A Tuesday assortment of animal situations and a puzzling storm...

Let’s get right into the day’s activities. Please drop a nickel into the slot on the right side of your monitor and that’ll open the Readlarrypowell.com paywall, making information available to you as easily as a dog scratches his ear.
Thank you. Now, please read on:
WAIT! PAYWALL? No, we don’t have a paywall. You know why? Because we have great advertisers and my technosavvyspouse Martha who keeps Readlarrypowell.com clickable so that our valued Readers can spend their extra nickels on two kinds of fuel:  gasoline and coffee. Yes, we all need a lot of extra nickels.
Send the link www.readlarrypowell.com to everyone you know and people you don’t know, too. They’ll appreciate it, we’ll appreciate it and I’m sure the animals that are saved because more eyes are looking at them will appreciate it.
FYI, this individual in the red hat is Wendy, one of the young residents in the Readlarrypowell.com Canine Academy of Portraiture and Social Graces. In this case, an otherwise standard photo of Wendy has been artistically enhanced by solemn Inky (right), the Readlarrypowell.com staff portrait artist, staff impersonator and Cocker Laureate of the State of Texas.
By the way, yesterday was Red Hat Society Day – you can look it up. And because we missed noting it, we feel is it appropriate for Inky to offer a few lines of, well, doggerel, based on the poem that inspired the Red Hat Ladies and the portrait of Wendy. He writes:
When I am an old dog
I will sit by the side of the road
and wear a red hat and bark
at passing people who look like
they might be up to no good.
I will wear myself out the first day. 
DITTO’S CHALLENGE: Keli Halteman, who formed Halteman’s Haven originally to tend to dramatically injured or ailing cats, comes across a lot of dogs and this one, a Pom mix named Ditto, has captured her attention.
(Oh, and FYI: Keli says she’s made arrangements to foster Simba, the blind cat from Collin County that we spotlighted yesterday at Readlarrypowell.com.)
Back to the dog: Ditto has been undergoing some tough times for more than a month. Keli works at a vet clinic on the East side of Dallas. An elderly owner brought Ditto in about a month ago – he’d been the victim of an attack by the neighbor’s much, much larger dog.
Emergency surgery on the dog’s mangled right rear leg saved his life. But that didn’t end the challenges. Keli says the dog’s wounds became horribly infected and the dog was in a tremendous amount of pain. Neither the dog’s human nor the neighbor have the dough to spend on this dog. The situation overwhelmed the owner.
The bill is around a thousand bucks now ($500 has been previously paid), Keli says. And, she says, the dog that attacked Ditto was declared to be a “dangerous dog” and was surrendered to Garland Animal Control.
Ditto is scheduled to have his injured and now woefully infected leg removed today. The family has surrendered him to Keli because they can’t properly tend to the injured dog. Keli is trying to raise money to pay for the 5-year-old dog’s expenses. She says donations can be mailed to Ditto’s Fund at VCA Beltline East Animal Hospital, 2555 N. Beltline East, Sunnyvale, Texas, 75182. Call the hospital at 972-226-0265. Or go to Halteman’s Haven HERE for a PayPal link. To ask about adopting Ditto or helping in some other way, e-mail [email protected]. (Yes, her e-mail is “kelly” because “keli” was already taken.)
THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN BURNS FLAT: Our reliable rescue tipster Terry Lynn Fisher runs into some extraordinary situations in little Burns Flat, out in far west Oklahoma. But she keeps plugging along.
Right now she’s concerned about three big ol’ black-type dogs that have been in the city pound for a while. Move ‘em or lose ‘em is the latest ruling. Oh, and there are other things, too. She has the case of these two thrown-away dogs and the dozen puppies threatened by a man with a hammer.
First these two throwaways (and you’ll see what happens when you are known as the “dog lady” of a small town. Terry Lynn was at her son’s house nearby when “I noticed a car stop around the corner from my house and a girl got out, carrying two little puppies. She walked up towards my house, but when she saw me, she walked pass it. She got on her phone and the car came and two guys picked her up.
“ I watched as they drove down the street and slowed down and this idiot girl opened the car door and THREW THEM OUT and they drove away. We immediately went down and got them. They are young, only about 6 weeks old – healthy-looking and very social.
“Sadly, I have no clue who they were, so there is not much I can do...but I have absolutely NO PLACE for these two to go."
And, then, there’s the mom dog and dozen puppies. Terry Lynn will get custody of the puppies on Wednesday.
They were born over the weekend. Terry Lynn writes, “The owner’s dad was going to hit them in the head with a hammer until she stopped in.”
The father is away until Wednesday night, so Terry Lynn is desperately looking for housing for the newborns immediately.
To help Terry Lynn with any of these situations, call her at 580-330-1459 or e-mail [email protected].
DUMPED, RESCUED AND ON THE MEND: We’ve learned of Jasmine the Lab Puppy from Sara Shepperd of DASH (Dallas Australian Shepherd and Herding Dog Rescue) – formerly known as North Dallas Dog Rescue.
This pup was, according to Sara, dumped near Hutchins [on the south side of Dallas]. the family that found her took her to a vet who set her broken leg and gave her the cast.
DASH has stepped up to handle the expenses for the dog’s vet care. Jasmine is going through the typical puppy stage – she’s chewing stuff and growing.
She’s in foster care, but will eventually need a home.
To see how to help her, go to DASH’s website HERE (the address is still the old one for now but that will change at some point).
A NOTE FOR THE MOURNING: The SPCA of Texas Pet Grief Counseling Program’s next meeting is at 1 p.m. Saturday (May 7 – first Saturday of each month) at the SPCA of Texas’ old office, 362 S. Riverfront Blvd. – that’s the boulevard formerly known as Industrial. It’s just across the freeway from downtown Dallas. The Grief Recover program helps people get past the ache and misery that comes when you lose your pal. Read more about it at www.spca.org.
CONTEMPLATIONS: I just don’t know about this one. As a veteran reporter, I’m kind of troubled by the alleged facts. Is this “Dog Wars” thing a hoax? I didn’t believe this when I first saw the reports of a dogfighting game app, Dog Wars. And I’m still not sure about it, though I have spent considerable time trying to find a way to confirm that there actually is a game called Dog Wars that features dogfighting. Each of my searches found nothing concrete --  a server was down in one place, a website under construction in another, contact with the alleged manufacturer hidden behind layers of e-mail addresses.  The assorted stories claim it’s a joint production of Google/Android. Nothing I can find confirms that on a Google or an Android corporate site. Maybe I’m just missing it.  
Over the weekend I got an indignant e-mail protesting “Dog Wars” and I thought, “No company would be that stupid.” Then I remembered how stupid American corporations can be.
Still, I  haven’t confirmed that there is a company – Kage Games is blamed on most sites -- that has created this game. All of the sites that decry the game loudest are blogs reacting to what they’ve seen in e-mails or on other blogs. No genuine old media sites report on anything but “reaction.”  They may be late to the story.
I’m thinking hoax or not-so-funny joke for publicity sake, but I could be wrong. Nothing undermines the credibility of good people quite like suckering them into a big snot-spitting frenzy against an enemy that doesn’t exist. But why do that?
Maybe it’s part of the Google vs. Android conflict?
I Googled “Dog Wars” Monday evening and discovered myself sitting on the same side of the “against” fence with Michael Vick, the dog-fighting felonious Philadelphia quarterback. Mr. Vick is urging that the game be pulled from availability though I can’t find anyone to whom it has been actually available. Nobody decent would download such a thing.
Mr. Vick says the game sends the wrong message. He’s right.  
And if anyone could be wrong about this being some sort of goofy computer publicity hoax, well, it could be me. I am frequently proven wrong on a number of topics. But there has to be proof.
And, frankly, it doesn't hurt to be vigilant. Just in case there's truth to this.
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