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Pregnant Bitches, Gay Christians and Swindling Baptists

One dog-lover gets a surprise

As told to Richard Connelly 

Karen Augustine of Porter decided she wanted a "companion dog." She went to the Montgomery County animal shelter and paid $100 to adopt a mixed-breed female she named Zoe.

Sixty bucks of the fee was for having Zoe spayed. So it was a little surprising when, as they say on the street, the bitch got pregnant.

"I was rather perturbed, to say the least," Augustine says.

Augustine took Zoe to her vet for an abortion, no doubt braving the hordes of spittle-spewing demonstrators holding up plastic doggie fetuses.

That little trip to the vet cost $354, further pissing Augustine off. But the fun wasn't over yet: She still had to deal with the folks at the shelter.

Which, as we found out, is not an easy thing to do. The Montgomery County shelter offers a complex voice-mail maze, and getting anyone to return your calls is difficult.

Augustine had more time than we did, and eventually got an actual live human being on the phone. An actual live human being who didn't sound all that perturbed that the dog that was allegedly spayed had ended up pregnant.

"I was told that 'Maybe someone had seen a scar and assumed she had been spayed,'" Augustine says. (Post-op procedure at Montgomery County: 1) Check for scar, maybe. 2) Release patient.)

You might think that the county would offer some sort of refund of the $60 spay fee, seeing as there was a lack of anything approaching an actual spaying. You would be wrong.

"They said I should have taken her back to their vet so I could have gotten 20 percent off [on the abortion]," Augustine says.

They also offered her another dog. "I was appalled," Augustine says. "I said, 'This is ridiculous.'"

She's also annoyed that the information card on Zoe provided by the shelter said the dog loved cars and kids.

"She hates cars. She does not like children. Those things don't matter to me personally, but I would hate to think what would have happened if she'd been adopted by a family of beach-loving kids," she says.

Not to mention a family of beach-­loving Right to (Doggie) Lifers.

Get Together

Lakewood Church is a very, very busy place, what with the massive services each weekend, the endless scheduling of Joel Osteen's speaking tours, the fighting of lawsuits against Victoria Osteen by disgruntled flight attendants.

So it's understandable, perhaps, if they get a little behind on answering their mail. Or maybe they just really, really take their time when asked to meet with gay and lesbian groups.

A group called Soulforce is working with several other organizations, including one headed by the son of Jim and the late Tammy Faye Bakker, on something called the American Family Outing.

They've contacted a half-dozen of the most famous mega-churches in America, asking for an opportunity to meet and "create meaningful dialogue about homosexuality and Christianity," as Bakker put it in a letter to Lakewood.

The group has heard back from some churches, including the one run by Rick Warren of The Purpose-Driven Life fame, but not from Lakewood.

"We wrote the first letter December 3, a second in mid-January, then a third letter and then a handwritten note," says Jeff Lutes, executive director of Soulforce.

They've also been calling the church weekly, says spokeswoman Paige Schilt. Since the scheduled date for Lakewood's American Family Outing is Mother's Day, time is getting tight.

"Finally, last Friday I got a form letter asking the reason for our visit, which was what all the other letters had already explained," Lutes says. "I immediately filled it out and faxed it back but haven't heard anything...We're hoping it's just that they're behind with the mail, and they will get with us and we can have this ­conversation."

Yes, we're sure they're just a little behind on the mail. (A Lakewood spokesperson did not return our calls.)

If there's no contact by Mother's Day, Lutes says, Soulforce will still try to make its presence known at Lakewood.

"If they aren't able to show us hospitality, we'll create a space and our own hospitality," he says. "We thought that by writing five to six months in advance, asking for 90 minutes to two hours for a meeting, that we were being reasonable."

Come on, Lutes. Do you know how tough it is to get good help in the mailroom these days?

The Story Continues

We've written before about preacher Val D. Adams of the Canaan Missionary Baptist Church (See Hair Balls, October 4, 2007), a guy with an interesting past.

He's been sued by a parishioner who claims he had sex with her and swindled her out of $600,000; he's also had a long, long list of criminal complaints filed against him.

Since then, at least some worshippers at Canaan Missionary have continued to question his right to lead the congregation. And now they have some more ammunition: Adams has been arrested and charged yet again with a crime.

The preacher is in Harris County jail, charged with theft of between $20,000 and $100,000; we couldn't get more specifics by press time.

We'd like to think that this might be the final straw, but then again, the folks at Canaan Missionary seem to be a very, very forgiving bunch.

One More Time

New coach, same result: A postseason collapse by the Rockets. Rick Adelman replaces Jeff Van Gundy, sees the team go on a 22-game winning streak (without Yao!) and has them primed for the playoffs. Whereupon the team promptly goes on to lose the first two games at home. Unless they pull off a miracle comeback, it will be yet another one-and-out for the hapless Rockets. So what's new?