Monday, June 30, 2008

EARLY SUMMER '94- THE PUPS


We lived about five minutes away from some of our cousins. They had a couple of boxer dogs. One being a female and was about to give birth to some puppies. As she delivered the veterinarian found cancer and they had to put her down. I did not know it until then but cancer is pretty common in boxers. It was a very sad time, but now the focus was on taking care of the puppies. There were six of them. They were newborn and needed to be bottle fed, comforted, and played with. My cousin, Melissa, who owned the puppies had a full-time job during the day as did her husband. My mom was not working at the time so Melissa asked her if she could babysit the puppies during the day while she worked. Without hesitation my mom said yes! I was not working at the time either so I was very excited as well!

Every morning for about six weeks Melissa would bring the puppies in a box. You could hear the little noises they would make all along what their paws scraping to get out of the box. Mom and I would each bottle feed 3 puppies a piece. They would use our fingers as pacifiers. They would grab a hold and not let go! During this time my Grangee (Dad’s Mom) came to visit from Oklahoma, and she also got to participate in feeding and playing with them. She was so cute with them, that as she got through feeding one of them she would put him onto his back and rub his tummy. And said that is how you would get him to burp! Now I am not a professional bottle feeder to dog’s and I am not aware if Grangee had any special training either, but it sounded good! Besides that she is a Mom, and you don’t question your Mom, right? A few weeks after total bottle feeding them we started giving them cereal. It looked like oatmeal. So Mom the lined them upon the linoleum floor in the kitchen with six plastic saucer bowls filled with the oatmeal, and let them have at it!! Their eyes were barely open and they were stepping all in the cereal:( Due to this they were not getting good traction on their little paws so they were slipping everywhere. They had more food up their nose than in their mouth! I was beginning to think they had FA!! It was the cutest mess I had ever seen! This was the only time I had ever seen my mom NOT frustrated in cleaning up someone else’s mess! She was in her total element:) It was a very fast six weeks and we had so much fun! They all survived!!

If I remember correctly Melissa ended up keeping two of the puppies and sold the rest. This was one of those things in my dash that might not seem like much. Thank you Melissa!! Have you ever done something that seemed so small but meant so much to you? I would love for you to share.

Thank you for taking the time to read, Miss S

1 comment:

Parisjasmal said...

awwwwww. Girl I know you and Moms were in hog heaven taking care of all those baby puppies.
What fun. You were like John and Kate Plus Eight--HA!
Was Thumps ever invited over? Was he jealous or did he teach them how to lift their leg when they peed?
(((((Thumper))))
xo