Straydog UPDATE posted TUESDAY 12/10/02 at ~8:30 p.m. CT

Pat Arnold's Daily Dog Log

TUESDAY DECEMBER 10 2002

EARLY MORNING UPDATE

The six new puppies

     Busy afternoon yesterday with the arrival of the six little pups, but all was quiet the rest of the night (I think) after their last meal at 6:00 p.m.

     At 5:00 this morning I finished feeding the six puppies in their outside kennel, and what a mess they were! These little tykes are able to eat mush food okay, but what goopy, mushy messes they are by the time they finish! While eating they all crawl in their big pan of food. They all seem to think it tastes better in the middle of the pan, and when they finish, they are so goopy with the mushy food all over them they lick each other's faces for dessert!

I have to get these pups moved into the house

     The outside shelter is big enough for the new puppies, and it's warm enough for them, but it's just not good for such tiny pups. They poop and pee in their hay beds and hay-filled dog houses, which means a complete change of hay for them every day, and it's hard for us to get into this shelter easily to do this. (Having a mommy dog around to keep everything clean--as unpleasant as the thought is--sure makes it easier on the puppy caregivers.)

     Freckle's puppy kennel (which is where Freckles is now with her son, Leo) was made for tiny pups, and built especially tall with a people-size door for easy access for us to get to the pups to care for them. But Blind Mother Dog Freckles can't be moved right now. She is just beginning her treatment for heartworm disease, and I don't want to stress her by moving her to the other kennel, so we'll have to figure out how to make room for six little puppies inside the house. They need to be in a place where their little "bathroom" messes are easy to clean up. They also need to be where they are easy to clean up after they finish "swimming" in their food at mealtime, and of course with the pups in the house it will be much easier to hold and cuddle them often during the day, which all puppies very much need at this young age. (Bobby and his sister Briar are good examples of what happens when puppies don't have human contact till they're over a couple of months old. Bobby still won't come to Bill, and both Bobby and Briat are spooked by all new people.)

The Plan

     The plan will be to move Frosty the Husky (who is in the big recovery kennel in the kitchen/living room) to the back hallway, which extends off our living room/office to the extra bedroom/offices at the other end of the house--Danny's former home. Frosty still has to be confined to a fairly small area where she won't be able run or jump while her leg heals from the bullet wound that shattered her left hind leg. By keeping her in the carpeted hallway with all doors to office rooms closed she should be fine. This is like a nice, narrow, long kennel, complete with a window.

     We can then move the six little pups to the big kitchen/living room kennel where Frosty is now. I'll feel much better with these little fellas in the house.

Long scar noticed on Freckles during her first heartworm treatment yesterday

     Freckles has no eyes. She is the small dog who was abandoned on a country road when she was pregnant. She was brought to our shelter September 1st this year and gave birth two weeks later to five puppies (four survived). We will never know why Freckles has no eyes. We want to believe that she was born this way, but the appearance of the area of her eyes makes us think this could have been caused by abuse.

     This doesn't matter now. Freckles is safe. She is well cared for and will never have to endure such pain again. (She is the only dog we've had who cannot tolerate the pain of an injection, and we have to mussle her.) But after noticing a scar yesterday that encircles the entire back half of her body, it makes me think that she must have been terribly abused at one time.

     Freckles had her spay surgery two weeks ago, and she's recovered completely from that. Yesterday it was time to take her to the clinic to begin the treatment for heartworm disease.

     While I was at the vet clinic with Freckles, as I held her on my lap petting her to keep her calm while waiting for the doctor to come into the room, I noticed a slight, very narrow indention in the fur on her back. At first I thought this probably was a tiny ripple of fat (which some of the dogs have), but she is not a fat dog, and no way could her skin ripple. I examined the area more closely, and as I parted the hairs along the indention, I saw that she had a scar that encircled her whole body right in front of her hips. I easily followed the scare going around her belly and up the other side.

     When the doctor came in the room, I showed him the scar. He thought it must have been caused by tight wire, and the only way for her to have gotten out of the wire, which had embedded itself deep into her skin, was for someone to have cut it off.

     Sometimes when we see the wounds and scars on the dogs we rescue, it's just hard for us to put out of our minds the harsh life and abuse they must have had to endure after becoming homeless dogs, and our hearts break for them.

EVENING UPDATE

New little puppies are cozy and warm In the House

     After a busy morning of (among a million other things) taking Freckles to the doctor for her second heartworm treatment I then made a quick trip to town to get a regular baby bottle to begin bottle feeding the pups a supplemental meal, especially the little black runt of the family. (These pups won't need tube feeding, because they are strong enough to nurse from a bottle. The woman who rescued them (originally) had been bottle feeding them successfully.) Tina helped me move around the dogs in the house recovery kennels to make room for the six little puppies.

     After all the work we went through to puppy-proof the outside kennel for these babies, I still was worried about them. The kennel is nice, but puppies need a nice, clean area that is easy to keep clean, so we moved them inside this afternoon. [Photos to come. Bill's behind in the photos because he's up in Dallas helping to care for his almost-94-year-old father, who just had back surgery five weeks ago and is doing fine!]

     Now the puppies are happily settled in the big kitchen/living room kennel on nice clean papers and two little plastic puppy beds filled with soft towels, and one Big Teddy Bear to serve as a mommy for the babies to cozy up to, which all six of them did immediately after I put the teddy bear in with them.

     The pups eat their mushy food okay, but they miss the "mommy feeding" very much, and they are so young to be apart from their mother I decided to supplement their diet by bottle feeding them a few times a day. There is one very small black puppy who needs extra nourishment, and he gladly took to the bottle immediately! The others did too, and now their tummies are full of nice warm "puppy" milk and they are sound asleep, all snuggled up on their big teddy bear. (Let's just hope they sleep through the night!)

     Frosty Husky is asleep in her new quarters too, on her soft dog bed in the hallway. She likes the low hallway window she can look out to watch the dogs in the neighboring kennels.