The Bride Really Put on the Dog

--Debbie Dolan’s new husband would have been in the doghouse if he had complained about her wedding attendants: four of her nine dogs. “I love the dogs. They’re a real big part of my life,” said Dolan, a Niagara Falls, N. Y., dog groomer and nurse. “I told him if he’s marrying me, he’s marrying my dogs too.” Earl Richbart did not mind if his wedding went to the dogs, she said. So Pierre, Angel, Pebbles and Sweet Pea--three poodles and a Yorkshire terrier--attended the Tonawanda, N. Y., affair in formal attire designed by Dolan. Pierre, the ring bearer, carried two gold wedding bands tied to the back of his white tuxedo. Angel, the flower girl, wore a pink satin dress, trailed flowers behind her and scattered rose petals. Pebbles and Sweet Pea wore pink gowns and hats. Four human bridesmaids, also wearing pink gowns, escorted the canines.

--Kenneth and Sue Massey, whose letter to the rock group Alabama became part of a video televised at the FarmAid concert in Champaign, Ill., say they will accept no money to save their farm. The Masseys’ letter told how they and their five children are about to lose the 325-acre Wisconsin spread, which has been in the family more than 70 years. A judge is expected to set a foreclosure sale date in November. Since their plight was televised, the family has received individual donations ranging from $1 to “in the hundreds,” Sue Massey said. But she told the Milwaukee Journal that the family decided it would not be right to accept the contributions. Instead, she wrote a second letter to Alabama. “By saving ‘our land, our home,’ we’ve not touched the root of the problem for all,” she wrote. “So please, with no hard feelings intended, send your contribution to FarmAid . . . or call or write your congressman. . . . As much as we’d love to save our farm, we realize it’s such a (widespread) problem . . . there are so many others out there who have just as many problems as we do. We have food and we have each other and we have jobs--and if we have that, we have it all.”

--Truck driver Dominic Cirone spent the night in an outhouse after his cargo disappointed three hijackers. Cirone, of Rio, Wis., pulled off the expressway to use a telephone and the hijackers waylaid him. When they discovered that his truck contained 2,000 to 3,000 plastic toilet seats and bedpans and 59 humidifiers, Cirone said, one of the men threatened to kill him. Instead, they tied him up and left him in a forest preserve outhouse, and abandoned his truck and cargo in Chicago. “They got the wrong truck, unless there is a big market in bedpans that I don’t know about,” detective Sgt. Fred Bohnke said.