Lana’s Pups

 

Lana came to us about a year after she was born. She was a daughter of Joy, and therefore a niece of Pat.  After being on the east coast, she was sold to a couple of different homes without any success of finding her place in this world. She is a lovely dog, but you could sense that she felt disconnected as she really hadn’t found a permanent home.

Pat loved puppies, whether they were her puppies or from someone else. One year when I had a friend visiting with her Jack Russell bitch and newborn pups, I found Pat stealing the puppies and taking them to the living room where she could care for them. When I was working on the newborn pups, I always had to put Pat outside as she became nervous if she heard them cry or scream and she would shake until they had calmed down.

When Lana had a litter of puppies, Pat became quite excited. She always loved to check out the puppies and make sure that their mother was doing a proper job. Lana was a good mother, but as time wore on, she became less enthused about being crated with her pups. She like them, but really didn’t like the confinement of the crate.

So when Lana came in from her exercise, she would avoid going back to her pups. Pat immediately took this as a cue to step in. She ran into the crate and settled herself down with the entire litter. She clean and bathed each one, and made herself available to their needs. She couldn’t nurse them of course, but she would lay down with them and be happy to be with them for hours at a time.

At the time, Pat had been diagnosed with Diabetes. She was a bit unstable with the disease, and of course I was concerned about her health. When she wanted to be with the pups, you could tell that when she was with them, her needs were being met. I might have forced her away from the pups if she hadn’t been sick, but with her new role, you could tell that she was truly happy and that her sickness was not a factor. 

We let her have a large role in that litter. When the pups were put outside, we let Pat stay with them at night to keep them warm and toasty. She continued to clean and bathe them through their puppy hood…until they were ready to go to their new homes.

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