Puppies

Puppies! Who doesn't love puppies? I saw a whole lot of puppies growing up. One year (was it Christmas?) my parents gave their three boys a young female German miniature schnauzer. What fun! But with a caveat. She was the gift that would keep on giving. She was an early lesson in entrepreneurialism. She was a breeding dog, and we were going to make a bit of money. Her name was Lucky Loo (sp) because she somehow escaped having her ears cropped, dew claws clipped, and tail docked. I recall sitting outside the room when the veterinarian did all of that to the puppies and their cries still haunt me. I can still see their tails piled up on the stainless steel table.

"Puppy farms" have a bad reputation, and rightly so. Those dogs are not treated well. Dogs that come from homes where they have been held and loved on are more likely to be well-adjusted and happy. So homegrown puppies commanded a bit of a higher price. Our puppies ended up in pet shops in Denver. I thought the whole experience was fun. Big cities were exciting. If you put your head to the window of your car, you still couldn't see the tops of some buildings. But, the sad fact was, we were leaving these puppies we had bonded with since their birth. It was always a sad day (yes, that's us saying goodbye below). But money! We boys kept some, and it went into savings.

When you see a dog with puppies in a movie that just gave birth, let me tell you, that crap is fake. They always show clean, fairly large puppies with their eyes open. Reality is a little messier and not nearly as pretty. They don't come out looking clean and fluffed with a hairdryer, that's for sure. And it takes weeks for their eyes to open. The mother eats the afterbirth, which gives her energy for feeding her babies. The whole process was a lesson in procreation and the miracle of birth for me. I recall seeing a stud we "rented" impregnating our dog, and I didn't think it was gross. It was fascinating, and then I let them have their privacy.

In descending stature and sock height except for Lucky on the left. And that's not how you hold puppies, Joshua.

The last photo shows our last puppy. She was to replace Lucky Loo, but somehow she got parvo or something equally awful. I recall having her in my room overnight and she crapped all over me, my bed, and my room. Imagine waking up to crap all over your bed, your face, in your hair, on the floor. I felt bad because I didn't know she had to go, so blamed myself but at the same time, who knew she would crap all over me? 

 

By the way, I almost always had to clean up dog messes, whether it was puke or crap or pee. And the house we rented had shag carpeting from like the 60s that was once white but was gray when we lived there. Can you imagine cleaning up piles of vomit bigger than the dog that vomited, piles of crap, or pee nearly every day? Why was our dog so unhappy/unhealthy? Was she losing control of her body? No one seemed to care, and I had to clean that crap up. So there were clean spots of carpet all over the house as sort of a reminder where our dog had made messes. Why was the youngest child the most responsible member of our household with regard to the dog? So many questions now that I look back at it. It's pretty clear why I haven't wanted a dog most of my adult life.

Without moralizing any of this, it's clear I have some good and bad memories of having dogs and breeding puppies. As with my other memories, how I frame them is important, as that determines how I grow from here. So I've chosen to remember the good stuff and disregard the bad. And when it's possible for me to have a dog again someday (for my son, of course), I won't balk at the thought. Someday our lives will settle down, and then we can have a dog and all that. Here's hopin'.

Thank you for reading, and God bless.