Dog Situation in Arkansas

We just can’t take in any more! We already have our 90 lb, 12-ish yr old lab/shep mix & 3 indoors cats. Some have special needs; all are rescues. And we have the 2 outdoor feral cats that have adopted us. He (the boy cat, “Dennis” as in “–the-Menace”) just had 2 surgeries for an ear infection and now has a floppy ear. He was getting fairly friendly with me until I brought him to the vet 2ce. Now he’s very wary. And Momma Cat, Dennis’ mother & ‘lover’—having ‘spawned’ 4 kittens that took us months to spay/neuter and finally adopt out) is VERY wary…she will accept food, of course, but it better not be some shitty Wal*Mart cheap-o brand, either godammit!! The beagle mix puppies are a blur of energy and feeding frenzy, not to mention the poop quantities involved. The heeler is also a bundle & we don’t know how they will mix.

The adoption place in Fayetteville was a shithole and the woman who runs it is psycho. I mean a real mental case; vicious & vindictive. That’ll be another story…

So I brought the pups all the way back home; a waste of a day (12½ hours & well over 400 miles of driving on two-lane, twisty roads). We’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that the only way through this despair is to put the beagle pups down via our vet. We absolutely just can’t keep them & a humane euthanizing is better than to abandon them & leave them out to die.

We’ve called every shelter in a 200 mile radius. No one will take them. No one CAN take them. Every shelter is over capacity & with this heat the toll is rising. It’s 106 right now. Even that “haven” in Fayetteville had many dogs in outdoor pens w/access to shade but no centrally cooled common area.

There was an abandoned kennel found in western Arkansas yesterday that had 114 dogs w/no water or food. They estimate it had been up to 2 weeks w/o care. Apparently the kennel itself was well constructed and designed, but the people there shut the fkng water off to the self-watering system built into the pens, shut down the power to the A/C system and drove off without telling anyone. No one has yet been able to locate them; they even just left a lot of their shit in the house & disappeared. 30 animals have to be euthanized (or have been by now). One female ate her own pup. This is a ghastly situation; one that we never knew existed anywhere to this extent before.

Even the woman with whom we board Reno (he doesn’t do well at our normal groomer/boarder—Marilyn at “Almost Home Acres for Pets” keeps him inside with her & he follows her around w/his tail between his legs) says that she now has to shut her eyes and just press on when she sees a stray. She let herself get over extended and got into money and effort problems. She told us about her friends who opened a shelter in her area (she’s 20 miles away) about 4 years ago and within 6 months, people had dumped so many animals that they lost the business due to over-capacity, the unforeseen expenses, & extra labor, and stress; they even lost their home and the couple divorced within a year after shutting down!

Sorry for the depressing news, but Pam & I are at wit’s and emotion’s end & we have to face this event head on. So, we thought we’d share our misery w/you. (That means I have to vent.)
I wish I could find a smiley face to add to the end of this sentence…


We thought about buying a dog run. A 10x10x6 we found is $500 but A) we can’t get it for 9 days and B) every asshole in the area will hear about it and they’ll dump dogs & cats here.

**Addendum
Pam just got off of the phone. That heeler mix we have got away from us the other day and was gone for 2 days. Animal Control got her somehow and tracked her back to us via rabies tag. Well, they just called to tell us that they have her again. But they don’t. "Ours" is in the garage right now. This is yet another one. And she was picked up near where I found “ours”. Must be a sister.

S H I T

Hell Motel

A couple weeks ago, I decided to take a little overnight getaway. So, on Sunday, the 5th, I headed to Hot Springs, a venerable old spa town of days past, to see the sights and to see if it was gimp friendly enough so that Pam & I might spend a day or two there in the future. Then on to Little Rock to spend the night so that on Monday I could do some non-rural shopping & chores in the 'big' city before heading back home. I used hotels.com to find a room. I found a La Quinta w/room rates that were suspiciously low (as compared to regular La Quinta rates) and it was located right in central Little Rock. Perfect! I could visit the River Market area, head right across the river to North Little Rock to visit a Land Rover specialist to get some info & advice on some minor glitches I've been experiencing w/my Discovery II. Follow that w/PetSmart stop (to find a special weight loss food for our now 30 pound cat) and then another stop or two to locate some car parts for the 2 vehicles I'm selling. Back to the River Market area to have an Anchor Steam (or 2) at the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium (http://www.beerknurd.com/). Then I'd drive over to west Little Rock to the one & only Indian restaurant in the city (state?), & load up on to-go plates for Pamela & me, and head home.

Hot Springs was jammed w/a fishing contest. & I mean jammed! By the way, the winner of this contest won ONE MILLION dollars!! It was not some little local event (move over NASCAR). Fox Sports Network & all of the Little Rock affiliates were among those covering the event. I got caught up in it and went in to watch the final weigh-ins. I though I was at a Rolling Stones concert...well, except for the music itself. There were only 2 kinds played: Country and Western. Because of the crowds & traffic I didn't get to my La Quinta suite (near the UofA Medical Center) until 9:15-ish. I was out of there by 9:30.(-ish).

This place was like a crack house. It started w/a sullen Asian girl, "Mai", at the front desk. She certainly did not make me feel "welcome" or even human. There was another employee there stumbling around the reception area. It seems he'd forgotten where or what a shower was. He was kind enough to grunt at me in acknowledgement of my greeting to him; that made him somewhat nicer than "Mai". And she had no idea where my room was. She told me to go "that way and turn left". Well, that way and left brought me to a wall. Then she yelled (I'm still in the office area...not 40 feet from her desk) "Oh, sorry, maybe you go right!" She essentially just sent me out to look for it on my own. As soon as I hit the littered parking lot, I was followed around by someone requesting money from me. The request quickly changed into a demand. I gave him a buck to get him away from me. Roaming the lot trying to locate the room, I passed by a room where a woman was shrieking at her two (or more) screaming, crying children. Then, I happened upon the pool where a woman was watching her 3 fully clothed (including shoes) children splashing & screeching in the water. But the best was yet to come. In a narrow hallway beneath the 2nd floor walkway, I glanced into a room to see a lovely 200+ pound, middle-aged, sweaty black woman napping on a bed in a brightly lit room right at the window...& not even the sheer curtains were drawn to protect my corneas, by the way. She was topless. She was wearing horribly stained granny panties. Nice. (I just threw up a little into my mouth recalling that sight.)
When I did finally find my room, the toilet had urine in it and the shower had been partially pulled out of the drywall. In an adjoining room there was a man & woman fighting. "Motherfuckin' this, motherfuckin' that, motherfuckin' 'ho', motherfuckin' bastard"...you get the idea. Plus, either he was slamming her into the wall (or maybe vice-versa) or they were throwing things around. I pretty much decided that I didn't want to be a part of this family's gathering.
On the way back to the front desk, a man came out of a room on the 2nd floor and dumped an ice bucket or a small garbage can full of water & debris over the railing & down into the pool, onto the deck, &, of course, on me where I was walking. When I returned to the desk area, there was a security guard sitting behind the counter hitting on "Mai". I've stayed at La Quinta motels before. They are usually rather nice. This place wasn't.