A splendid sleeper named Misty and some additional Big D and Metrosprawl info ...

Do you wonder, sometimes, if couches were primarily designed for critters? They sure seem to gravitate toward the furniture.
Take, for example, this dog Misty. She’s 7, an Australian Shepherd/Fox Terrier mix, and she’s the spotlight sweetheart in this edition of the weekly readlarrypowell.com feature “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap.”
Beth Southerland has the story of her beloved Misty and pal Buddy.
Misty has been in the Beth and hubby Robert household for about 5 years -- she was adopted from the Humane Society of North Texas in Fort Worth. Beth says the Society got her “after she was found wandering close to Highway 121 and Beach Street near Krystal Burgers.”
Buddy was also a free-roaming Fort Worth dog. “We rescued him from the street
about 3 years ago when he showed up one day in the parking lot of Fort Woof Dog
Park. He was scared to death and the vet said he thought he had been on his own for quite a while.  He’s a sweetheart!”
Misty is given to sleeping in “odd positions,” Beth says. “Many times she sprawls out on our bed on her tummy with her front legs completely straight out in front and back legs straight behind her, which seems unusual for a dog.  We often come into a room and she’ll be asleep on her back with both front legs in various odd positions above her head, sometimes completely straight up for long periods of time.  That’s a sight to see! She also often barks softly in her sleep.”
[LARRY ASIDE: Now that’s a good dog! We’ve tried for years to get our dogs to bark softly in OUR sleep.]
Beth says that Misty is “very agile and a master escape artist. We have a hard time keeping her in the back yard as she has escaped while being at a dead stop at the bottom of a 6’ privacy fence by leaping straight up, gaining purchase on the horizontal wood planks and then over the top.  Once we took care of that (by buying another section to cover it and face the planks on the other side), she then started squeezing through the very narrow ironwork on our gate. We have that fixed now, but I’m sure she’s busy planning her next method of escape. She was gone for 3 days one time and then just showed back up. She’s very happy in our home, but she just likes to go out on adventures.
“She loves to jump up and hang out on the trampoline in our back yard, chase anything and everything and run circles around our other dog, Buddy, who is a Swiss Mountain Dog mix.  Oh, and she also loves to figure out how to open covered trash cans and tear up any and all paper items into very tiny pieces all over the floor.  She’s now leading poor Buddy astray! She’s quite a character, that’s for sure!”
[TO NOMINATE YOUR PAL OR PALS FOR THE SPOTLIGHT : If you have an adventurous dog, a curious cat, a masticating manatee or any other slumbering critter and you’ve captured a photo of the sleeper, send the picture and info to us at [email protected] and we’ll put the international spotlight on your best friend. We do this as a public service for insomniacs who gain inspiration by realizing that you don’t have to just sit or lay on a couch, you can turn your slumber into performance art.]
BEFORE WE SHUT DOWN FOR THE WEEKEND...
AN AMAZING FIND IN DALLAS ANIMAL SERVICES: Back in 1989 young Tom Hanks starred in a cop buddy film called Turner and Hooch with a big ol’ slobbery dog.
Rare dog in the United States, they said. Not a lot of the classic French Dogue de Bordeaux breed romping around stateside.
Here’s the reality in 2013. No breed is too rare to wind up on the clock in the Dallas Animal Services Shelter & Adoption Center.
This one is named Lassarina -- all we know about her story is that animal advocate Amy Warren saw the photo of Dillon we ran Friday and did some online cruising via the DAS PetFinder site and found Lassarina listed as a Dogue de Bordeaux, known to some as the "French Mastiff." 
Really doesn’t matter what you call these dogs. The key fact is Lassarina and Dillon are in a shelter than can’t keep them forever. Their fate is in the hands of us humans. Ain’t that a swell spot to be in.
Contact the shelter about these dogs. [email protected] will probably work just fine.
THE PHRASING SOMETIMES GETS ME: I’ve been a writer for so long I’ve committed nearly every blunder that can be committed -- from spelling to comma, from subject to verb and I may even have inappropriately dangled a participle, though, Lord knows if you put a gun to my head I couldn’t explain what a participle is.
Anyway, I got one of those multi-forwarded emails -- the kind that originates once upon a time, far, far away, to borrow from Star Wars.
The email was about this Arlington Animal Shelter resident, Alex, who was struck by a car and his leg was so broken that it will be or has been amputated. The note noted (so to speak) that by the time a rescue group claims Alex, the amputation will have already been “performed so the rescue group will not have to foot the vet bill.”
Foot the bill on a leg amputation? The phrasing gave me paws.
But someone needs to help Alex at some point or maybe they have already helped Alex at some point. Whatever the case, there ought to be a way to keep all animals from facing untimely deaths from one side of the Metrosprawl to the other. Of course, that sounds like a fairy tale that might start “Once upon a time, there was a big wish....”
FLYERING (AND BIG FIX FOR BIG D AND GEOGRAPHIC SENSITIVITY): That’s what the e-mail we got called it: "Flyering." I hope it sticks.
People grab a bunch of hanger notices and distribute them on behalf of the spay/neuter program Big Fix For Big D.
Our note came from Paws In The City which is partnering with Big Fix at 11 a.m. Saturday to distribute the notices about the free Spay/Neuter opportunities in the far East Dallas Zip Code 75228. That’s a big feral cat area, we’re told. The
volunteers will gather at -- where else do people gather these days? -- Starbucks, the one at Garland at Buckner.
Big Fix for Big D is a 3-year, 5-million program that launched in June of 2012.
At the time the Zip Codes involved were largely south of the I-30 trail across Dallas -- 75203, 75207, 75208, 75210, 75211, 75215, 75216, 75217, 75223, 75224, 75227, 75232, 75233, 75236, 75237, 75241, 75249, 75253.
When you go to the Big Fix website  at www.bigfixforbigd.com and click on “AREAS SERVED” you get a note that reads: “The current phase of the program will offer free spay or neuter surgeries, vaccinations and registration to the pets of people living in eight zip codes in South Dallas.”
Not to be argumentative, but some of these Zip Codes listed are in South Dallas like I am in the Petite Ballerina Hall of Fame.
The current Zip Code list  includes:
75211 -- that’s North Oak Cliff, Mountain View, Central Oak Cliff, West Oak Cliff Cockrell Hill.
75212 runs from the Trinity River, north of I-30 west to about the Grand Prairie Line.
75216 may actually fit into South Dallas -- it runs between roughly I-35 and I-45 and between Loop 12/Ledbetter and Cedar Crest on the north.
75217 is south of downtown, close to I-45 and east to Balch Springs and it includes Pleasant Grove.
75224 is southern Oak Cliff, mostly east of I-35 and 67 in the Wynnewood/Kiest Park/ Ledbetter area -- that’s my neighborhood and I can tell you if someone tells a resident of Southern Hills that we’re in “South Dallas,” there’ll quickly be real estate value lawyers involved in the discussion.
75228, the flyering area for Saturday, starts at I-30 and Ferguson and boxes an area bounded by Highway 78 (Garland Road) LBJ and roughly a line from I-30 at the U.S. 80 split on the south northeast past Harry Stone Park to LBJ.
And 75241 is bounded by I-35 on the west, I-20 and 342 on the south, the Trinity on the east and Loop 12 on the north. More Pleasant Grove than South Dallas by a longshot.
The key thing is no matter where the Zip Codes actually are, someone is trying to influence the humans to halt the rampant breeding by intact males and fertile females of the dog and cat variety.
But, really, calling my part of Oak Cliff “South Dallas” is like being a cartographer from New York City and calling Fort Worth a western neighborhood in Dallas.
I do want to emphasize this: There’s also a note on the Big Fix website that says of the spaying and neutering in the chosen Zip Codes; “
These services are free, but the Big Fix for Big D partners ask participants to please consider making a donation so they can help even more individuals spay or neuter their pets.”
Now, I hope they’re getting donations in those Zip Codes. Money makes worthy programs work.
But, more importantly, I hope they’re making a gigantic impact on the litter production -- bigger even than City Council Member Dwaine Caraway’s complaints about plastic bags.
And, of course, I’m assuming that the reason the new Zip Codes have been targeted is all the dogs and cats in those earlier Zip Codes have been fixed.
We’ll be able to tell, I guess, when we see the tracking information from the intake statistics at Dallas Animal Services. Fewer surrendered litters may be the best indicator.
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