And then there were five. Dag, Winter...

The family, as it once was. From left to right: Rusty, Sam, Panchita, Sasha, Benny, Duncan, Winter.
June 19, 2016.
Only three of them are left today. 

When she came to us, the whole lower half of her body — from her waist to the toes of her hind legs — was completely bald. Her tail was a mess of scabs and patches of long, matted hairs. Of course, no one in the building wanted to pet her, or even feed her; unlike the other occasional strays that had wandered onto the company's parking lot lately, most of them recently abandoned and still looking good, no one wanted to encourage this raggedy mutt to stay.

Winter at the Amicorp building, August 26, 2010.
(Note that I framed the photo just so, in order to avoid showing her bald half. I posted this on Facebook that evening, captioned as "I need a home." Nope, no one was interested.)

So, on the evening of September 13th, having witnessed one more disgusted cringe at these intensely eager brown eyes, I let heart overcome reason and brought her home. She needed no encouragement to climb into the car; I opened the rear and called her ("Baby", or "doggie", or some such; she was still nameless then), patting the seat, and she jumped right in. 

Temporary, I repeated to myself as I drove. We'll get her healthy, and in a few months she'll be ready for a forever home. Once her hair grows back — her skin issues, as unsightly as they might seem to the untrained eye, probably weren't all that serious — people would see what I already knew, that this was a gorgeous dog, remarkably smart and with a sparkling personality, who would make a family somewhere immensely happy. All she needs is a few weeks of good food, good shampoo, good meds. 

After all, wasn't this the very reason why we had, just a few months before, bought our own house? So that we could provide a safe haven for dogs without pesky landlords giving us the evil eye? Yes. Yes, it was. 

She was mostly healthy; no heartworm, thank the dog gods, just a bit of tick fever, and the skin problem turned out to be a flea allergy — anti-flea shampoo was all she'd need to get rid of those. But it took months for her fur to grow back. Even three years later, her back end was still kind of scraggly. 

Winter (with Duncan and Rusty making faces) at the doggy beach in Jan Thiel, August 2013 — three years after she came to live with us. You can see how thin her fur was still then.

And by then, well, we were attached.

She was a difficult dog. A larger-than-life personality. And stubborn to match. She was the most aggressive of our dogs — up to that point, anyway. She bit the gardener once. She hated strangers. Taking her to the vet was an exercise in saintly patience. She bullied other dogs, stole food, even provoked a reactive and highly aggressive pitbull at the beach one day. (And barely escaped with her life. Did she learn from it? No, she walked away from that one — after the owner had managed to restrain her dog; I, of course, was useless — with head held high, ears perked up happily, and with a look in her eye that said, "Ha. You should see the other guy.") 

Winter at St. Joris with Benny and Jopie, November 28, 2017. This was the spot where that Pitbull encounter happened. Might even have been this same day.

She was better off here, with us, where she wasn't judged, or punished; where she'd be loved anyway, in spite of her misbehaviour — maybe even because of it. And she seemed to fit in the pack, somehow; Panchita, always the Alpha, seemed to know how to make her authority stand even for Winter. And Rusty, always calm and playful, became Winter's favorite sidekick. 

We didn't know how old she was. Throughout those first months of frequent vet visits, we came to the conclusion, based on her general health, that she must be around 5. She had obviously had several litters of puppies — who knows what happened to them — and her teeth were in terrible, terrible shape. A few were missing already, and several others so damaged they needed to be extracted. She probably has another five years, we were told. 

On the front porch, October 27, 2016. Clockwise, starting from bottom left:
Benny, Rusty, Winter, Sasha, Panchita, me.

Five years passed, and she was still going strong. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done. After another three, she started showing only faint signs of age. A bit of stiffness in the joints after walks, some more teeth that went missing or had to be taken out. And we suspected she might be losing her eyesight somewhat. But she was still feisty, full of life, and stiff joints or not, she still seemed to believe the world was hers and the rest of us just lived in it.

And then, about 2 years ago, Rusty had a seizure — and a week later, Winter had a suspiciously similar one. We did all the tests (the ones available here on this island), but couldn't find a cause. No damage done, it seemed; they were both fine afterwards, as happy and healthy as before. Phew, we thought, having no idea that it was the beginning of the end. 

The last time — according to photo record, anyway — that Rusty and Winter managed a hike.
St. Joris, May 2019.

Back in June this year, kidney failure was determined. For both of them. Rusty's was acute, but Winter's wasn't quite so bad, so we hoped — especially after Rusty declined so fast, and we had to put her down in July — that Winter would give us a few more months. Six, maybe. Maybe even a year (though the vet kind of winced at that). 

She didn't. Not because she didn't want to; she was feisty and full of life till the end. But that was her; we couldn't expect anything less. She hated weakness, and she was loath to show any herself, even when she should have. For her, it was always death or glory.

There was this one time, some five years ago, when I took her on a walk to this new beach I had heard of and wanted to find. (That's Curaçao, full of secret little coves everywhere.) I miscalculated the distance and parked way too far. We did find the beach, but by the time we started making our way back to the car, it had been over 2 hours — in the searing island heat. I was running low on water both for me and for the dogs, and we were all exhausted. 

Secret beach finding mission, November 30, 2017.
Gorgeous place, but the water was too rough for the dogs to do anything more than soak their paws in the surf. Which meant they didn't cool down much by the time we started back on the 1.5 hour hike to the car.

About halfway to the car — still about a kilometer left to go — Winter finally sat down in a scrap of shade from a thorny bush and refused to keep going. We rested for a bit, but with little shade available for the rest of us bigger folk, and with water down to the last inch in the container, the other dogs were eager to keep moving. So I picked her up and carried her. Oh, no, she was having none of that. She wriggled and bit until I put her down again. But she really just couldn't walk. So we did that dance — pick her up, struggle with her in my arms for some twenty steps, then set her down — almost all the way back. When we were close enough, maybe three hundred meters or so, I left her in a shady spot and power-walked with the other dogs to the car, then drove back to get her. Did I find her waiting? Nope. She was sauntering, at her own short-legged pace, down the blistering red earth of the path, towards us. She must have thought I was abandoning her (which broke my heart), but did she show it? Fear? Relief? Not at all. She acted like it was all good, this was the plan all along. Nothing to see here, move along. 

The car was parked at that far-off first windmill — or the last one, from the perspective the photo was taken. No shade anywhere from here on, so this is the spot where I left Winter and dashed ahead to get the car. When I drove back, she'd made it just past this clump of cacti.
November 30, 2017

That was Winter.

So, as she became more and more blind, as her body began to fail her more and more, she refused to give in. She put up a brave front, and wouldn't back down. But the joy was seeping away, and no matter how lionhearted she tried to be, things were slipping out of her control. Her bladder, for instance, demanded she go out in the middle of the night — sometimes multiple times — to empty it. With all the dogs sleeping in the bedroom with us, and with her poor eyesight, that caused problems. After waking up to a few skirmishes (and a few puddles on the floor), we decided she was better off sleeping out in the hallway. She seemed fine with that — the hallway had become her safe spot during the day, too. But, as months went by, that hallway became her whole life. We noticed she was going outside less and less, and often requiring assistance to navigate the other dogs lying along the way to the patio door. In a combination of her loss of sight and the kidney failure, she was becoming more and more disoriented, more and more prone to bump into another dog — and, if this was Benny, for instance, or Jopie, the consequences could be painful. 

So it became a self-fulfilling prophecy: she was afraid of going outside, so the other dogs saw her less and less, and would attack her more, so she became more afraid and went out less. In the end, she slept maybe 22 hours a day. She flinched every time another dog passed by. She couldn't find her way to the patio. She couldn't negotiate the three steps on the front porch. Her hips weren't cooperating. Her eyes weren't, either. 

Was she in pain? Maybe. We wouldn't know it, because she wouldn't show it. But, after discussing all these symptoms with the vet, we agreed that she was definitely living in fear if not pain. And, inescapably, we grudgingly came to the conclusion that had been staring us in the face: her time had come. If we waited for her to show real feebleness, then we'd have waited too long: she was simply too plucky, too unshrinking, to do that. It was up to us to stop her suffering before it became so intense that she simply couldn't hide it any longer.

And so we did.

Rest easy, beautiful girl.

Grief is the price we pay for love, so we're doing our best to embrace it, to celebrate her life and, in gratitude for the time she gave us, cherish the hole she leaves behind. She was the last of our first generation of dogs: Panchita, Frida, Rusty, and now Winter are all gone. Each of them taught us so, so much. Each of them changed our lives in ways we never even considered possible. They put up with our ignorance, patiently repeated the lesson again and again until we learned it. Their love was pure and unconditional, and we barely deserved it — but, by the time they began to leave us, they had prepared us enough to deserve the love of the other four-legged bundles of joy they left behind to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Dag, Winter. Maybe we loved you "in spite of" — but you loved us "in spite of", too, I think. Thank you so, so much for that.

Book, Tour, Dogs, and Gratitude for Everything #GratitudeCircle

Release day came and went, and it's been so hectic that I haven't even had time (or energy) to post an update. Vidya's Gratitude Circle linky for April is still open, and I've been wanting to join that hop since forever—and right now there is so, so much to be grateful for, especially this month, so I'm going to combine both.

First, one of our dogs, Panchita, had surgery last week and is healing marvelously. Some three years ago she was diagnosed with skin cancer, so two or three times a year the vet removes whatever growths she's sprouted in the hopes of preventing them from metastasizing. She's on the elderly side, though (turning 13 this year), which means that any surgical procedure, especially with general anaesthesia, is a risk. This is why we celebrate her coming through each surgery like it's 1999.

Panchita. Still going strong at 13.

The Thing About Goodbyes...

In the predawn hours of Thursday, July 27th, our little Sasha died. Tiny Sasha, scared and shy Sasha, big-brown-eyed Sasha, fluffy toy-sized Sasha. I've been unable to write about it—hence the hiatus in posts. This is the fifth attempt at a draft, and quite honestly I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this time, either. Yes, of course it was my fault—isn't it always?—but I don't think that's the reason I find this so hard. Or not all of the reason. Maybe it has to do with the impossibility of quantifying loss. In a weird way, paying tribute to her like this, by writing about her death, by "announcing" it, so to speak, so publicly, feels like a lie. There is no way that the huge ways her little self impacted our lives can be translated into words. No way that I can capture the joy she gave us, the bottomless pit her absence left behind... No way I can do any of it justice.

But I must write about it. Until I do, I can write nothing else. Not on this blog, not (really) on the other one, not in my notebooks, not in my journal, not even a short story. I can't, no, because what happened to her left not just a hollow emptiness in the house, in the family, but also wreaked indelible, irreversible change on those of us still here. Powerful lessons that need to be assimilated. Learning on managing the ways our dogs relate to one another, and even to me. Observation skills that need to be developed. So, so much learning. And all of it needs to be processed and mulled over and, eventually, written—

But I cannot write about this, either. That is where every previous draft has fallen short. Fallen flat. Fallen away from the intention I set out to achieve, without ever taking the trouble to define it, even to myself. Every word I write, that is not about Sasha, feels like I am moving away from her. Every word I have written, that is about Sasha, feels like I'm reducing her death into a lesson, something practical and mundane. Every word I write, about or not about Sasha, has felt like I'm leaving her behind—without saying goodbye.

That is the intention I had, when I began that first draft two days after she died. That was the purpose. But in telling the story of her death, in explaining the hows and the whens and the (stupid, stupid) mistakes that led to it, the Goodbye fell further and further behind, until it shimmered so distant in the rear view mirror of the words as the mirage of water on a hot summer highway at noon.

Here it is, then. Goodbye, little Sasha. I did love you, much, much more than I was able to convey to you. And I'm glad you came to our lives, and to our house. I'm glad we didn't give you away back then. Maybe you would have lived longer if we had, so it's selfish of me to say this, but I really am glad you stayed.

So, we'll go no more a roving
   So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
   And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
   And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
   And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
   And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
   By the light of the moon.

(So We'll Go No More A-Roving, Lord Byron)

If a Dog Was Your Teacher...

Posted at the Lessons Taught By Life page on Facebook. It echoed so much of my Lessons In Life From Dogs series for the April Challenge in 2014 that I simply had to share.

The secret, not just to happiness but to fulfillment and serenity? Be more dog.

And so it begins, this year 2017...

I hope you had the most wonderful beginning to the new year. May 2017 bring you naught but positivity and hope. (I know, for all us progressive, liberal types hope seems a tad out of reach, but remember all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. It's easy to feel hopeful when things are going well; it is in dark times, though, when the light of hope is most needed. Keep the flame burning.)

I'm sorry for my absence. I haven't posted for over a month, and haven't written a serious post since the A to Z Challenge ended. And I'm sorry about that. You deserve better—and there's been plenty to write about, just... not enough time to do it, I guess. Speaking of time, I won't be joining the Challenge this year, by the way... A multitude of reasons, but mainly because the rescue book—the one that began in said A to Z Challenge—will be coming out within the next couple of months, and promoting that will probably overlap with April in some way.

The cover for the rescue book. Photo by yours truly (yes, that's Sam),
and design by Matt Potter, publisher extraordinaire at Truth Serum Press.

A shame, really. I had a theme all planned out. The A to Z of Fostering Rescue Dogs, ha. A good follow-up to the Rescue posts of last year (and my publisher wants to work on a follow-up book, too, so... two birds, one stone, all that). In October I got involved in fostering again—which is part of the reason I've been so freaking busy. I'd been unable to foster since 2013 because three of my own dogs have 'issues' with new dogs, but... Well, the way things worked out, we didn't get much of a choice. (More on that later.) But, hey—perfect, right? I mean, this is all fresh material that will bring the whole fostering thing much more alive for strangers to the 'craft'...  Yes, I'd have had some excellent A to Z posts. And I still plan on writing them, and certainly on writing the Fostering book, but... No, it won't happen this April.

I may do something in April anyway, just to avoid losing the habit, but it won't be an alphabet thing. I'm thinking maybe a music thing. Maybe on the other blog. I saw this 30-day music challenge on Tumblr a while back and, with some tweaks (additions, deletions, combinations, etc.), it might be fun. Maybe, if you're not an A-to-Z-er yourself (and if you love music), you might want to join me. We'll be the rogue April Challengers—ha!

Anyway. I wanted to keep this short, but I promise to be back soon—like, within the week—to tell you about these fosters we've had. The first was a little Chihuahua mix that seemed to have some severe neurological issues; so severe, in fact, that he had us (heartbreakingly) convinced the kindest thing we could do was put him down and end his suffering. Then, a month later, he went to the best of the best forever homes—and we got a litter of five puppies, about 6 weeks old, who'd been abandoned in a plastic carry-all on the side of the road to die. One did, in fact, in my arms two weeks later, but the other four are doing great. The week before Christmas—the day of the winter solstice, actually (which I found beautifully coincidental)—they were declared healthy enough to receive their first vaccination.

The puppies! Clockwise from top left: Bowie (F), Jopie (M), Lemmy (M), Harper (F).

So. More on the foster stories, puppies and Chihuahua, coming soon. I promise. One of my resolutions for 2017 is to never abandon this blog (or the other one) for more than 2 weeks. Yes, you can hold me to that :)

Thanks for sticking with me, y'all.

Because Nothing Connects Us With The Good Like A Puppy Coming Home

I don't know about you, but I needed this.

Your Feel-Good for the Day. Or the Week.

How cool is this?

High school cross-country team take shelter dogs out for a run. Read the story here, and watch the video the team's coach (and mastermind behind the whole idea) posted on Facebook.

Kudos, St. Joseph High School. Here's to more kids (and adults, and schools, and offices, and... well, people) following your example.

"My Dog Has A Job?" — Guest Post by Lynne Hinkey (@LMHinkey)

Lynne Hinkey is a marine scientist by training, a writer by passion, and a curmudgeon by nature. An Olympic-caliber procrastinator, she honed her skill through years of practice and dedication to life on island-time. She uses her experiences living in the Caribbean to infuse her novels with tropical magic, from the siren call of the islands to the terror and hysteria caused by the mysterious chupacabra. 

P.S. from Guilie: And she *loves* dogs.

The Story of Little Leo (and How He Adopted Us) — Guest Post by Susan Brody @unpubYA

It all started when cancer took our beloved Murphy from us in February. He wasn't quite 11 years old.

Murphy & me

We'd had three months of warning that this was coming. In November, he had collapsed. I was the only one home. I scooped him up and drove like a lunatic to the vet. The vet did a sonogram and showed me the unmistakable outline of the large tumor on his spleen. He could probably save him this time, the vet told me, but it would only be a matter of weeks or months until the tumor ruptured and no one would be able to save him. Every day from here on in would be a gift.

The vet did save him that time, and then performed the same miracle once again in December. But in January Murphy began steadily losing weight and becoming weaker, despite his six daily medications. When he collapsed again on February 6th, we knew it was the end. Despite all the time we'd had to prepare, once he was gone no one in my family could imagine what we would do without him.

But we still had another dog at home that we had to take care of: 8-year-old Finney, our younger Goldendoodle, who from the age of 8 weeks had never known life without Murphy. And, unlike us, he didn't understand what had happened.

Finney (left) and Murphy

A to Z of #Dog Rescue: FAQ No. 2 — #atozchallenge

(Missed Part I?)

Why are there so many more women than men involved in rescuing?
Like most preconceived notions about rescue, this one's part myth and part truth. As you've seen from the videos I've posted, plenty of men are involved in rescue—and they're darn good at it. But—and this is a fact—many dogs respond better to women strangers than men strangers. Maybe it's the voice (higher pitch vs. lower). Maybe it's the perceived dominance of a male scent. Maybe it's hormones. I don't know.


Why are stray dogs so often in such bad health? Are they predisposed to some illnesses? 

No. Ferals, especially, tend to be stronger and better equipped to fight off disease. (It’s natural selection at work; only the stronger genes survive.) 

Why, then, are so many homeless dogs rescued in such terrible states? Three reasons:

1. They’re exposed to more
2. They don’t get any preventive care
3. Their diet is anything but balanced, which causes deficiencies in their immune system

A-Z of #Dog Rescue: The Dog Rescuer's Kit — #AtoZChallenge

No, nothing so dramatic. (I know. I was excited about the helicopter ride, too.) The truth is you don't require much to rescue a dog. In an emergency, all you'll need are your hands and a halfway working brain. (And none of the items below will be much use if you don't have those.)

A-Z of #Dog Rescue: Health Issues — #AtoZChallenge

You don’t need a degree in veterinary medicine to rescue a dog. But, whether by choice or necessity, you’ll end up learning at least the basics of canine health. 

This is what you’ll most likely come across:

#atozchallenge Prep Post: Dog Rescue FAQ

This is an #AtoZChallenge prep post, an introduction to the April series

The A to Z of #Dog Rescuing.

So what, exactly, is dog rescue?

#atozchallenge 2016 Theme Reveal: The A to Z of #Dog Rescuing

There are so many misconceptions about rescuing. So, so many...

The truth is that most people don't know what rescuing really is. Or what it takes. (Or what it gives.) And most rescuers rarely talk about it. After all, most of us prefer animals over people.

The dog beach!

Found this on YouTube... It's a video of our (my and the pack's) favorite beach. No, sadly no dogs in the video...

How Pélagie Solak Became The Crazy Dog Lady — The Lost & Found hop

Then he says, in what might be a Guinness Record for Most Awkward Change of Subject: "You never told me how you got involved in dog rescuing."
     "You mean how I became the crazy dog lady?" She grins, blows at the surface so the water ripples. "Don't apologize. Living with eighteen dogs qualifies me, I think. I'm even proud of it, which makes it so much more dysfunctional."
     He laughs, and when she looks at him, the smoldering sunset lights her face like sun through stained glass.
     "You really want to know?"
     "I really do."
     "It's a long story. And corny. Maudlin."
     "I like maudlin." A lie, but it sounds convincing. Good lawyer, good boy. Or maybe it's not a lie. Because Luis is discovering he's fallen in love.

~ When The Sunset, The Miracle of Small Things

Pélagie Solak tells her story, of how she became "the crazy dog lady" (her words, not ours), to the book's protagonist, Luis Villalobos, off-stage—or is it off-page? Off-book? Either way, I thought the Lost & Found hop was a great excuse to share it—and to do it here, on the Dog Blog.

(It's not as long as Pélagie thinks, by the way. Funny how our own stories always seem longer and more convoluted to tell than others', eh? Plus... we can only guess at the version she tells Luis. This is, however, how it began.)

The homeless & their pets... And the organization that wants to help.

Every person, whether two- or four-legged, needs a home. But for four-legged ones, "home" is—quite literally—where the human is. And what if your human doesn't have a home of his/her own?

Photo source: Bark Post

You see them often, everywhere. Homeless people with animals. What little they have, they share with that dog or cat (or bird, or...). Often they'll go without food themselves in order to feed their companion. It's not an ideal situation for either of them, but it still warms my heart to see it: these bonds of love between two homeless beings. How wonderful that hey've found each other. That generosity of spirit exists even in the most desperate of circumstances: in the human with nothing, in the animal who's been abandoned and mistreated and has no reason to trust a single human being ever again.

Photo source: Bark Post

As generous as the homeless human may be, however—as willing as s/he may be to sacrifice him/herself in order to provide for the animal (who, by the way, is even more helpless than the human)—there are things that will be forever out of reach.

Affording a vet, for instance.

Photo source: Bark Post

I can't imagine anything more desperate than seeing one of my dogs hurt or sick and not being able to take them to the vet. These dogs (and cats) of the homeless live on the streets; they're exposed not just to the elements but to human cruelty. They can be hit by a car. They can eat poisoned food. They can get kicked, or punched, or stabbed—and their human can do very little to protect them. Besides, they're not getting yearly vaccines. Or a balanced diet. Or tick- and flea-prevention tablets. Or deworming. Or HeartGard.

Look at this man. His face is full of love. He'd be heartbroken if something happened to his dog... Especially if it was something that could've been prevented with just a little bit of cash.

Photo source: Bark Post

Pets of the Homeless is an organization that understands this and wants to help. They feed and provide emergency veterinary care for animals whose humans are homeless.

Yes, of course the ideal thing is to eliminate homelessness completely—for humans and animals. But that's not going to happen any time soon. Meanwhile, these pets need help that their humans—who love them as much as you love yours, if not even more—aren't, in spite of their most frantic efforts, able to provide.

Photo source: Bark Post

Kudos, Pets of the Homeless. Every nation needs an organization like this.


P.S. — If you're as touched by this story as I was, maybe you want to help. You can donate ($50 will provide food and basic vet care for 20 days!), or find other ways to participate. In the year-end spirit of giving, this seems like a beautiful way to make a difference.

Work a miracle before the year ends

As an animal rescuer and volunteer with animal welfare organizations, I'm no stranger to the cruelty humans inflict. Like one of the Animals Asia staff says in the video, it's stuff you never get used to—you just learn to put your emotions on hold in order to get the job done.

But this one... This one made me cry. For the puppy's pain, first, and then for his amazing recovery. And, especially, for his capacity for joy.

Miracles do happen. But only if you make them happen. Please donate / foster / volunteer at your local shelter or rescue organization before the end of the year. Remember these homeless and abandoned, and often mistreated, little ones when you're doing your holiday shopping... A little goes a long way for them. And no one will be more grateful.

Funny-bone Sunday

I will not stop laughing at this all day. That last line...

Happy Sunday!

Oh, by the way... I'm over at awesome Michele Truhlik's blog, Angels Bark, talking about the dangers of animal advocacy in fiction... And the work-around I (think I) found for writing THE MIRACLE OF SMALL THINGS. I'd love to know if you think it'll work, as well as what your experience has been in "preaching beyond the choir", so to speak, when it comes to animal welfare.

A novel in stories, a book tour in blogs

Romy's Story (Part III — Naming Puppies)

A quick recap:

In Sept 2012, a small female dog was rescued from a garbage dump on the west end of the island and we offered to foster her. She was about a year old, of the nicest temperament... even though life had thrown her its worst. Not only had she been dumped (thrown out like garbage... Really, who does that???) and had suffered hunger, but she also had tick fever (ehrlichiosis), a host of intestinal parasites, and she was heartworm-positive. A month later, we found out she was also pregnant—and, in spite of the high-risk birth due to the medication she'd been on, it was a higher risk to terminate the pregnancy. Romy—that's her name—gave birth to seven big, healthy puppies on the night of Nov. 4-5, 2012. All of them survived.
And now the challenge was to raise them properly—socialized, well-behaved, loving—so they could find excellent homes.

(You can check out the full story at Parts I and II.)

Nov 5th, 2:52 AM. Six newborn puppies.
(Unbeknownst to me, there was a seventh still to come.)

With a litter of seven pretty uniformly colored — and uniformly sized — puppies, it was hard to tell them apart.

Now, Romy's wasn't my first birth. I've seen my share. And usually, even with uniform coloring, you can keep track by how dry their fur is, or at the very least by size.

But this time, as soon as Puppy #2 came out, I was clueless. In the end, we had four black ones, three dark-brown, and among them the only ones I could identify were The Girl (only one female in the litter), and a black male who was born with a short tail. (I'd never seen that happen, by the way. I didn't even think it was possible.)

Nov. 11th, 2012
Romy handling motherhood like a boss.

Nap time!
(See the puppy with her head hanging out of the basket?
Yep. That's The Girl.)

Both of these, though — The Girl and Short-Tail — were black. Two other black ones, and all three brown ones, remained interchangeable for at least the first week. Maybe even the full ten days until they opened their eyes. They grew at the same rate, they seemed to have the same amount of energy, and exhibited the same apparent dominance in fighting for a teat or for the 'top of the pile' sleeping spot.

Except for The Girl; from the first, she was the Alpha of the litter, undisputed.

But going on a week later, it got easier to tell some of these babies apart. Mr. Short-Tail also had a white streak on his nose, and a thunderbolt down his chest. The Girl grew brown eyebrows and socks, kind of Rottweiler-ish. Of the brown batch, previously unidentifiable, one developed a white spot on a hind paw. Just the tip of the toes, like his foot had been dipped ever so daintily in white paint.

Remember this. It will change lives.

Sixteen days after they were born, we caught said white-paint-toe-dipped puppy on camera, exploring the world...

Not long after, the den had become too small for them. I started bringing them out to the patio for an hour or two at a time.

The first patio incursion, Dec 2, 2012.
The puppies were 3 days short of a month old.

And, because they were so big—and growing bigger by the day, almost by the hour—and because Momma Romy was so small and so skinny, we started giving them puppy formula to 1) supplement their nourishment and 2) begin the weaning process.

Dec. 4, 2012
"What's this? Milk not in a boob?"

You can see how quickly they took to the formula. And you can tell they were no longer unidentifiable. Our once-interchangeable puppies were becoming little individuals... And it was time to give them names.

The first one, perhaps the easiest one, was The Girl. From very early on, I started calling her Nena, which is "baby girl" in Spanish. (So sue me for lack of creativity.)

Meet Nena (aka The Girl). Looks like a little Rottweiler, doesn't she?
Dec 12, 2012

Another easy one was Bunny—Mr. Short-Tail with the white streaks on nose and chest.

Bunny, Dec 12, 2012

The others took a bit more thinking, but eventually I came up with names:

Sam
(Dec 12, 2012)

Zorro
(Dec 11, 2012)

Two of the brown puppies were getting lighter, and seemed to have shorter, less furry hair than the others. And, dammit, they looked like twins. I named them, but for another month or so, I wouldn't be able able to tell them apart unless I had them both in front of me. Look at them:

The twins, Benny and Dennis, Dec 12, 2012

There was another pair of quasi-twins, but I never had any trouble telling those two apart. You see, one of them was that wandering puppy, the one with the white-paint-dipped toe (although, by then, a few others had developed white toes). And I was smitten.

Duncan
(Dec 12, 2012)

Duncan and Sam were very, very close in coloring. In the photos above, the one on the upper right has Duncan sleeping in the foreground and Sam behind him. You can see the similarities... But Duncan was lighter than Sam. And, besides the white-tipped right hind toe (you can see it in the bottom right photo, if you look closely), Duncan also had that white star on his chest. And a white-tipped chin. And... I don't know, we had a bond. From the day he could see me and interact with me, something passed between us. He was my dog, and I was his human. Period.

Sam (left) and Duncan (right), playing in the patio.
Dec 12, 2012

Except, of course, we already had more dogs than we ever expected, or could handle. Aside from our own canines (Panchita, Rusty, Sasha, and Winter), in Dec 2012 we were fostering another dog, Blondie, who wouldn't get adopted any time soon (she'll get her own post soon and I'll explain)... And five dogs were already way, way far beyond the limit of 3 we'd agreed on as a family.

So I said nothing about Duncan. I kept this thing between us to myself. I thought, life will sort it out. Maybe when we got adoption applications, the perfect family would come up. Maybe this attachment I felt was just puppy love (literally), and I'd grow out of it. Maybe... Or maybe not.

To Be Continued