s the truth. Thank you all for letting me be a part of it.
BILL ARNOLD: We were going to do a slide show, but Juana couldn’t get here early. She had to go to her grandson’s first birthday party. She’s on her way now. Anyway, we were going to do a slide show, as we’ve done in the past but, if you look at the website and the newsletters, you can see the pictures all of the time. We decided to bring The Arnold Family Band out of retirement. Actually Erin plays the guitar and Bill Jr. play drums, but we didn’t bring the drums today. He’s going to sing with us. We’ve got three members of the old Arnold Family Band, which we’ve now begun to call, “The Gimme Shelter Band.” We are glomming off The Rolling Stones. Hopefully, they will either support us, if they ever here about us, or they’ll sue us. A lawyer friend of mine said, “Hopefully they’ll sue you and then you will become famous.” But we are glomming off of them, because now if you search for the words, “Gimme Shelter,” it will bring you to The Rolling Stones and The Arnold Family Band.” Anyway, we thought we would bring our equipment up here. We’ve been practicing quite a bit in the last few months. We did an actual, regular gig two weeks ago at a local club, The Coconut Island, down on Cedar Creek Lake. We had a lot of fun and we brought some other members of other bands that my boy Bill has played with in the past and I have played with them too at times. They came and we had a tremendous night and a lot of fun. We were going to try and turn it into a fundraiser, but we ran out of time. We didn’t even put a tip jar out. We were so focused on trying to play some good music that night and we put all of our emphasis on that. Anyway, it was event number one for The Gimme Shelter Band. Now we are going to have event number two and play a few dog songs. Let me preface this, before we start. Over the years, I’ve written a whole lot of songs from the late 60s through the 70s and 80s. When we started the dog shelter project/mission, I started writing songs about dogs with dog lyrics. We’ve got three of them that we are going to do right now, plus our version of The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter.” One of the dog songs is called, “Looking for My Old Friend Rocco.” I wrote it in 1988, the day after Rocco passed on. He was quite a dog. At that point in time, Pat and I were just starting to learn about the macrobiotic diet. Some of you might have heard of it. It has a lot of value. It is supposed to be an anti-cancer and cancer-curing diet. There have been many books written about it. Anyway, we got started on that. We still eat brown rice and steamed vegetables every day, so we at least do that much. I haven’t told Dr. Morton this story yet, so he might find it interesting. A year before Rocco passed away in 1988, he came up lame on his left front leg. He had an osteosarcoma on his wrist, if that’s the word for wrists in dogs. Dr. Steven at Lakeside Clinic said that he had a very fast-growing and aggressive cancer and he would probably only live for maybe six weeks. We had just started macrobiotics and we said, “Why don’t we feed him brown rice and beans and all kinds of steamed vegetables.” We did and he didn’t die in six weeks or a year. He lived 15 months and 11 days and he didn’t die of cancer. He died of a twisted stomach. About halfway through our treatment, he had to have his leg removed, because the tumor started to grow. I remember the night we took him in and Dr. Steven met us at their clinic. He realized it was a twisted stomach, but he was very interested as to why this diet had worked so well and prolonged his life. He asked if he could do an autopsy and see if he still had cancer. Unfortunately, he had a few some small tumors in his lungs, so he wasn’t going to live forever. It did prolong his life. If you count a dog year, it would be seven years for humans. It does work, but I am not here to promote that. In fact, it is so difficult. You couldn’t eat any of this stuff or go to restaurants. You have to take your food, if you go to friends’ houses to eat. We used to carry everything and eat our own food. After a while, we realized it is so hard to do it. There are people, who bring up their children on the macrobiotic diet and they never get sick. They can’t go to birthday parties and eat cake and ice cream. They learn to love the food, but they can’t have the fun that they could have. I am not recommending it, but it works. It is very difficult and they learn to love the food, but it is difficult. I have been eating that diet for about 25 years now. Going back to the first song, Rocco died and I wrote, “Looking for My Old Friend Rocco.” The second dog song is a song called, “Straydog,” which I wrote a while ago. The last song is called, “Angel.” She died on March 31, 2006. I wrote that the night she died. We are going to do these three or four songs for you right now and hope you enjoy them.
We will start out with our version of The Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter.” The original lyrics are very simple. There are only two verses and it was written around 1968 or 1969 about the Vietnam Conflict or about war in general. The first verse fits for homeless dogs as well. The original verse is, “The storm is threatening my very life today, if I don’t find some shelter, I’m going to fade away.” That’s the first verse and that is true for dogs. The second original verse is, “The fire is sweeping my very street today, burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost his way.” We start here with, and in a minute Junior is going to sing it, “instead of the fire is sweeping,” “the dog catcher is sweeping my very street today, if I don’t find a no-kill shelter, dog catcher gonna sweep me away.” That’s the lyrics. Anyway here we go . . .
| Gimme Shelter - Part 1 | Gimme Shelter - Part 2 |
| Rocco - Part 1 | Rocco - Part 2 | Rocco - Part 3 |