Six Puppies

As we were about to turn into our driveway coming home from church the other day, we saw a couple of puppies in the middle of the county road.

So we had to stop and investigate.

The puppies ran off into the woods onto our property so we followed them and their little barking, and found more puppies. In all, we found six, yes SIX, puppies back in the woods.

At this point it occurred to us that the strange noises we'd heard the day before out toward that direction had been the puppies. Then I remembered there had been the sound of a vehicle idling, just out of sight, in that same area the day before. And our dogs had been barking all day at something in the woods we couldn't see. It all finally added up to the fact that someone had dumped a litter of puppies on our property.

Puppies are so cute. It's hard to believe that someone, a human person, would have the heart to dump them off out on a country road. It's heartless.

We gathered them all up and put them in the back of the car to get them to the house, afraid they might run further into the woods if we left and came back. We put them in a box, and later moved them to the empty chicken tractor. They were hungry, thirsty, wet, and cold. So we fed them and they climbed over each other to eat.

It looked as if the parents had been a border collie and a pit bull, based on the look of the puppies.

To add to our little problem, Guv'nor and I were leaving the next day for a "fortnight holiday" in England. So the pressure was on to deal with them quickly.

Monday morning I phoned around and found that the local animal shelter was open and would take the puppies. When I took them later, I had to pay a fee for their services. Luckily they gave me the "litter" rate of $75 (instead of the individual animal rate of $30).

The fact that dogs are regularly dumped out in the country angers me on several levels.