Blog Archives

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

9/30/2015

BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Bill and Juana here and it’s early Thursday morning, October 1st. Happy New Month, Juana!

JUANA: Yes, Happy New Month! I read this morning that this was National Black Dog Day. We have lots of wonderful, adoptable black dogs here at Straydog.

It was a good day at Straydog. This is a picture of Bill walking big puppy James to the park.

I want to report that I made a video of James eating at 6:00 last night. He didn’t vomit or have any trouble eating. I sent the video to vet tech Jeanie with a report that we took him to Morton Clinic and he weighed 66 pounds. We also purchased his food there. Jeanie replied that they were very pleased with James’ progress and what we are doing. Dr. Lay still wants to see him this Monday. He has been seeing him every two weeks. We hope that Dr. Lay will release him this Monday. James just has to keep gaining weight. He is currently maintaining this weight.

BILL: What was James’ normal weight? 60 something?

JUANA: He was more than that. At one point, because he tore his ACL and we had to keep him indoors for so long and he wasn’t able to run, he was obese. He was probably 80 pounds then. He probably weighs 20 pounds less than he used to weigh.

BILL: He had a good walk in the park for me. This picture is of his 10:30 walk. Don’t use that picture of me, because of my tummy.

JUANA: Well, you can work on your tummy, while James works on his.

We haven’t reported on our newest rescues, who were at Morton Clinic. A long-time contributor found two dogs on her ranch one morning. She went to work that morning and she hoped that they belonged to someone and that they would leave. But when she returned, they were still there. She lives in Athens. They were very friendly and very skinny and she took them to Morton Clinic and paid their vet bill. She asked if we could find homes for them. We didn’t have any room at our shelter, but I moved Handsome and Marcela was adopted and Cadet is now with Copper and Wendy is inside. I wanted to put these two dogs in the kennel, where Handsome was. When I sent George to get them, they said the girl had some kind of discharge in her privates and they wanted to keep her at the clinic for a while. She is a small yellow Lab and she looks like Mariela. George brought the boy home and he looks just like Big Foot. He looks like a big Big Foot. Stephanie said that we could call him Little Big Foot, but I said that we would have to call him Big Big Foot. We are running out of names. Then Stephanie suggested Midnight. I am asking for suggestions for a good name for a big black Lab. He is very handsome and very sweet. He ate his food, but he was scared of all the dogs barking here. We hope that his kennelmate will come to our shelter soon.

BILL: Are they siblings? Midnight doesn’t look like he was starving.

JUANA: I don’t think they are littermates. The girl is very small. He doesn’t look like he’s starving anymore, because he’s been at Morton Clinic for a while and they put weight on him. Both of these dogs look very good now.

Stephanie and George bring Midnight into the Straydog campus.

Stephanie introduces Midnight to the big park.

Ronnie was the walker of the day and he was taking Skylar to the park.

Stephanie was caregiving Luigi and Jazzie. Luigi wants to have his tummy rubbed and Jazzie just wants to play. With one hand, you throw the ball and, with the other hand, you scratch Luigi’s head, or his tummy or his legs. Luigi and Jazzie never get into any squabbles. They get along and that’s good.

There’s Wayne caregiving Ethel and Fred and sitting on the ground with them. Fred has short hair and Ethel has long hair. Fred is coming around. We can brush Ethel. They are doing very well.

Wayne brushes Ethel while Fred makes sure he stays just out of reach.

Ethel tells Wayne to wait a minute while she says hi to the camera person.

While Stephanie was caregiving, she noticed little spots on Aggie and Moe. I went to check on them and they aren’t anything to worry about. There might have been something on the ground that scratched their bellies, like rocks.

Judy’s ringworm fungus is getting better. She’s still in quarantine and she doesn’t like that.

We haven’t talked about The Three Amigos in a while. I love these guys. Fletcher is so rambunctious, when it comes to the water hose. He’s crazy about water, but they are doing very well.

I am very proud of our new employee Connor. He is doing very well. It’s his second week here and he’s doing great and working very hard. There’s Connor caregiving Rowdy.

We recently took blood samples for Annie and Tobi, to see if there was anything wrong with their thyroids. Well, they both came back positive for thyroid problems and now they are both on thyroid medicine. Annie is so chubby and we feed her diet food and we don’t overfeed her. This medicine should help her lose weight. Tobi isn’t fat, but his hair was so coarse. That’s a sign of thyroid problems. This medicine should help with his coat.

Toby

There’s Ronnie with Jazzie and Luigi. Luigi likes to sniff and play in the park. Jazzie plays ball and she wants to play in the pool.

That’s all I have.

BILL: We’ll be back tomorrow with another report from Straydog.

You can listen to today's Radio Show below.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

9/27/2015

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BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Wednesday, September 23, 2015. Bill here in my office and Juana is on the phone from H1 at Straydog. Good morning, Juana. Let’s talk about what happened Wednesday.

JUANA: Wednesday was a good day and a very busy day. Blind and deaf Colt went to the vet, because we noticed spots on his leg on Tuesday. They looked like ringworm and we put him in quarantine. I wanted to take him to the doctor and have the doctor examine him under the black light. Poor Colt gets so nervous at the vet and I hope that he never has to make another trip to the vet. I didn’t want to take him to the doctor, but I didn’t want to leave him in quarantine, if he didn’t have ringworm. He didn’t know why he was put in quarantine or why he couldn’t go the park, because he can’t see or hear and he was upset. He could have had a skin infection. I wanted to know if I could take him out of quarantine and let him go to the park. I hope that this is the last time that I will have to take this poor baby to the vet. If he ever gets sick again, we will have to ask the vet to come here.

BILL: He can’t hear or see and he has no idea of what is happening. If he’s not in his environment, he only has his sense of smell and touch.

JUANA: George took Colt to the vet and he has ringworm, poor baby. He will have to stay in quarantine.

Colt is in the van crate on his way to see the doctor. Poor guy does not know what's going on.

Our dogs are so funny. Erika, Junior, Ebony and Nelson used to escape, when they were young. They are getting older and it’s harder for them to dig, but they dug a whole on Wednesday. Erika and Junior were in Ebony and Nelson’s kennel. There is only a fence to separate them. They used to do this almost every day and we used to ignore it. It was too hard for us to cover the hole up every day and they would just dig it out again. Then we decided to take them to the park together. That didn’t work because, as soon as they got to the park, they would squabble. If they dig into the same kennel, they like to visit. But they don’t like to be walked together to the park. It happened again very early Wednesday. It’s been a long time, since they’ve done this. Ronnie had never seen them dig like that and he has been here more than a year. I told Ronnie that they used to do it all of the time. He wanted to take them to the park together, but I told him that we couldn’t. Ronnie went to get a shovel to fill the hole. Before he got back, Erika and Junior went into the hole and went back to their kennel. They don’t dig that much anymore, but they did this time and it was so funny.

At the fence is Nelson and Ebony, you can see Junior running around the house over on the right, he's actually chasing Erika. It looks like Nelson and Ebony are tell Ronnie what Erika and Junior did.

Ronnie comes back with a shovel to fill the hole that Erika and Junior dug but they had crawled back to their kennel and acted like nothing happened. They're trying to fool Ronnie.

We didn’t walk the dogs to the park in the morning, because I wanted to bleach the entire park. We walked the dogs in the afternoon, after it dried. I bleached the whole park. Wayne did one section, Stephanie did one section, Ronnie did the sidewalks and I did the whole park. Then I bleached the H2 park. We bleached the whole shelter, because we are trying to control the spread of ringworm fungus.

Juana spraying down Park One with bleach.

Travis’ kennelmate Maria has something wrong with her skin. It’s peeling, but it’s not red or irritated. The irritation is round and I don’t know if it’s a skin infection, because it doesn’t look like ringworm. If it’s not ringworm, I don’t know what kind of fungus it is. Travis didn’t have anything. It was only Maria. So George took Maria to the vet too.

Maria in the van crate on her way to see the doctor about her skin infection.

He also took Wendy to be spayed. She was going to be spayed on Thursday morning. She had already eaten and she had water all day. I asked that they not spay here right then, but to wait until the morning. They took her to the back kennels and scheduled her spay surgery for Thursday morning.

This is little girl Wendy wondering what's going on.

This is a photo of Dr. James. He took care of all of the dogs. George didn’t get a good photo, because he was having trouble holding Colt. Colt was so nervous and he didn’t know what was happening. The doctor said that he has ringworm and he gave him oral medicine. We usually don’t use the oral medicine anymore, because it could hurt the dogs’ kidneys. The ringworm will have to run its course. The oral medicine could make it easier to heal and it might heal more quickly, but it has side effects. Since Colt is blind and deaf, we decided to use the oral medicine. We will also use lotion and we will dip him. We want him to heal as quickly as he possible, because he doesn’t understand what is going on around him.

Dr. James checks out Colt's ringworm spots.

Maria has a skin infection and it’s not ringworm. The doctor sent her home with medicine.

Next he checks out Maria's skin infection.

Back at our shelter, after we bleached all of the kennels and started doing the walks again after the park was dry, we started care giving. It’s September 23rd and it’s so hot. It was 91 degrees. This weather is crazy. There wasn’t any wind and it was so sunny and hot. You would think it was July or August.

BILL: How was Colt, when he got home?

JUANA: He was fine and he was very happy to be home. He’s doing well. He just didn’t like the trip or going to the vet, but he’s okay.

The last time our vet was here, we noticed that Joe had a little cyst on his face and it was hard. The doctor squeezed it and put him on Cephalexin. It started to heal, but it got full again. When we were caregiving Brownie and Joe, we noticed that Joe’s cyst might have ruptured and it is bleeding. It’s right near his nose. The doctor didn’t want us to bring him in and remove it at that time. But we are going to take him to the vet and have it removed, before it gets bigger. If it gets any bigger, the doctor won’t be able to suture it, because it’s right near his nose.

Lacie had the day off from Morton Clinic and she came and helped us. George had the camera and I didn’t get any pictures of Lacie trimming Rosita. She was so badly matted, but she looks so good now. Rosita looks adorable.

We asked Lacie to look at some of our dogs and give us her opinion. She works with Dr. Morton and she has a lot of experience as a vet tech. We asked if she thought we should take some of our dogs to the vet. She looked at Joe and, because his wound is open, she suggested that we take him to the vet as soon as we can and get it removed. I hope it’s not cancer, but it has ruptured. That’s not a good sign.

Lacie sees that Joe's cyst has opened and suggested we take him to the clinic as soon as we can.

My granddaughter Emma is enrolled in daycare. Bless her heart; she wouldn’t go to school on Wednesday. We can’t trick her anymore and Emma knew that her mother Lacie was coming to Straydog. She wanted to come to Straydog and she did. She loves it here. I got a video of her playing with Sandy. It was so cute. Emma played ball with Sandy and Sandy is so gentle. She lets Emma get the ball from the ground and Emma throws the ball to her and Sandy runs and gets it and brings it back to her. It was adorably cute!

We were also concerned about another knot that we found on Harley’s chest. A few months ago, Harley went to the vet and he was very, very sick. The last time we took Harley to the vet for very hard knots, Dr. Shirey aspirated them and they were just fatty tumors. I wanted to take him to the vet and see what was going on with this particular lump on his chest. It’s a little different.

Next one to be checked out is Harley. He has a knot on his side.

We’ve had Annie, Toby, Maria, Hannah, Marie and Mackenzie on diet food. They’ve all lost weight, except for Annie. She is super obese. She is older and she hasn’t lost any weight. It could be a sign that her thyroid isn’t working properly. Lacie said that she could save us a trip to the vet and she asked George to bring her a tube from the clinic. She took a sample of Annie’s blood and she will take it to the clinic and they can send it to the lab. I know that’s probably not fair to Dr. James, but we are trying to save a little bit of money. I look forward to getting the results.

Toby is not as fat. He’s not obese, but his hair is very, very coarse and thick. That is a sign that a dog’s thyroid might not be working properly. His hair and coat was always shiny, like a Lab’s. But now his hair is thick and bleached and coarse. It could be from the sun but, since he’s getting older and his coat was never like this, we also took a sample of his blood for testing. They don’t do the tests at Morton’s. They actually send them to another lab. We should have the results sometime next week.

Lacie checks out Toby and takes a blood sample to see if his thyroids are causing his hair to be so coarse.

I handed the camera to Emma and asked her to take a bunch of pictures. She took a bunch of pictures of her feet and her face and her nose. I asked her to take pictures of her momma and her nana, when we were taking blood from Annie. I was holding Annie and hugging her, while Lacie took the sample. Emma took a bunch of crazy pictures.

Hi, I'm Emma.

And these are my feet.

And this is my Mom and Grandma getting a blood sample from Annie.

We sent Purtis to the vet on Monday, because he was huffing and he had a bunch of knots again. The doctor aspirated them and said they were fatty tumors. I asked them to look for and aspirate the lump on his chest and it was full of pus. He was limping so badly on Wednesday and I thought he might have torn his ACL. The doctor thinks that, when he was trying to bite Lacie and Gordie, he might have bruised his leg. They were holding him down for the doctor. I hope he hasn’t torn his ACL and that it’s just bruised. He’s been having trouble with his leg. He can walk or run to the park and I carry him back to his kennel. He just sits in his kennel and he appears to be in pain. I brought him in and put him in a crate.

Purtis is going to the vet shortly but first gets a cookie.

We got several pictures of Fancy and Mike going back to H2.

Mike and Fancy wait outside H2's door. They are ready to go back inside.

They like going outside but are always ready to go back inside.

There are Jessie and Teddy, two more H2 residents. Jessie is hanging in there. He’s not doing well. I know that his time is getting close. His cough is horrible, but he’s still eating. He tries to walk and he tries his best. He has deteriorated in the last month and, bless his heart, it’s getting bad.

Jessie takes a cookie after getting back from the park.

Little Bear is doing the same thing. Sometimes he’s rejuvenated. He just won’t give up. He’ll have days where he can barely walk and we think he’s giving up. The next day, he’s perky and running around. He just wants to hang in there and live. It’s amazing! We’ve seen this time and time again.

Esther brings Little Bear back from the park. He's doing pretty good today.

BILL: We’ll be back again in a minute with another report from Straydog.

You can listen to today's Radio Show below.

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Saturday, September 26, 2015 - Marcela Gets Adopted

9/26/2015

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Last weekend at the RV Show Marcela met her new parents. Right away Tony and Lindsey knew Marcela was the one. They currently have a 7 year old Schnauzer named Benny who needed a friend. Today we did the home visit and it went terrific. Benny was so happy and you could tell Marclea was happy too. Many thanks to Tony and Lindsey for adopting Marcela and making her a part of their family. Congratulations Marcela!

Before Marcela went on her home visit Shelby and Juana gave her a bath and made her all pretty. She is such an adorable little girl.

Shelby gives Marcela a bath.

Juana dries her off and tells her today is the start of a wonderful day for you.

Marcela is looking good.

Next some brushing and nail trimming.

Juana takes a goodbye picture on her phone.

The Home Visit

Marcela meets her new buddy Benny.

Benny shows Marcela around the back yard.

Marcela checks out all over the place.

New Dad Tony asks Benny if Marcela is going to work out here.

And off they go again. They both like each other very much.

Marcela tells Tony to hurry up and make this final and that she is going to stay.

A great picture of Marcela with her new family.

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Tuesday, September 22, 2015

9/22/2015

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BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Tuesday, September 22, 2015. Bill and Juana here and it is actually early Thursday morning. We are going to do the Tuesday report first.

JUANA: It was a good morning. We didn’t have a full crew, but we had Ronnie, Stephanie and Jacob. Oh, and we had Connor too. Connor is a new employee, who started last Friday. I hope Connor makes it. I always tell everyone how hard it is to work here and how it’s not for everybody. You have to really like what you are doing. He was here on Tuesday to help us with the kennels. Jacob was the walker of the day. I got pictures of Jacob walking our dogs and also of Ronnie, Stephanie and Connor working in kennels.

We have bad news. We think that blind and deaf Colt has ringworm. He had three big circular sores, which were very red, and one little tiny one below the other three. We put him in quarantine and we took him to the vet on Wednesday and you will see more about that in ourWednesday report. I didn’t want to take any chances. We put some medicine on his sores. If he has ringworm, it’s going to be awful. Our dogs don’t understand why they have to be in quarantine and poor Colt is blind and deaf. We doctored him and put him in quarantine. When it was time for him to go the park, he got very upset. We had to skip him and he didn’t understand what was happening to him. We will talk about this more on Wednesday’s report.

Ronnie and Stephanie doctor up the suspicious sores on Colt.

They do kind of look like the ringworm fungus.

Everybody was working very hard and we got lots of pictures.

Connor rakes one of the kennels in his section. He is doing a great job around here.

Stephanie scrubs a water bucket to make sure it's clean before filling it with fresh water.

Charlie the dog leads new walker Jacob to the park.

Ronnie finishes up this kennel with watering down the dry sand.

There are several pictures of Rosita and Purtis in the park. Purtis was limping. We took him to the vet on Monday and Dr. Shirey said that his knots are just fatty tumors. One of the knots on his back left side is getting worse and I called Lacie and told her that Purtis is really limping badly. He’s getting worse.

Rosita has her eye on something.

She must have been watching Purtis sniffing the ground.

The only three Chihuahuas that live inside are Henry, Bug and Rose. We have another gang of Chihuahuas and three of them, Lee-Boy, Owl and Allie, go to the park every day. They really enjoy the park. We can’t get the other two little black ones, Tia and Tamara, to go to the park. We have persuaded six out of eight of them to go to the park every day and I guess that is a good thing.

Momma Rose and her children Bug and Henry.

Rose

Henry is running and Bug is sniffing.

We discovered sores and hot spots on some of our dogs on Tuesday. Collin had a hot spot on his side and it looked infected. I doctored it and he gave me kisses. We also gave his kennelmate Kayla a treat. Even though his kennelmate didn’t have anything wrong with her, after we doctor our dogs they and their kennelmates get treats. They like their treats.

Juana tells Collin she needs to check his hot spot.

There it is, a little bit of medicine is all it needs.

Kayla asks Juana where her cookie is.

I noticed that the top of their doghouse was ajar. I moved it and I saw a huge black widow spider. It walked down the wall. That can be so dangerous. Not too long ago, we searched for spiders and cleaned all of the doghouses. The day before, Stephanie reported that she killed two black widow spiders in Splinter’s kennel. We are still seeing spiders and they are a danger to our dogs and to us. Maybe some of the dogs’ sores are bites. We lost two dogs due to spider bites in the past. We’ve been pretty lucky to have gone all of these years and not suffered more bites. It’s mindboggling.

BILL: The spiders couldn’t have bitten the dogs or they would be sick. Maybe black widow spiders don’t bother the dogs, if they don’t bump into them. We’d better do another search for spiders.

JUANA: There are a lot more spiders than we normally have, so we will have to do another search.

Rosita was limping on her foreleg. She loves to jump and she will even jump up into your arms. I think she might have jumped the wrong way, but she was limping. I think it might be a bruise. Her toes were okay, but she needed a good grooming. She had lots of tangles. We usually have to get her out of her shelter or she will hide from me. She knows that she is going to be checked or brushed or messed with and she hides. She’s just so cute.

Juana sees Rosita is limping and checks her out.

It must have just been a bruise.

We found a hotspot on Buzz. I doctored him with Animax, but it’s just a hot spot. It’s nothing to worry about.

Buzz says he's ok and feels just fine.

It's just a hot spot.

I got beautiful pictures of Marcela and Copper in the park. Marcela has a home visit scheduled for this Saturday. We are so happy for her. We hope that she is going to her forever home and that Copper will find a forever home too. They are both such sweet dogs.

Marcela sees park time is over and runs to the gate.

Jacob grabs a couple of cookies for Copper and Marcela.

Lucy had a hot spot under her foreleg. I put some Animax on her.

Lucy has a hot spot too.

A little medicine here and she will be fine.

During caregiving, Stephanie and Ronnie were holding Wup and cutting his nails. His nails are like needles and, when he tries to play with you, they can tear you up.

Wup is not too happy about having his nails trimmed.

Luna has a big skin infection and it’s the same thing that her sister Selena had about a month ago. At that time, we took Selena to the vet and Dr. Shirey said that it was a skin infection and it cleared up. Then she got it on her mouth. Now Luna has it. It’s just irritated and it’s so sore. Their kennelmate Embry had his staples removed and he is doing well. He’s still on Cephalexin and his wound is healing. I am very happy about that.

Luna has a skin infection just like her sister Selena had.

Embry had her staples taken out and the cut is healing up nicely.

Big pup James came home to Straydog. We took him to Dr. Lay on Monday and we brought him home on Tuesday. Dr. Lay didn’t keep him very long. He did two more enlargements of his throat. The doctor said that he doesn’t need to come back
next week. He wants to extend it to every two weeks. He wants us to take a video of us feeding James and send it to him next week. Right now, he is planning to see him in two weeks. So far, he is doing very well. He still has a feeding tube and that’s how we give him his medicine. He’s still eating and his food isn’t as watery. He’s holding his food down. He’s starting to gain weight and Dr. Lay thinks he is out of the woods.

BILL: David put up a piece on big dog James on our website explaining the whole procedure. We should call him, “Big dog James.” He is three years old.