Puppies

Long story a little less long: We adopted a dog from the Cache Humane Society on April 13. Her name at the shelter was Precious, but we quickly renamed her Lucy. Lucy seemed like the ideal dog, quiet, mellow, and very sweet. We kept wondering why her owners would have surrendered her (which is what we were told they did). It could be because of what we found out 3 weeks after adopting Lucy, she was pregnant!

Yes, Lucy was not spayed at the time of adoption and when we took her to the vet on April 15, we were told we had to wait to have her spayed due to the kennel cough she had. We noticed her gaining weight and sure enough, on May 4 when I took her back to the vet, they saw 7 little puppy bodies and gave us an estimate of 5 days until they were born.

On Monday, May 11, Lucy showed signs of being in labor, digging and not eating, so I waited and waited and waited... Finally, I just had to run an errand and when I returned an hour later, there was a squealing puppy and sorry, but also a placenta, on our living room floor. Lucy was in her kennel looking like, "What are you going to do about THAT?!" By 8:00 p.m. Monday we had 8 puppies, 7 black and 1 brown. Crazy!

I wish I had chronicled the next 47 days, which consisted of a lot of trips outside, introducing the puppies to mush, later feeding them every 4 hours and the countless visits from neighbors and passers-by who wanted to play with the puppies.

The puppies are now 11 weeks and 1 day old and we kept 2, Percy (the brown one) and Winston and of course we have Lucy! I started out saying we would not keep ANY puppies, gave in with Percy pretty quickly, but Winston was the one Steve really wanted and when his family had to change their minds about adopting him, he became ours.

So we went from no dogs to 3 in less than 3 months. And of course, we still have Jada, the cat, who has quickly learned to show them all that she is the queen!