The last few days I’ve reconnected with some of my animal rescue friends as I slowly get back to volunteering.  Today I’m picking up a dog named Autumn at a vet across town for Corridor Rescue and transporting her to a boarding kennel where she will stay safe and well cared for until a foster can be found.   Autumn was found as a stray, and is still unsure of people, but if I can control 4 dogs in the cockpit of a small plane for 4 hours, I can get her across Houston in my truck.

I’m told it happens to everyone who tries to help, dealing with the ravages of apathy and cruelty, witnessing the suffering of people or animals at the hands of others, experiences that break us for a little while and we have to step back, close our eyes and breathe so we can move past it and be of some use again.  For some it’s just burn out or frustration, but for me it was Hershey and Blue Bell.

One Saturday I was working at a county shelter, doing the normal volunteer things like walking dogs, bathing puppies and visiting each dog, just letting them know they weren’t forgotten.  In the shelter that day there were three momma dogs with pups, which is always disheartening because even in the very best of shelters like this one, disease is just one cage away and little puppies have so little immunity, their chances of staying healthy are very low and many don’t survive.  Most momma dogs have little patience with humans touching their pups, especially in the sterile loud atmosphere of the shelter, but there was this one small black lab, horribly emaciated and she had seven puppies, and you could see she was doing the best she could.  A kind volunteer or staff member had made her a nice bed, a large soft comforter, probably the only soft bed she had ever known, and her puppies were desperately trying to nurse, but sweet Lovey was depleted and the puppies were in trouble.  I opened the door and Lovey raised her head and looked at me and struggled to stand, she needed to go outside.  I slipped the leash over her head, made sure all the puppies were protected in the comforter and we started out of the room, but it had been too long and she couldn’t hold it anymore, she had obviously been waiting so as not to soil her babies’ bed.

Another volunteer came by and I asked if they would take Lovey outside so I could clean up the large puddle before anyone slipped.  I mopped the floor and went back to check on the puppies.  Kneeling to get a better look, I noticed they weren’t very active, but one of the pups seemed too still, so I gathered her little limp body in my hands, wrapped her in a clean blanket and took her to the vet room.  The vet looked the pup over, took her temperature, listened to her heart and said that the pup simply needed nourishment, which was the problem.  By this time several of the other volunteers were sitting on the floor next to the cage, each holding a puppy to their chest and Lovey was also back from her walk.  She seemed weak, but relieved as she curled up on the blanket and tried to sleep.  We all looked at one another and almost wordlessly we made a decision, Lovey needed a break and if the pups were going to have a chance, they needed to be fostered and fed by hand.  I agreed to take two, the lifeless blond female and  a tiny brown little girl who looked completely different from the other puppies.  I don’t know, but I would swear that puppy didn’t belong to this litter.  She looked like a miniature Doberman.

Their eyes were open, but not focused, and their ears were still closed tight and every three hours I fed them with a syringe filled with puppy milk replacement and a bit of Karo syrup for energy. Then I would rub their little bottoms as their mother would have done to stimulate their bowels, made sure they were warm enough and put them in their bed. I  had named the blond pup Blue Bell and I was sadly convinced she would never make it through the night, but Hershey, the brown one, seem to be responding to the food.  In the very early hours the next morning, I opened their kennel, ready for the worst, but two small heads popped up and tiny squeaks let me know they were alive and hungry.  Puppy care was a completely new field for me so I scoured the internet and talked to people and found out that if they were at least 3 weeks old, I might want to offer them puppy gruel in addition to the puppy formula.  That evening I found two small shallow bowls, mixed it up and put it in the kennel and they waddled straight to the bowls and slurped it up.  There is no sound in the world like slurping puppies.  When they finished their faces were covered in gruel, but they were fat and happy and ready to nap so I wiped their little mouths, picked them up, tucked them in the blankets and watched as they curled themselves around each other and went to sleep.

I knew the struggle wasn’t over, the odds were against them with their earlier malnourishment, the exposure to germs at the shelter, and my lack of experience, but we’d made it through that day and I counted it as good – they ate, they slept and moved towards life.

Afterword:  Later that month we would lose sweet Hershey to distemper, but Blue Bell miraculously never contracted this highly contagious terrible disease.  We would find out that only 2 pups of the whole litter survived, the rest were also lost to distemper.  Blue Bell’s compromised immune system led to numerous ailments and her tail had to be amputated due to infection from a skin disorder, but today she thrives in a happy home with family friends, Karma and Martin.