Saturday, April 29, 2017

BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Saturday, April 29, 2017, tornado day at Straydog. Juana, it was a serious day. Let’s start at the beginning. When we started out, we would have never known that a tornado was going to come close to Straydog. At least it missed us.
 
JUANA: Yes, obviously we are still here. It was a very cloudy day. We knew that it was going to be a stormy day, because the forecast called for 100% chance of rain. We knew it was coming. We just didn’t know that it was going to get that bad.
 
We didn’t have enough people to cover for us that Saturday. Tyler, our maintenance man, who is Wayne’s father, was taken to the hospital. He had a very bad infection in his leg and he is diabetic. The doctor was very concerned that it could get worse. Tyler didn’t say anything about it for two weeks and by then he could barely walk. He was taken to the emergency room and the doctor said that he couldn’t leave the hospital until the infection was under control. Wayne was at the hospital with his dad and we knew that he wouldn’t be here that Saturday. Stormy, who is another part-time worker, had baby sitter problems and she couldn’t make it. Our other part-time worker, Ms. Colleen, had another commitment for this specific weekend and we’ve known about that since she was hired. I only had Shelby, Sherri and myself scheduled to work. I hurt my knee and I could barely walk and I thought it was going to be a bad day. I want to thank Maci, who came to work on her day off and helped us. We also had two wonderful volunteers, who helped us that day and made that day so much easier. My nephew Juan Manuel, who lives with us, volunteered. So did Maci’s cousin, James. They are both wonderful 14-year-olds, who didn’t know each other at school, because they are in different grades.
 
Maci did the walks in Pat Arnold Park and Shelby did the walks in the Shirley Olsen Beemer Park. Sherri, James and Juan Manuel worked in all of the kennels. Sherri supervised the kennel work and we all worked together. I took care of Hospital One and Hospital Two dogs. It was a difficult day, but we didn’t know how much worse it was going to get.

On Friday, a gentleman walked into our shelter. We will talk about this on the Friday report. I guess we are going to have to move to another country, so we can’t be found. He just showed up with this little Chihuahua.

He had a sad story and I don’t know if we believe it or not. No one could touch this little dog. He was so terrified. He was growling and aggressive and he didn’t know what was going on. I accepted this little doggie. Obviously, if he would have taken him to a kill shelter, that little dog would have been put to sleep right away, because of his attitude. But we will work with him. Initially, we put him in a temporary kennel. I knew that it was going to rain, so I got a big blanket and picked him up. I thought if he bites me, he bites me, but I couldn’t leave him out there. He was terrified and growling. He stopped trying to bite me and he seemed to think, “I’d better be nice.” I think he was glad to get out of the weather. I put him in a little crate in H1 and he was fine. The man told me that his name was Junior. We already have crewmember Junior (George Jr.) and Junior the dog and Bill’s son is also Junior. So this little guy is Mini-Junior. The man told me that this little dog’s owner, who was his neighbor, was placed in hospice. The lady was dying and this little dog was left at the house alone. The man, who was an older man, said that his granddaughter either used to work at Straydog or she knew about us. I could never get him to give me the name of his granddaughter. I couldn’t understand him and he just kept mumbling. He said that his granddaughter said that we would take him. This man just walked onto our campus. I told him that he could see that every single kennel we have was full. This little dog was terrified and I could see it in his eyes that he was so lost and confused and aggressive. I knew that he would never survive at a kill shelter, so we took him. That’s the story of this little guy. It’s now Monday and he’s been with us for the last two days.

We got a good picture of Newly with his tennis ball.

He had already torn up his Kong. We have to get him another one. David Bonski was so nice to send him one for Christmas and they last a long time. Newly chews them just a little bit at a time. He then spits the pieces out. When his Kong is just completely torn up, we throw it away. He’s now carrying a tennis ball around. He won’t tear up a ball. He carries it around everywhere he goes. It’s his security blanket. Lola does the same thing. She also carries around a tennis ball everywhere she goes. BamBam used to carry a toy.

It was Adoption Day today. We have two new boys and we’ll talk about how we got them later. This is Spotty going to Adoption Day for the first time. He’s a little Terrier mix, who is very friendly.

At first, he was growling and barking, but he’s very sweet. David said that he was barking at first but, by the end of the day, he was very, very sweet. He was just scared at first. Then he realized it was fun to have lots of people petting him and giving him treats. He enjoyed himself at Adoption Day.

This is little Miss Prissy, doggie Maci. This isn’t the best picture of her face, because she’s always smiling. She is always happy to go. She jumps right in her crate.

This is Mr. Larry. We was found running on a country road a few months ago.

He thinks that everybody wants to play. Not every dog wants to play. If other dogs try to bite him, he just wags his tail. He just wants to be friendly. He loves everybody and he’s a very good boy. He had a great day! A family filled out an application for Larry and they wanted to have a home visit that day. David did the home visit and he now has a wonderful home. The family, who adopted him, have two children and they’ve never had a dog. He will be an only dog with a stay-at-home mom. Larry will always have someone at home and he will have two great children to play with. Larry is very active and so are the boys. That worked out. That was Saturday and this is Monday and Larry is doing well in his forever home.

Copper also went to Adoption Day. He was so excited.

He’s such a good boy. I just don’t know why he hasn’t found a forever home. He’s such a well behaved boy with beautiful markings.

David was ready to go to Adoption Day and we want to thank our wonderful, wonderful volunteers, who make these adoptions possible. They are always there for us and we can’t thank them enough.

This is Juan Manuel doing some kennel work. He’s washing out water buckets in the small park.

Mini-Junior wouldn’t eat on Friday. He was finally calmer on Saturday and I was able to find something he liked and he scarfed that down.

We planned on taking him to the vet on Tuesday. Even though he hadn’t been vetted, I had to bring him inside. At the end of the day, it was raining and he had to come inside. I couldn’t possibly leave him out in the rain.

Shelby was the walker in the Beemer Park. There she is with Willow and Noel.

There’s Ms. Sherri working in Terry and Brody’s kennel.

Brody was loving on and kissing Sherri. He is sometimes aggressive at feeding time, but only with certain people. He’s never aggressive with me or Wayne or Ronnie and Sherri has been able to feed him and he’s okay. He doesn’t like to be fed by anybody else. He’s just very strange. Obviously, he will always have to be a sanctuary dog. We can’t adopt him out like that.

There’s Shelby taking Joe and Brownie to the park.

Brownie was enjoying the pool. Ms. Brownie is slowing down and walking funny. She’s getting old.

It was a very muggy, humid and sticky day. It was really hot. It was in the 80s.

I was loving on Fred. I was feeding him a meal that Ethel didn’t want to eat. I had him in the feeding gate.

I wondered if we could take him to the park, because he was so hyper and playful. He was in a very good mood and he was letting me touch him. I thought it might be the day that Fred would let us take him to the park. I got Shelby to get Ethel. I put Fred on a leash and Maci was taking pictures of us. There he is.

As soon as he stuck his head out, he ran back in and he said, “No.” I threw a little piece of his favorite treat out there. Half of his body was outside of his kennel and then he ran back inside. That’s as far as he got. He wouldn’t go any further. I think he will eventually learn to trust us enough that he won’t be afraid to go the park. In this picture, he is halfway out of the kennel eating treats off of the ground.

Then he realized how far he was out and he ran back inside and he wouldn’t go any further. That was a good one and that’s a great picture! He will go eventually. It might take a year or more. It takes a long time for some dogs to gain confidence and we’ve got the time. I am so happy that we are finally able to get a leash on him and walk him around his kennel.

There’s Maci bringing Midnight and Jet back to their kennel after their time in the park.They were enjoying their day.

There’s Maci bringing Fletcher and Fritz to the park.

There’s Juan Manuel, James and Sherri after lunch.

We still had hay in one section of kennels in central and it was warm enough to take it out. We had already taken the hay out of the houser kennels and the middle kennels. I asked Sherri to ask the boys to help us get the hay out. Sherri also helped. She got all of the hay out of one kennel, while Juan Manual and James were caregiving dogs and getting the hay out of the kennels together one by one.

There’s Juan Manual lying on the ground with Travis.

They had fun. When we got home, Juan Manuel didn’t even want to eat dinner. He just wanted to go to bed and he slept through until the next morning.

There’s Maci brushing doggies.

Then our afternoon began. We fed the dogs on time that afternoon. After everybody left, Shelby helped me feed the dogs in H1, while I fed the dogs in H2. By 4:00, the clouds looked ominous and it started raining really hard. David got back from Adoption Day in the rain. We were able to feed the Adoption Day dogs and get them back in their kennels. Shelby left around 5:30 and Juan Manual was waiting for me to finish up and bring him home. At 6:00, we could see that the radar had storm and tornado warnings. We could see that it was getting very dark and the clouds were so different. It didn’t look like just a bad storm. We were watching were the clouds for rotation and there wasn’t any.

You can see this ball of hail. After it started hailing, the electricity went out and it was getting scary. Then I put the camera away and kept my phone with me. I went to get Mini-Junior.

David Ford was in the kennel office putting out the medicine. I didn’t want to leave David Ford alone in this weather or drive in this storm. Juan Manual was taking a shower in H1. Then alarms went off on our cellphones, “To take shelter now.” The wind picked up so much and all of the dogs were so scared. They were barking and panting. The inside dogs in H1 ran into the closet. Oreo ran into the laundry room. Allie put herself in a crate with Bug. All of the dogs were barking and scared. It was horrible! We had already given Ace pills to Soullie, Sam, Terry and Cole and we had already brought Terry inside.

BILL: Did it bother blind and deaf Colt?
 
JUANA: No, he didn’t like it, but he just stayed inside.
 
When all of the sirens and alarms went off, I was watching the clouds. They were starting to rotate. I started taking a video and the rain stopped and everything was calm. The sun was out and then the clouds that were on top of us starting rotating. Tornados were forming. At that moment, I thought a tornado was coming right at us. You have to see the video I took of those rotating clouds. I posted it on Facebook. When I finished taping that 17 second video, I really thought that it was going to hit us. I could hear the roar of the tornado and I thought it was coming right at us.  I ran from the porch into the laundry room. There was no way to close the doors. I just lay on top of Oreo and covered him and I stuck my head in the crate that was holding Bug and Allie. I called to Juan Manuel to stay in the shower until I told him to come out. Then, before we knew it, it was gone. That is how fast they are. At that moment, I knew that God was watching over us. We didn’t know what had happened yet. Some of our crewmembers took pictures that night of some of the destruction. The next morning, we saw that the tornado had touched down less than a mile from our shelter. Our crew went out and helped some of our neighbors the next day. We saw two mobile homes on 1861 that were gone. There were trees and debris everywhere. The road was closed. Thankfully, none of us were hurt. That tornado was the same one that went up threw Canton. Canton is about 10 or 12 miles away from us. It did a lot of damage there and killed some people. It was awful! That was the scariest thing that I have ever lived through. I didn’t know that it was that far way.
 
BILL: It is amazing how fast they are.
 
We’ll be back again shortly with another report from Straydog.
 
You can listen to today’s Radio Show below.