Thursday November 12th, as I was leaving to go to the airport, I saw a skinny Boston terrier standing by the side of the road near my house, who looked like she was nursing puppies. I was late so I couldn’t stop but wanted to find the dog and at least give her food. I didn’t see her again that day, but the next day when my brother and sister-in-law, and I went for a walk, we saw the dog again and she came to us. She was obviously starving and exhausted, and had no milk, so we figured her puppies had died. We took her home and fed her, then went to buy dog food and a crate, and other necessities.
Friday we spent awhile trying to find her puppies, but it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. With feeding, she was producing milk and was very uncomfortable. She also was unreliably housebroken, making me happy I was already saving up money to get the rugs taken out and wood floors put in.
Then the story gets more complicated. The dog, who we call Dixie, got loose Saturday night and ran off down the road to a house on the next road up from us. My sister-in-law and I followed her and caught her eating food scraps that had obviously been left out for her. We took her back home but decided we had best take her to the house the next day to see what they knew. We took her to the house this morning and knocked but no one answered. Then we heard puppies. They were under the shed behind the house. I pulled them out from under the shed - there were 4 - and they were big, healthy, and hungry. A man came out of the house right about then and said he had found the dog by the road in Monticello, where he works. The house was his Mom's, who was moving. He was living with her and helping her move. He said the dog had pups 2 days after he brought her home - she had 5 but one died - but she wouldn't stay with them and kept wandering. Of course, she was starving! He wasn't feeding her enough or the right kind of food. He said he couldn't care for her (no kidding) so we took her and the four puppies back home.
Since then the traveling vet has come out to check everyone over, and except for a bad case of intestinal worms, all were healthy.
