This is a sad story

This is a sad story, so best keep warm and be with someone you love - and if you’re reading this alone you’ll have to love and comfort yourself just a little bit more than usual.

A couple of weeks ago someone brought us 5 tiny puppies they’d found in some weeds. They were too young to have lost their mother, but otherwise seemed fine.

Except one of them didn’t join in the playing. She sat in the back of their den looking sad. Didn’t want to play, didn’t want to eat. So we brought her up to the house for The Treatment.

Usually we concentrate on fighting worms. But this little girl didn’t seem to have any - just very dehydrated and weak, no appetite. All she wanted was to snuggle up in someone’s arms and sleep.
 
I can’t handle the ‘force’ part of force-feeding, but Xenii has no time for resistance and is a dab hand at it. I’m pretty good at cuddling, though, so our routine consisted of feeding administered by Xenii, then a cosy snooze in my lap.

She looked funny when she came back from the vet’s. They’d shaved a part of two legs to administer the rehydration fluids, and she came back looking like she was wearing little furry leggings.

After several days of intensive care in the kitchen she was still weak and wobbly. No worms, nor any sign of sickness, and we just couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t troughing down like her sisters – now about twice her size.

Then one day we found one of her sisters lying dead. The necropsy revealed that she had choked to death. A tragic accident – or some kind of congenital malformation of the oesophagus? Might this also account for our puppy’s  reluctance to eat? And if so, what to do about it?

She had been sleeping with her sisters in the warmth and snugness of their little den, but now Xenii made her a cosy bed in a box in the bathroom, and she stayed with us. Looked like she was becoming one of the family.

The days went by and nothing much changed. The puppy started taking herself out to lie in the sun with the other dogs. She looked so frail and tiny, sleeping on the deck next to two or three of these big brutes we live with.

Yesterday she found her bark and started to use it. She sat in her day-bed and went yap yap yap until someone picked her up. And I’d been hoping she’d grow up a nice, quiet girl!

She died last night, in her sleep. She looked very peaceful lying in her bed. I thought at first she was just sleeping, but she did not respond – no kisses for me this morning – and I knew before I reached out and felt the cold body that we’d lost the fight.

We’ll bury her today in the garden graveyard – a tiny little puppy who did not have a name, and only one chance at life.