SAVING DOGS; ADMIRING FACES OF CATS AND DOGS; CONTEMPLATING POP....

EDITION OF TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 6-7 [PetPowellPress] Dogs are important. Cats are important. People I’m iffy about. Wait! People who love and protect and rescue animals — those are some angelic heroes who make the world a better place for animals and people! I’ve been a working journalist since 1965; observing the realities of life —that “angelic heroes” is constant. As the lawyers sometimes assert, “That’s a true fact.”
THIS MAY BE A DOG
WHO’S GETTING SAVED…
We’re waiting to get the final word on all the details about Zeke — but the early word is there’s an apparent good turn in his life. Details will come later. I’m sure he’ll need some donations. Criminy, look at him!
Starvation? Looks it. What we can’t see is the dramatic heartworm challenge he’s facing. [LARRY ASIDE: Look, yeah, I became a sap for this dog just because of the look in his eyes and boniness of his puppy ass! We’ve seen dogs like this before. They usually get in this condition because a human had a “don’t care/so what” attitude about animals.]

Zeke has been #A1156343 at Dallas Animal Services and the 5-year-old, painfully thin pup has been listed as “EU Risk” since last week. 
But, now, as we reach Tuesday the 6th, word is he’s got a way out toward a healthy, happy life. Stay tuned. 

The thing is: While this one dog is getting out of the city’s big shelter, there are many others critters waiting. Dogs and cats, as you know, tend to gather at the shelters formerly known as “pounds” in the big cities.
SO, FOLLOWING ON THE PAWS
OF THAT SHELTER DOG TALE….
OK, Dear Readers, this note says things far better than I could type them. It comes from Lauri Gautreaux who has a heart-felt connection to the Fort Worth Animal Care & Control Shelters. FYI: Her bio on her Facebook page reads, “Family First, Crazy Cajun Girl, Pit bull Advocate and Dog Lover, Lead Volunteer at FWACC!” 
And here’s the message [LARRY ASIDE: Shelters and workers may appreciate the attitude!]:
“If you really want to help a shelter instead of talking crap about them and dragging them thru the mud, starting private Facebook groups about them and constantly putting them down, how about you use that energy to go to that shelter and volunteer! We are needing people to help with enrichment, help getting better pics, helping adopters on the weekends and a list of other things. If interested please fill out the app. Trust me, it’s a lot more beneficial being part of a solution instead of adding to the problem!” And she says this photo is “courtesy of the amazing Kellei Mayes and Muffin!”

The Fort Worth volunteer link is HERE:
https://www.fortworthtexas.gov/.../cod.../animals/volunteers.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN DALLAS,
THE WEBSITE, THE CRITTERS…
As the noon hour approached Tuesday, we discovered that visiting the Dallas Animal Services website at 
https://www.bedallas90.org reveals that there are still problems with the site. But, we also could click through to photographs of animals waiting in the area’s big municipal shelter at I-30 and Westmoreland on the west side of downtown Big D. 
One of the animals listed is this kitten Dallas (#A1151621). He’s about 2 months old and is currently in foster care — but here’s the deal: In Dallas, it’s never too early to get onto the waiting list for a kitten! You know how the  kitten supply is always short in North Texas. Why, we hardly ever see free kittens around here…Oh, wait! I may have been hallucinating when I wrote those last three sentences.
But, isn’t that Dallas wearing a remarkable face! 
Could be yours.
Speaking of remarkable faces, I found this guy Kimbel’s picture on the Dallas available dogs list — his shelter ID is #1154696. He’s a year old mixed breed with the greatest set of show-biz eyebrows since Pagliacci.
 Scroll down to last weekend's Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap to see the reference point to the clown who cries in an opera. That canine/clown eye makeup is uncanny, isn't it!
You want dogs with eye designs — August (#A1155179) has the dots over his eyes and Kernel (#A1155228) has the patch effect. All available. 




The city has many, many more adorable adoptables waiting for either the right human heart or a human with a needle. Cruel fact of life in the town that named it’s airport Love.
CONTEMPLATIONS
ON A BIRTHDAY THAT WAS UNCERTAIN…
Not my birthday. Nope. My Pop would have been 98 on Tuesday — 9/6/24 to 11/18/2008. The reason I mention this is I knew his birthday was in September, but I could never remember when. Nor could my younger brothers. Mom and Pop hid his birthday from us — it was his idea.
 He never celebrated his birthday when we were kids — wouldn’t tell us when it was and teased us about his age. He’d rather laugh with us than be the center of attention. I don’t know why. 
Depression Era kid raised in rancid poverty with (if I’ve got the count right!) older and younger brothers and sisters — altogether 8 kids that survived infancy. That's a lot of poor kids.

Maybe, after living through a few years of WWII as an infantry soldier -- shooting and shot at from Normandy into Germany, then going into a concentration camp to set it free, he just figured he’d bury all those images and try to live a good American hometown life and ignore getting older. [LARRY ASIDE: That’s the photo from before he left for war. He looks like a little boy — I guess they all did in those days, didn’t they. No idea where my later photos are. In a box somewhere.]
 Pop was a kid with his kids. We played baseball, went fishing, played dominoes, played checkers. My lifelong friend Robert and I were talking about his checkers talent not long ago and Robert lamented, “I never was able to beat your dad at checkers!” Robert was pretty good, too. Pop was fun — more fun with our cousins but that’s because he wanted exemplary behavior out of his 3 boys and the cousins were his siblings’ responsibility. Of course, all of us cousins were wonderfully behaved at all times. That’s how I remember it. Our cousins loved “Uncle Calvin.”
Pop wouldn’t talk about war but he’d sure go to church.
 And he loved just staying home or visiting his siblings across town. But that’s it. No travel, no trips…He made exceptions.
 Once cold autumn weekend, I badgered him into going camping with my Boy Scout troop. He and Mom kept secrets from their kids. I didn't realize he'd "camped" across Europe in a wartime so cold that it wrecked a lot of tough soldiers. And it was only about 15 years after the war. Kids -- we pay no attention to these things and blunder right ahead. One of the secrets mom revealed after Pop had died was that frostbite from “the War” made life miserable for him in cold weather and then she said something about how that Boy Scout camping trip wrecked him for weeks. Geez, y'all shoulda explained things?
Pop also had war-borne insomnia -- I didn’t fully appreciate all he put up in addition to his little boys. I guess the thing to say is when it came to his kids, he “soldiered on happily.”   
One really key thing? My Pop taught us how to take care of dogs and why to love dogs, too. He got us our first Collie, Frisky, from a “Tyler fellow I was in the war with.” And, years later, he got our Border Collie Queenie from a relative who lived “out in the country” and always had beautiful dogs. Queenie may have been the best herder of three boys ever to have lived on the planet — and I know she’s enjoying a rest with Pop in the Hereafter. Pop also rescued our cat Pepper from under the hood of a car engine at his work one frigid winter morning at the railroad station where he worked. Pepper and Queenie were pals. We adored them. [LARRY ASIDE: That's a photo Mom took of me and my little brothers, Barry (left) and Garry) -- honest, Larry, Barry & Garry -- in the winter of 1961 in Texarkana --- Pop wasn't in it because he was at work at the railroad station, loading and unloading boxcars in this ferociously cold storm. American work ethic, you know.]
So, back to Pop’s birthday: I was way grown, beyond my divorce and working in Big D at The Big Paper — can’t remember if I was National Editor or a columnist at the time, but I decided I’d get Pop a birthday cake.
 I had to double-check the date with Mom -- reluctant Mom. And I ordered a “store-bought cake” that read “Happy Birthday Lil’ Calvin” and had enough candles to set off fire alarms. 
When I set it down on the dining table at Mom’s and Pop’s and lit the candles, Pop was nearly giddy and had to excuse himself. In a few minutes, he came back and we had birthday cake and ice cream and laughed, talked about times past and present (He was nuts about his kids, but, oh, my the grandkids — the 4 boys. Plus he and mom, who’d never had daughters, were bonkers over the little girls they “babysat” for our pals down the street. Those girls gave ‘em some new spirit!

Years later, Mom, who enjoyed keeping secrets, told me that the reason Pop had left the table that long-ago birthday was he felt himself getting emotional and went to the bathroom so he could cry a little bit and gain control. “Cry? Why?” I asked Mom and she said, “In his entire life, nobody had ever given him a cake on his birthday and it just got to him.” 
If he were here today reading this, he’d probably be embarrassed, maybe a little miffed that I mentioned his birthday cake and his birthday. But, you know, I miss him — I got to take him to his first big league baseball game — the Texas Rangers at their first ballpark, beloved Arlington Stadium. He was so excited, this 6-1 tall lifelong baseball fan with 3 kids who couldn’t make the big leagues.
He looked at me at that mid-70s game and looked around at the stadium, the people and the teams on the field and he says, “I never thought in my life that I would get to see a big league ballgame in person.” 

I can’t remember for sure, but for the sake of Pop, watching from a mid-level seat with a great view halfway down the 3rd base line, I like to think that I remember the Rangers won the game. Happy Birthday, Pop. Thank you for you’re service, for your daddying and for rooting for the Texas Rangers. And, Pop, if you have any influence with any Guardian Angels, see if you can get some assigned to the Texas Rangers for 2023 — a couple of pitchers wouldn’t hurt, either. FYI, Pop: I can’t imagine you at 98 — you probably still look like you're in your late 30s.

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