Send in the Puppies
Late on Monday night I got an email from V. A litter of orphaned puppies had been handed over to a rescue group up north (think holy shit, even colder), and they were looking for rescues in the tropical Twin Cities that could take in the puppies. The mother had been hit by a car. The puppies are young, and need a lot of care and bottle feeding.
Now, we normally take a break between fosters, and this is a really busy week. Our teen had a birthday yesterday, and we’ve got an extra teen visiting from California for two weeks. With all the outings and shopping (no sales tax on clothing in MN) that I figured they had planned, it didn’t seem like a good time to take on such a time-consuming responsibility. Auxiliary Teen looked up at me with giant blue eyes and told me puppies were better than shopping.
Still? Orphan puppies? I mean, common. That tugs at the heart-strings. Plus, not content to just rely on my regular level of big fat sucker-ness, V sent me some photos of tiny sad lonely orphan puppies. They were not singing “It’s the Hard-Knock Life”, but still.
My mother is in town for a visit. Her super awesome and amazing cat, Neo, died suddenly from cancer, so my mother came here to help me with Laney. Sharp needle puppy teeth sinking into your toes through your socks is totally proven grief therapy. It’s like acupuncture, but with needles that haven’t been sterilized. Okay, so it isn’t FDA approved, but what to they know? My mother agreed to stay a little longer if I took in the puppies, to help me until they were ready to move on to regular food.
So, I emailed V early Tuesday morning and agreed to take in some bottle babies. Auxiliary Teen said, “Yay!” when I announced my decision. I assume she is planning to sneak at least one into her suitcase to take home. I am planning not to notice.*
The puppies will be transported to the metro area by volunteers today, and then checked into the rescue officially and checked over by a vet. I expect to get them about 7 PM. I’m not sure how many we will get yet. The full litter is 9, but 9 would really be brutal to provide that level of care for, so they’ll be split up amongst different fosters and rescues. I’ve agreed to take as many as 6, but hopefully it will be less.
Today I have a bunch of errands to run, since tonight and tomorrow will be the all puppy all the time channel, stuff needs to happen today. I also need to set up a puppy preschool area in the house. I am so lucky that our landlord is a soft touch when it comes to animals, so they are supportive of us doing this. They foster animals themselves. Still, I work very hard to make sure their beautiful house does not suffer because of it.
* Okay, okay Auxiliary Teen’s mom, I’ll notice. I promise.
Tags foster dogs
I seriously can not even imagine 9 puppies that young being totally dependent on me. I am excited your mom will have some serious puppy therapy.
I can’t wait to see them
Puppy therapy is good. And, with Auxiliary Teen, you have another set of hands to clean up puppy poo and bottlefeed. <3