AT MIDWEEK, TALK OF RAIN, DOGS, CATS & A SUMMER-LIKE SPRING. (SAVE 'EM ALL!)

EDITION OF WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY MAY 18-19 2022 [PetPowellPress] There will come a time when we all look up and realize we miss summer weather. OK, that’s a stretch. How can we miss summer when spring is such a delightful oven?
Anybody reading this remember in the 1950s when a legendary drought held Texas captive and, in particularly, brutalized Dallas and, as a result, the always open-minded City of Dallas hired a “rainmaker?” More later. Get an umbrella. 

THE BUSTER REPORT:
HE GETS HIS SURGERY
In our previous edition of readlarrypowell.com we featured a story about barkleyworld.com's efforts to help Buster the Dog get delicate surgery to make his right front leg whole again. 
The price was going to be considerable. And barkleyworld.com's mission is to help people without funds help their injured and ailing pets. Buster fit right into that category — he’d been hit by a car while roaming around in his hometown of Center, Texas. 
On Wednesday morning we got a note from Karen Lee of barkleyworld.com revealing that “Buster had his surgery yesterday and went home a few hours later.” The operation to reconnect the pieces of his leg by using plates and medical knowledge and skills had worked. A few hours after the surgery he was released from a Texarkana vet’s office to go back to Center in East Texas, just over two hours south of Texarkana.
Karen says that snoozing dog is “a picture of Buster on the ride home from the vet — probably feeling no pain.” The second photo is Buster’s “before surgery” photo from the weekend. 
[LARRY ASIDE: We think Buster’s next major surgery may be a skilled neutering, not that un-neutered dogs have a tendency to roam into trouble. As readlarrypowell.com has declared for years, “Dogs are always too clever for their own good.”]

Buster, on Wednesday morning was said his human Shelby to be “doing well” with “lots of pain meds and anxiety meds keeping him calm.”
Karen says barkleyworld.com “raised about $400 in donations — and I’m grateful for that! The bill was exactly $3,000 — the vet gave me discounts here and there to make that happen.”
To help Karen and Barkleyworld and get treatment for other animals in tough situations, go to barkleyworld.com. Read about Barkley, too. He’s the inspiration for the organization founded by the people who loved him.
MEANWHILE, $400 AND PRECIOUS
NEED A 501C3 TO HELP THE DOG
The folks with 4-Legged Helpers have been trying to find someone to help this girl Precious for quite some time now. Our tipster, Helper Laura Macias reports that there is a “special $400 donation to a 501c3 that can help Precious.”

Precious is currently in the care of one of the “small” shelters that is on the list of the Helpers’ low-traffic, low-budget shelters in rural or smaller towns in the Metrosprawl. 
To ask about helping Precious, email cat_girl_71@yahoo.com or call or text 214-949-2726.
The pup’s bio says the young girl is “very sweet” and “a little cutie pie” who desperately needs someone.”
 [LARRY ASIDE: No idea how a sweet girl like Precious would wind up in such a fix, but it’s good to know she has people looking out for her and trying to find a place she can call home. She’s one too-many-to-count in the North Texas area. But, remember: While there are too many to count, there are not too many to save if all the hearts in the metrosprawl are activated by the realization that doing a good thing for animals makes you feel pretty swell. That could just be rhetoric if it were not fact.]

Follow 4-Legged Helpers on Facebook HERE.
CONTEMPLATIONS
A CAT; RAIN; A QUARTET…
I snapped this photo during the weekend as I sat in Martha’s unclaimed recliner for a moment and tried to catch up on the scoring in the Byron Nelson Golf Tournament. Esme, Martha’s personal cat, is a big fan of local golfer Jordan Spieth and you can see she’s putting her paw on his name on the scoreboard. To my knowledge, Esme has never played a round of golf though she has knocked a golfball or two around the floor at our house. Never seen Esme lose a ball in the woods — she’s never been in the woods. I have, however, been in the woods looking for golf balls many times. ….
Let’s talk rain: I remember the Texas-wide drought of the 1950s. I was a kid in elementary school and it would come up in conversations, mainly because parents were talking about it after having seen stories in newspapers, heard them on radio, and if your home had a TV, you might have seen it in black and white. Did you know that Dallas once paid a rainmaker thousands and thousands of dollars to bring showers to Dallas? I wrote about it now-and-then in my column at The Big Paper Downtown -- found it fascinating. Online I found this story in D Magazine in 1977 that will take you back to 1952 when Dallas paid a man to make it rain. CLICK HERE ...
And if you enjoy Queen and cats, click HERE. Kind of fun to watch. And if you live with a cat or cats, you’ll appreciate the sentiments toward the Big Toe.
—- Offer rainy day tips by clicking on ‘comment’ below or by emailing dallrp@aol.com and put “KEEP THE UMBRELLA HANDY” in the subject line. —-