It’s Moondai and I, jtg, will be ur special guest Peep riter twodai, and I am going to tell you the tail of my special Furkids, Delight Doggg and her wild 0puppers.
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Delight came to me during a dark period of my life.
My father had died about a year previously followed a few months later by the passing of my 18-year-old York Tzu dog Norman. Norman’s mother Lindsey was a Shih Tzu and his daddy was a Yorkshire Terrier named Randy and ergo Norman and his siblings I called “York Tzus”. After a night of increasingly severe seizures in my arms, I took Norman to a vet and, as I was looking in his eyes so that I would be the last thing he saw, Norman passed over the rainbow bridge.
The death of Norman, coming as it did only a few months after my father’s death, was very traumatic to me and hit me very hard. For the first time in my life, I did not have a dog. I had my two cats, Anubis and Apophis, and I love them dearly and they both are very obnoxiously affectionate, but I missed having a dog.
I had been Dad’s caregiver for fifteen years prior to Dad’s passing, and he had been my caregiver after my diagnosis and surgery for colon cancer. I had been diagnosed with cancer only a few weeks after my Mother’s from lung cancer. In all those years, Dad and I had been constant features in each other’s lives, and when we weren’t actually together, we would call the other on the phone to check in. In those days following the loss of Dad and then Norman, I was often overwhelmed with grief and anxiety and I often would breakdown and cry which would lure my pooties Anubis Apophis to come over and cuddle and rub their faces against mine.
I had trouble finding employment following Dad’s death and eventually had to take what I now call the worst job of my life, working the graveyard shift at a local AM/PM. I later learned that on my first day of training, the owner happened to be at the site and told the local manager to fire me because he “didn’t want any fat guys” working for him. Fortunately, the manager stood up to him and did not fire me. I was often alone at night and even so, I was forced to stand for hours at a time without sitting. The whole place was full of cameras and I understand that the owner, who lived about 50 miles away and had dozens of stations, often looked in via those cameras and one night saw me sitting behind the counter and issued a command to the local manager to instruct me NOT TO SIT during my shift, even if I was alone with no customers in the shop. The constant standing for up to six hours at a stretch resulted in my feet swelling and I developed an infection that resulted in a partial amputation on my right foot.
This darkness in my life became more intense as I spent two weeks in the hospital wondering how long it would be before I was homeless. Then when I came home, as I walked up to the front porch, there was a little puppy. I grabbed the little critter and took it inside. I took the puppy to a vet and there was no chip in it and it had no collar nor nametag. I walked the neighborhood and I ended up adopting her. I named her Delight after one of my ancestors, Delight Otis, born in 1708 in Boston, Massachusettes.
Delight got along with my kitties, Apophis and Anubis.
Delight quickly made herself at home. She became a playful and energetic puppy who was the center of attention all the time and brought some light into my then very dark life.
Unfortunately a few months after rescuing Delight, she got very sick. She was not eating and I thought maybe she had swallowed some stuffing from a pillow she had torn to pieces and had an intestinal blockage. I was very poor at the time, having just gotten out of the hospital, so in desperation, I set up a GoFundMe to cover vet bills, and I took her to a vet. The diagnosis was Parvo, a disease that is both painful and often fatal without treatment. From the vet’s office, I posted the diagnosis as I waited for the vet to determine what the treatment options were, but they would be expensive. I was very sad about the possibilities of losing my baby so soon after finding her. I was afraid I would not be able to afford to do the treatments, as I was wondering how I would even pay my living costs, and I was literally within minutes of telling the vet to put Delight down when my phone dinged with a notice that enough had been contributed to the GoFundMe to do the first treatment, and that saved Delight’s life.
At the suggestion of some people, I reduced some of the cost of treatments by doing the fluids myself. I called it an IV in the video, but the needle didn’t go into her vein but under the skin on her back. This was not pleasant for either of us as it was difficult to hold down a wiggling puppy while sticking a needle in her back.
After being VERY sick, Delight eventually recovered and became again the wild and happy puppy she’d been before.
When Delight was about a year old, there was a windstorm that blew down all the fences. The boy dog next door got with Delight, and they made puppy love, and Delight got preggers.
As Delight got bigger and closer to giving birth, I became very anxious that she would give birth while I was not home. By that time, I had begun working as a substitute teacher, and I was also teaching NASA Science classes on Saturdays. I would rush home as soon as possible after getting off in fear that Delight would give birth while I was away.
As it happened, she gave birth late one Saturday night. I had her in a box on my bed and I and Apophis were by her side. Apophis was there for the whole event, and he kept looking in on her as she was in labor.
Delight was in labor for a long time, and I was getting worried. In fact, I was literally looking up emergency all-night vets when the first puppy came out, whom I later named Dorcas Delightsdotter.
Dorcas came out and dangled by the cord with the afterbirth inside Delight for several minutes. Suddenly Delight lept out of the box and off the bed with newborn Dorcas bouncing behind her. I managed to catch Delight before she ran out of the bedroom and out the open back door. If she’d gotten into the yard and dropped the afterbirth outside in the overgrown back yard at night, I probably would not have found the newborn puppy and it would have likely died.
I held onto Delight tightly and closed the back door and the birth order proceeded.
The video below is of Delight’s birth of Dorcas. The second puppy came out with a white marking in the shape of a “2”, which was a funny coincidence. since a “2” and a “Z” are similar in shape, I named her Zorrita.
Puppies three and four came later. After Zorrita, I’d been with Delight for several hours, so I took a brief bathroom break, and when I came back, Delight had lept out of the box and had two more puppies in my bedding. Those two puppies I later named Fenris and Brunhilda.
Delight and her son Fenris loved to play
At first, I was going to try to find homes for some of the puppies. However, the owners of the daddy dog, Boots, were deadbeat dog owners who did not want anything to do with the puppies, not in adopting any of them, nor in helping with their care nor help in finding them homes. I kept intending to find them homes, but I kept putting it off as they were so adorable and they were small, and I ended up keeping all of them, and I intend to do so as long as I can, which I hope will be their whole life, as long as I don't wind up homeless myself someday, something that is not yet out of the question if my life goes wrong.
DELIGHT IS MISSING
When I came home a couple days ago, Delight was missing. I’d just gotten home from a day of substitute teaching at a local middle school followed by having my eyes dilated for an annual exam. I came in and sat in a chair and was covered with puppies and cats, which was normal, but I noticed Delight was nowhere to be seen, which was not normal. Usually, she was the pushiest of the pack and demands her mommy dog love up front.
I saw that the dogs had gotten into a box of chocolates which had only a couple of pieces left, and I wondered if she’d eaten them all by herself because she is a greedy eater, often pushing her puppies out of the way of food. Since chocolate is poisonous to dogs, I wondered if she were sick or dying. There was not much chocolate in the box, but she is a small dog. I looked throughout the house and got a flashlight and looked through the back yard, but no joy. I left the back door open throughout the very cold night just in case she was back there and came in.
The next morning I went outside and looked again, but she was not back there. The yard is overgrown so it’s possible she’s out there still, but if she is missing because of chocolate poisoning, Delight would be dead by now.
It’s also possible Delight somehow got out of the yard by digging under the fence somewhere or running out the front door without me seeing her, perhaps due to my dilated vision. I am hoping that is the case as she has a microchip as well as a collar with a name and address tag and I hope someone will return her, alive or dead.
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So now I can only hope.
If Delight’s dead in the back yard somewhere, it may be weeks, months, or even years before I find her, if ever. If the absence is due to chocolate poisoning, she would be dead by now.
In hopes that she somehow got out into the street, I’ve been checking the local animal shelter’s found animal website, but they are closed until Tuesday due to the holiday. I’m hoping that the nametag and chip will return Delight to me, but it’s possible that nobody will call if they decide they want to adopt her themselves. If that happens, I hope it’s a happy family.
I am going to put out flyers through the neighborhood and at local shops and vets with some of the pictures I have of her.
The energy in the house has gone down a lot. Delight was a puppy herself when she got pregnant, and she is (was) still young, and was basically a puppy herself and she was a high energy mama who played constantly when she wasn’t demanding that I love her right now! Her puppies are noticeably subdued in her absence.
I notice it a lot at night when I go to bed, as she always slept with me, either pressed up against me or, often, crawling under the blanket with me. Her absence is a huge loss.
I’ve been quite emotional about Delight being gone, feeling stupid for leaving the chocolates where the dogs could get to it, or if she got outside not being more attentive to her dashing between my legs. It’s hard not to think of Delight in the past tense, as she may be outside somewhere and may yet return.
I’ve been giving Delight’s puppies a lot of extra hugs and love this long holiday weekend, with extra treats and cuddles. I am hoping that Delight will return to me and her family.
#jtg
Post Script
I apologize for this not being a completely silly and goofy PWB diary as they usually are. When I volunteered to be a fill-in this week, I intended to do a silly theme along the lines of “Cat Party”, but I thought this would be interesting to people out there and it helps me get out my grief and frustration at losing my dear furbaby.
Next week I plan to make a diary about my kitties, Anubis, Apophis, Na’at, and some of the cats I’ve had throughout my life as well. Hopefully, I will be able to report that Delight has returned as well.