Thursday, July 9, 2015

BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog radio show covering the events of Thursday, July 9, 2015. Bill and Juana here a few days later and we are going to do the Thursday report.

JUANA: It was a good day. We have a new worker, who started on Wednesday. We have been shorthanded. Her name is Maci and she’s a friend of the family. She’s in college and she’s going to be working with us in the summer and then part-time during the school year. On Wednesday, she followed Melanie and she was in training to do walks. She’s very smart. On Thursday, which was just her second day, she did all of the walks on her own. Melanie just followed her to make sure she was okay. The only dog, who didn’t like her, was Embry. But that’s just the way he is. He is very skittish. If he doesn’t know you, he will bark. Once he gets to know you, he’s just a big sweet baby. He’s just so big, he’s intimidating. I can tell you that it’s a few days later and Maci can go in Embry’s kennel and take him to the park and love on him without any problems. She’s doing great.

Our new employee Maci is doing a great job. Here she is walking Betty and Chip to the park. Melanie has been doing the training and Maci is learning everything fast.

Finally, the day that I promised came. On Thursday, we took Fletcher and Fritz2 to get neutered. Thank goodness, our boys are neutered. I asked Brandy, our overnight crewmember, to dump their water buckets and swimming pool and not to feed them after midnight. We didn’t feed their kennelmate Jazzie2 until after they left for the clinic. It’s easier just to skip that kennel, because dogs don’t understand why you would feed one dog in their kennel and not them. We can’t tell them, “You are going to the doctor today.”

Ronnie takes Fletcher and Fritz2 to the van for their trip to Morton Clinic.

We dropped Fletcher and Fritz2 at the clinic. There’s Haley taking them from Ronnie or George, I forget who took them to the clinic. I picked them up myself later on and I will tell you why.

I got very bad, blurry pictures of Wayne working in the kennels.

BILL: We won’t use these pictures. There was condensation on the camera lens. It was just so hot and humid.

Stephanie stops her kennel work to help Juana check Ranger's eye but Beauty keeps wanting her attentions.

JUANA: There’s Stephanie working in the kennels. She helped me check Ranger’s eye and put in his eye drops. His kennelmate Beauty came over. The pictures got better after the camera warmed up.

There’s Maci with Big Foot and Snickers.

Chip gets a back scratch during care giving from Ronnie.

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There’s Ronnie with Ms. Betty Boop and Chip. Chip is such a beautiful baby. He’s Oreo and Raisin’s brother. All three of these siblings look different. Chip has such beautiful markings.

That afternoon, Wayne called me over to see Harley and Nancy. He said Harley wouldn’t eat. We’ve been talking about him, because I took him to the vet on Thursday or Friday of last week. He’s still not himself. He’s not the old Harley, who would eat your hand, if you put your fingers in his food or if you had a cookie in it. There was something wrong, because he wouldn’t eat. I went out to examine him and he tried to run back under his shelter. He wasn’t feeling well at all. I saw a big knot near his groin area under his back leg. I hoped it wasn’t lymphoma, because it was a swollen lymph node.

We pet our dogs and brush them every day, which we call care giving. We also check the dogs and make sure that there isn’t anything wrong with them. Noel has been scratching her ear. During caregiving, Wayne called me over to look at Noel’s ear. He thought there might be something wrong with it. She’s been having problems with her ears and I thought she might have food allergies. She gets ear infections quite often. So I went out there and looked at it. It was nasty and packed with stuff. The sandy soil, the heat and humidity don’t help and she loves the water and her swimming pool. She’s a Great Pyrenees/Lab mix. I cleaned it and I will probably have to put some BNT in it. She’s such a sweet girl and she just stood there and let me do whatever I wanted to do to her ear.

Juana tries to check out Harley but it's kind of hard with Nancy wanting her attention.

Noel has been scratching her ear so Juana checks it out to see if anything is wrong.

Juana found a bump on Harley, we hope it's not lymphoma.

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

You can listen to today's radio show below.

I then went to check on Phara’s pups, because Portia has ringworm. I thought that Barbie and Donatello might have ringworm.

Donatello

Barbie

I called the vet and made an appointment for the next day, which was Friday and Bill went with me. When I called, I asked Lacie if we could leave Fletcher and Fritz2 at the clinic overnight, because I didn’t want to put them outside right away and I didn’t have any indoor kennels. They were awake after their neuter surgery and they were doing well. I wanted to keep them at the clinic that night. I planned to pick them up on Friday, when I took Harley in for his knot. I also planned to take the dogs with ringworm.