Thursday, November 19, 2015

BILL ANNOUNCES: Straydog Radio Show covering the events of Thursday, November 19, 2015. Bill and Juana here a couple of days later with the Thursday report. Go ahead, Juana!
 
JUANA: Thursday was hot in the morning and it was humid but, as the day wore on, it got very sunny.
 
BILL: It wasn’t like a 100- degree-day, but it was warm enough to be uncomfortable.
 
JUANA: We had a sad day the day before. We lost Bear. It’s always very sad and it’s so sweet, the way my sister puts up a little memorial to the dogs on the day that we lose them. She puts out fresh water and makes their beds, as if they were going to come back. She either decorates with a little heart or their initials. This time she spelled L.B. for Little Bear in dog cookies. He really, really loved his cookies. We will miss Little Bear, but it was his time and he is so much better off.

Our Little Bear will be missed by us all.

We had a full crew and Jacob was the walker of the day. There he is bringing Patrick and Sandy back to H1. He came back from lunch and I wasn’t finished walking the H1 dogs. He helped me bring the dogs back inside, so I could change their beds and their water bowls.

Jacob is helping Juana finish up her Hospital One walks bringing Sandy and Patrick back from their park time.

​BILL: That’s my job – my 6 a.m. job.
 
JUANA: After we finished in H1, he went back to his regular outside walks.

There’s Jacob. I had to put Copper and Teddy back with Wendy and Cadet. We have four big dogs in one kennel. I know our crewmembers don’t like it, because that’s a lot of dogs. But they all get along so well and I really needed the space, where I was keeping Copper and Wendy. There they are. I told the crew, “If you can’t handle four dogs, make two trips. Take two at a time. That’s what Bill and I would do.” There’s Jacob with all four big dogs and he’s taking them to the park. Jacob is strong and he can handle them. When they got to the park, they took off running and playing and they had lots of fun. They are all very docile and very good dogs.

Copper, Teddy, Cadet and Wendy are lead to the park by Jacob. This is quite the job.

Our Portia-girl has ringworm. She’s diabetic and she has an enlarged heart. She’s doing okay. Bless her heart, she has to be in a quarantine kennel and she can’t go to the park. She lives indoors in the crate, where I had Sally. It was such a beautiful day and I kept her outside that day. After she pees and poops, she comes inside. She’s a really, really good girl. She sleeps through the night and doesn’t want to go outside during the night. She sleeps soundly. If she needs to go, she will bark and let you know. David takes her out at 6:00 in the morning, to feed her. She eats at 6:00 in the morning and 6:00 in the afternoon, because she has diabetes, like Noble. She has the same schedule that Noble had. She gets about 5 units or 2.5 units of insulin, which is so much less than Noble used to get. She’s borderline diabetic and she was glucose high. She took the curve test. This test shows a dog’s glucose levels for the whole month and they administer the test in one day. Sometime, someone will have to explain that to us. She’s doing well. She eats well and her diarrhea has stopped. The only bad thing is that she has ringworm. She can’t get rid of this fungus. It went away once and it came back.

Portia is ready to go back inside.

There’s Wayne caregiving Panda. She’s such a beautiful girl.

Panda gets some caregiving from her buddy Wayne

We are still struggling with dogs with sores. We discovered sores on Oscar and Pinky this day. It is a staph infection, but it’s not like a human staph infection. It’s not contagious and our dogs and our crew aren’t in any danger of catching it. We are treating it with antibiotics and Animax twice a day. They are getting better. At first, they were like big pus-filled hot spots. The infections are going away and the hair around these spots is starting to grow back.
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We had a full crew and we were all caregiving. Our crew was stuffing the doghouses with hay and they got a little behind schedule and I had to help with the caregiving. It was my pleasure to go out there and play with our dogs. I just love it. I had the camera with me and I didn’t have anyone to take the pictures. I was trying to snap selfies of me with the dogs. I got some good ones with either part of my face or part of a dog’s face.
 
Here I am with Kayla and Colin.

Then I tried to get a picture of me with Fred and Ethel. Fred doesn’t like the camera, but he lets me pet him now and kiss him and put my hand in his mouth. He still doesn’t trust us enough to let us put a leash on him. Ethel is just the sweetest girl and she wanted to be petted. She was jealous of me with Fred. She came up to us and she was barking. Fred started backing up. I told Ethel not to scare her brother, but she was all over me and kissing me and trying to mouth me.

Here I am with Rudy and Spice. Spice has a fatty tumor on the side of her tummy and it’s getting really big. I talked to the doctor about it and Lacie took a photo of it and sent it to the doctor. We have to remove it. The vet doesn’t want to let it get too big or, when he removes it, he won’t be able to close it up.

There’s little Tia. She’s coming around. There I am hugging and kissing her and checking her all over. She must have a strained a muscle in her leg. I moved her leg around and she was okay. It warms my heart, because she is really coming around. Tia is one of the older Chihuahuas. She kennels with Henry, Rose and Bug and them. They are all coming around and starting to trust us and love us.

There’s Ronnie caregiving Newly. And there's Stephanie making her rounds helping us doctor all of the dogs with sores. She’s so fast and good at it.

Newly see Stephanie coming to doctor him up and asks for just a few more minutes with Ronnie first.

There’s Wayne with the four dogs. I asked Wayne why he sits down and lets the dogs climb all over him and scratch him. He said that they love it and they really appreciate it.

They all love to climb over Wayne and both he and the dogs love it.

​It was a great day!
 
BILL: We’ll be back again shortly with another report from Straydog.

You can listen to today's Radio Show below.