16 minute read
DELICIOUS
SNACKIN’ WAGGIN’
DID YOU KNOW: Melanie Fox has a 13-year-old Boston Terrier named Trixie and a 5-year-old Chihuahua mix named Akeem. Akeem even has his own Instagram: @akeemtails
There’s a smell of cinnamon, pumpkin and peanut butter in the air. At first, one might think it’s a bakery down the street, but no, that aroma is coming from a small food truck with a dog bone on top.
Dogs pull at their owners’ leashes not because of the eye-grabbing bone, but because the Snackin’ Waggin’ is in the neighborhood and all of the treats on board are for the dogs.
Originally created for her own dogs, these treats, made by Melanie Fox, spoil pups and provide a healthier alternative to other highcarb pet store options.
“Every time I would buy a dog cake mix or a dog cake, it was either really hard or it was just a weird consistency. I feel like if I don’t want to eat it, I don’t want to give it to them,” she says.
This hobby became a business in Home- grown Hounds, an online holistic pet food company, and its associated food truck, which parks anywhere dogs are gathering. But Fox wanted a business with a cause, so 100 percent of proceeds from the food truck benefit Hound Haven, a foster-based dog rescue that has saved hundreds of dogs over its nine years. Now Fox is working with multiple dog rescues to form a dog rescue coalition so she can help even more homeless pooches.
SNACKIN’ WAGGIN’
Ambiance: Dog friendly Price: $2 for a treat, $30 for a personalized cake Locations: Vary, find the food truck at facebook.com/ snackinwaggin homegrownhoundfood.com
Dining Spotlight
BREAKFAST
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Another Broken Egg Cafe
It’s our passion to create exceptional dishes for breakfast, brunch and lunch that are “craveably” delicious with an artisanal flair.
Mon-Sun 7:00 -2:00 pm
You can find the Snackin’ Waggin’ in a different Dallas neighborhood almost every weekend. She even offers classes where dog-lovers can learn to bake their own treats at home.
Fox’s homemade treats include mini donuts, cakes, cookies and more. They look so good, even people can’t help but take a bite. And many say they love the flavor.
“I have people regularly buy the treats and say, ‘Those are my favorites,’ ” Fox says.
SMOKED MEATS
One90 Smoked Meats
Meat Plates Sandwiches Tacos
Salads
Lucky the chicken was a feather’s width from becoming garbage. When the rest of her siblings hatched, her egg remained unbroken, so Laura Birdwell-Meyeres threw her in the trashcan with the rest of the unhatched shells.
Later that day, she heard a chirping in the garage while doing laundry and assumed it was the other baby chicks down the hall. When she left the garage and could no longer hear the small sound, she rushed to the can and rifled through garbage to unearth a lightly chirping egg.
Birdwell-Meyeres eventually peeled back the shell to find a small chick, somewhat bewildered. “If you stay alive I promise not to give you away,” she told the chick.
Lucky is a Serama, a smooth-feathered chicken in the Bantam category, who lives alongside three other Bantams in the back yard including another Serama named Olive. Millie is the Mille Fleur d-Uccle chicken, which looks like it has misplaced feathers on its feet. Blanca is the Serama Frizzle, distinctive by her permanent bed-head style.
Raising Lucky and the other Bantams has become a family affair, as the chickens now join the family on the couch for movies. “The kids have learned great responsibility and many lessons about life and death,” says Birdwell-Meyeres. “All the work is worth it for the kids.”
The Bantams have assumed normal pet roles around the Casa Linda house. They sleep inside the house, and as afternoons turn into evenings, they tap the window as they wait to be invited inside.
In addition to these four smaller chickens, Birdwell-Meyeres has 14 laying hens, and they are also constructing a Texas Rustic-style chicken coop to join the designer chicken coop circuit (yes, that’s a real thing).
Ironically, Birdwell-Meyeres won a pass to the grand opening of the Garland Road Chick-Fil-A, but no longer eats chicken. “When I have held them and nursed them back to health, I just can’t do it,” she says. “We have turned into chicken people. I am the crazy chicken lady, but not too crazy.”
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6342 La Vista Dr. 214.272.3652 2sheaboutique.com
Fleece
Fleece offers the most beautiful yarn in town as well as knitting, crochet, felting and macrame lessons to ages 8-80+. Book your next birthday, shower or party event at Fleece. Call or visit to book Classes and Events.
Located in Medallion Center 6464 E Northwest Hwy., Ste 330 214.238.3820 fleeceboutique.com
City View Antique Mall
Why not accent a room w/ chinoiserie piece for a new dimension? We have a great selection of Asian, English, & French & painted furniture throughout the store by 65 of Dallas’ Best Dealers.
6830 Walling Ln. (off Skillman/Abrams) 214.752.3071
Turquoise And Lavender
Visit us for an exclusive shopping experience. Thoughtful gifts,custom furniture & art,jewelry,gourmet goods, and organic spa and wellness products. Your local source for all things beautiful at affordable prices. Monday: Closed; Tuesday – Saturday: 11-6; Sunday: 12-4
Located 1907 Abrams Road east side Lakewood Shopping Center
When you are born on Halloween, you may be destined to have a weird pet. This was the case for Teak Rocket Esneault when he turned 8 and his father bought him Bluefoot, a Venezuelan Green Bottle Blue Tarantula.
Bluefoot’s appearance will live up to her name on her final molt, which hasn’t happened yet. And if the idea of a large, colorful and hairy arachnid in the house creeps you out, its food might be even more disturbing. Teak keeps a container of live cockroaches in his closet to feed the eight-legged friend, as Bluefoot won’t eat anything dead.
Unlike spiders, tarantulas don’t use their web to capture prey; they prefer to hunt and pounce. Though they are scared of people, tarantulas have fangs and venom. To a human, their venom is weaker than a bee sting, but it can paralyze their prey. They then release digestive enzymes to melt the innards of their prey, allowing the tarantula to suck out the nutrients.
A tarantula can survive months without food but can also eat several cockroaches in a couple days. Teak enjoys watching his pet hunt prey and spin webs into a protective shield before it molts its skin and grows.
If all of this hasn’t induced enough nightmares, tarantulas can also urticate the bristles on their legs, allowing them
When injured or out of place animals are spotted in Lakewood, Beth Vercillo often gets the call. She has rehabilitated squirrels, possums and even a lost swan.
“I say yes every time,” she says.
Her latest flock includes six ducklings that live on her back porch, which has been turned into a fowl habitation. The caretaking of this quacking crew is self-imposed, as she ordered these eggs herself.
With a house that backs up to a dammed creek, she has the perfect environment to raise these webbed wonders.
Vercillo says she missed wings, feathers and flippers after she lost her pet swans due to a combination of coyotes and storms, so she ordered eggs.
Vercillo would chirp at the unhatched eggs the same way a mother might read to her baby in the womb. She says they responded and even giggled within the eggs. Soon Bandit, Dasher, Meriweather, Una, Willow and Chicken hatched in their home.
The babies imprint on the first animal they see when they hatch, which was Vercillo. Now 11 weeks old, the gaggle of six ducks jump in and out of her lap as she sits on the back porch feeding them mealworms. They follow her around and would definitely follow her into the house, if she let them.
They first stayed in a toddler’s playpen, placed in an extra bedroom equipped with a heat lamp and water element. The ducklings also spent time in the bathtub, where they could practice going under the water.
“It’s a lot of work, a real commitment,” she says.
Vercillo wears mucking boots to clean out the duck house, refills their pool and replaces their wood chips. Despite all the hours she puts into their care, Vercillo knows that when the ducks are ready, they may leave her forever. But like any good parent, she knows that she needs to let them go.
“This is big fun for us, and the ducks are always smiling,” she says. “This is what we do.”
With her squishy pug face, it’s easy to see why Advocate readers voted for Tessa. The 8-year-old pug lives in Lakewood Trails with her humans Julia and Clint Bell. Julia raised Tessa from puppyhood, and Clint adopted her when they got married. “My wife swears she is part human,” Clint says. “Tess has so much personality from the way she walks, looking out the window for my wife to get home, snoring with her eyes open, her farts, barking at bigger dogs as they walk away, rolling in anything that smells bad and spending all day on one or both of her couches.”
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Do you have heart failure, also called “fluid around the heart?”
Do you have heart failure, also called “fluid around the heart?”
Do you have shortness of breath and fatigue due to a weak heart?
Are medicines not controlling it?
Do you have shortness of breath and fatigue due to a weak heart? Are medicines not controlling it?
Is there a chance you will need an artificial heart or a heart transplant?
You may take part in a Research Study using stem cells for your heart problem at the Baylor Soltero CV Research Center.
Call to find out more information and to see if you qualify, 214-820-2273
Is there a chance you will need an artificial heart or a heart transplant?
Join
Do you have heart failure, also called “fluid around the heart?”
Do you have shortness of breath and fatigue due to a weak heart?
Do you have heart failure, also called “fluid around the heart?”
Are medicines not controlling it?
Do you have shortness of breath and fatigue due to a weak heart?
Are medicines not controlling it?
Is there a chance you will need an artificial heart or a heart transplant?
You may take part in a Research Study using stem cells for your heart problem at the Baylor Soltero CV Research Center.
Is there a chance you will need an artificial heart or a heart transplant?
You may take part in a Research Study using stem cells for your heart problem at the Baylor Soltero CV Research Center.
Call to find out more information and to see if you qualify, 214-820-2273
You may take part in a Research Study using stem cells for your heart problem at the Baylor Soltero CV Research Center.
Call to find out more information and to see if you qualify, 214-820-2273
Call to find out more information and to see if you qualify, 214-820-2273
WRITING TO REMEMBER WHAT SHE DRANK TO FORGET
Neighbor Sarah Hepola on being a New York Times best-selling author
By WILL MADDOX Portrait by DANNY FULGENCIO
A7-year-old girl creeps into the kitchen and quietly opens the refrigerator, her nightgown soaking up its cool glow. She reaches in for the half-empty can of Pearl Light, hoping her father doesn’t hear over the television in the living room. She takes two long, secretive sips. The dizzying effect of the booze spins her young mind in circles as she twirls through the house, bumping into furniture on her own private adventure.
Six years later, while visiting her cousin in Michigan, the same girl has a few drinks at a party. An 18-year-old crush kisses her after weeks of flirting.
“No way you’re 13,” he kept telling her.
He takes her to a vacant apartment, sparsely furnished with chairs and bean bag. She thought they came to talk, but soon they were naked and it was clear he wanted sex. She didn’t outright resist, but it felt “like a bowling ball stuck up your nostrils.”
Afterwards, he kissed her, “Which made me feel good. Because that made feel like he didn’t regret anything.”
Sarah Hepola has spent a lifetime going over what happened in that empty apartment, and processing the factors and influences that led her to that moment. These are just two of the many poignant, heart-breaking and hilarious anecdotes in the East Dallas author’s memoir, “Blackout.”
Hepola’s memoir pivots between heart wrenchingly vulnerable and laugh-outloud funny. It details her introduction and addiction to alcohol while growing up with a feeling she didn’t belong in Highland Park.
In college at UT Austin, Hepola’s drinking was encouraged. It allowed her to keep up with the boys chug for chug. “Under the cover of night and Keystone tall boys, I was full of righteous fire and brimstone. How I loved the taste of conviction in my mouth,” she writes.
Following college, Hepola worked for the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle and eventually made her way to New York, where she wrote and edited personal essays for Salon. She fell into debt and hit the bottle harder, even as her career prospects improved.
On assignment in Paris, a luxurious French meal was washed down with too much cognac. She exchanges pleasantries with the concierge on her way back to her room, and then everything goes black. Her next memory is being on top of a man she has never seen before, feeling like she has been dropped into another person’s life.
“It seems unfair that he should know me, and I don’t know him,” she writes.
Reflecting on her memoir and life, she says, “A drinking problem is not a problem; missing your deadlines is the problem. I was serious about my work, got things done and got promoted everywhere I went. I gave everything I had to those publications.”
“Blackout” touches upon the inherent tension and contradictions that exist
Our Neighborhood
By PATTI VINSON
Three legs and two countries
It began as the trip of a lifetime to Machu Picchu but it became a rescue mission. Planes, train and automobiles all played a role. Pachamama, the Andean goddess, helped out, too.
It was October 2016, and neighbors Sally Freedman and Chris Skoog were at long last at the ancient Inca city in the Andes mountains of Peru, a destination high on their travel bucket list.
They hiked the rocky terrain for eight days, with Machu Picchu as the planned culmination. As oft-annoying fate would have it, though, the morning after their arrival at the site, Skoog developed a serious bacterial infection. Freedman was headed to the small mountain infirmary for medication when she happened upon a grievously injured dog.
Attitudes toward dogs in North versus South America are quite different. They love their dogs, yes, but most are not allowed indoors, nor are they routinely spayed or neutered. The result is a huge stray dog population.
Freedman and Skoog, lifelong animal lovers, were aware of this and vowed to help every stray they could by doling out the kibble they carried in their backpacks.
When Freedman happened upon the injured dog, she naturally offered him some food. “He didn’t budge,” she recalls, “and I asked him what was wrong.”
As though understanding, the dog managed to stand up and held out his right leg to show her. The paw had been cut off and bone was exposed.
The infirmary doctor told Freedman that the dog — later dubbed “Mac” in a nod to Machu Picchu — had been carried up the mountain the day before by someone who found him near train tracks. He was streaked with grease, and seem- ingly had been struck by the train. Due to limited resources, all the doctor could offer him was pain medication and a bandage, the latter of which he gnawed off in short order.
The doctor told the head guard at Machu Picchu Park that Mac needed to get to a veterinarian in Cuzco, hours away by bus, train and car. But the buses wouldn’t be swayed from their “no dogs” rule.
Enter Freedman and Skoog who, after hearing of the obstacles, were on a mission. A bedridden Skoog, barely conscious chief relented immediately.
Word had spread about the “gringa trying to help the dog.” It inspired local guide Jimmy Vasquez-Calderon to get busy making calls. “I told Sally I would try to help, but I honestly had no idea what I was going to do,” he says.
Vasquez-Calderon had connections on the bus and train systems. Says Skoog, “A key person in this equation was Jimmy. He knew the local resources and was able to get them to help us.” and in need of IV fluids, urged Freedman to do all she could for the dog. Freedman remembers, “I marched up to that head guard and, in my worst Spanish, cried to him that we needed to help ‘el perro sin pata [the dog without a paw].’”
With the guard’s permission, Freedman then approached the bus chief. By this time, several park guards had become Freedman’s cheering section and accompanied her for the conversation. The bus chief remained stubborn in his “no dogs” rule until, out of frustration, Freedman insisted, “Pachamama wants you to do this!”
Invoking the name of this revered goddess from Inca mythology, a Mother Nature-type figure, did the trick. The bus
The guide would accompany Mac to the town of Ollantaytambo where, again through Vasquez-Calderon’s connections, a veterinarian met them and took the dog the rest of the journey to Cuzco for continued care and surgery.
Sadly, amputation of much of Mac’s leg was necessary. While he recovered, Freedman and Skoog began the search for an adoptive family. But the dog’s warm response to them when they visited him at the vet’s office sealed their fate: Mac was their dog.
The couple returned to Dallas while Mac stayed with Vasquez-Calderon and his wife and children to complete his recovery and 30-day vaccination/incubation period before he could switch countries. When Freedman returned to Peru to get Mac, the Vasquez-Calderon family had mixed emotions.
“The whole family was involved [with Mac’s care]. We all did it with so much
By GEORGE MASON
Tortured by choice
In his book “Steal Like an Artist,” Austin Kleon makes the case for limitations.
“The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote “The Cat in the Hat” with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with “Green Eggs and Ham,” one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.”
The spiritual life requires discipline. We can’t wander willy-nilly through our day with no direction or guardrails to our thoughts and actions. To live a truly spiritual life is to follow a narrow path of virtue.
Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount amount to wisdom for daily living as much as warning about eternal destiny. “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
Americans love choices. We hate to commit to one path. We think of wealth and education and social networks as the means to widen our options, as if that is the key to a happy life. But the German poet, Goethe, was right when he said: “The one who chooses is tortured by choice.”
Freedom is paradoxical: It comes from slavish discipline to a way of life that liberates. The writer Eugene Peterson titled a book on the spiritual life that is ironically based on the words of the Christian critic, Friederich Nietzche: “A long obedience in the same direction.”
As a pastor, I see the problem more acutely than most. Too many options of other things to do on Sunday morning besides worship, too much money to spend on things instead of given as an act of stewardship, too many ways to be served instead of serving others: These undermine the spiritual life precisely by widening rather than narrowing our scope.
The road of abundant living is found in denying the self that is driven by ego and worldly definitions of success. The true way of life Jesus calls us to is the path of loving our enemies, doing good to those who hurt us, adopting the values
Worship
Anglican
ALL SAINTS EAST DALLAS / allsaintseastdallas.org
Sunday worship 5:00 pm / Live in God’s Presence. Live Out His Love. Meeting at Central Lutheran Church / 1000 Easton Road
Baptist
PARK CITIES BAPTIST CHURCH / 3933 Northwest Pky / pcbc.org
Worship & Bible Study 9:15 & 10:45 Traditional, Contemporary, Spanish Speaking / 214.860.1500
WILSHIRE BAPTIST / 4316 Abrams / 214.452.3100
Pastor George A. Mason Ph.D. / Worship 8:30 & 11:00am
Bible Study 9:40 am / www.wilshirebc.org
Disciples Of Christ
EAST DALLAS CHRISTIAN CHURCH / 629 N. Peak Street / 214.824.8185
Sunday School 9:30 am / Worship 8:30 am - Chapel
10:50 am - Sanctuary / Rev. Deborah Morgan-Stokes / edcc.org
Episcopal
ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH / stjd.org
Worship: Sat 5:30 pm, Sun 8 & 10 am / Christian Ed Sunday Morning & Weekdays, see calendar on website / 214.321.6451 / 848 Harter Rd.
Lutheran
CENTRAL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ELCA / 1000 Easton Road
Sunday School for all ages 9:00 am / Worship Service 10:30 am
Pastor Rich Pounds / CentralLutheran.org / 214.327.2222
FIRST UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH / 6202 E Mockingbird Lane
Sunday Worship Service 10:30 am / Call for class schedule. 214.821.5929 / www.dallaslutheran.org
Methodist
GRACE UMC / Diverse, Inclusive, Missional
Sunday School for all ages, 9:30 am / Worship, 10:50 am 4105 Junius St. / 214.824.2533 / graceumcdallas.org
LAKE HIGHLANDS UMC / 9015 Plano Rd. / 214.348.6600 / lhumc.com
Sunday Morning: 9:30 am Sunday School / 10:30 am Coffee
Worship: 8:30 am & 11:00 am Traditional / 11:00 am Contemporary of humility and charity. (Other religions demand similar commitments that transform the self by not being conformed to the values of the world at large.)
Our souls expand by a deepening process of compression. Like a caterpillar pushing through the narrow opening of a chrysalis, strength is gained by the struggle to emerge as a new creature.
Singer and songwriter Jack White puts it this way: “Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want — that just kills creativity.”
Jesus’ words are often hard but always good.
George Mason is pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and the neighborhood businesses and churches listed here. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.
MUNGER PLACE CHURCH Come and See mungerplace.org
NON-DENOMINATIONAL
LAKE POINTE CHURCH – WHITE ROCK CAMPUS Classic Service at 9:30 & Contemporary Service at 11:00 am lakepointe.org / 9150 Garland Road
Presbyterian
NORTHRIDGE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH / 6920 Bob-O-Link Dr. 214.827.5521 / www.northridgepc.org / Sundays 8:30 & 11:00 am Sunday School 9:35am / All Are Welcome
PRESTON HOLLOW PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH / 9800 Preston Road
8:15 am Chapel, 9:30 & 11:00 am Sanctuary, 5:00 pm Founder’s Hall Senior Pastor Matthew E. Ruffner / www.phpc.org / 214.368.6348
ST. ANDREW’S PRESBYTERIAN / Skillman & Monticello Rev. Rob Leischner / www.standrewsdallas.org
214.821.9989 / Sunday School 9:30 am, Worship 10:45 am
Unity
UNITY ON GREENVILLE / Your soul is welcome here! 3425 Greenville Ave. / 214.826.5683 / www.dallasunity.org
Sunday Service 11:00 am and Book Study 9:30 am
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