Angel's Story
A Lesson In Fostering From The Heart (continued)

In the middle of this chaos I was moved to bury the puppies that lay in my garage. I wanted to make sure that their bodies were given the respect and love they should have had from the start. I selected the soccer complex behind my house as their resting-place. This place represents families for me and I envisioned these puppies sitting watching the families with happiness.

As I began to dig I heard jingling behind me, I turned and there in the distance was a Golden! Too far to see exactly what he was doing I stopped and watched as he approached. From another direction came another Golden and then a third! As I watched from the thicket I saw a family walking by playing ball with their Goldens. This image represented everything I had hoped for these puppies and it sent me into shock as I stood there.

By late afternoon Star was struggling and not as fussy. I was keeping her warm wrapped in the heating pad, feeding didn't seem to help.

By 7 pm I called Sandra in tears as I watched Star leave us. She struggled on my kitchen table for hours, all I could do was hold her and kiss her. I read her Dog Heaven and told her that she would be among friends and family and someday she would be back to have what every puppy should have--a home where they know nothing but love!

In the end I buried four babies in the soccer field; I had lost half the litter to something I could not control.

The four remaining puppies seemed to be struggling but were surviving. They were all warming up and eating as much as they could.

For the first time I got Angel to lie down and she peacefully slept with her head on my lap for an hour. She seemed to realize that she had nothing to fear with me and I was as much her mother as I was surrogate to her babies. Her fever was coming under control with antibiotics and the hook and whipworms were being treated to help her produce more food for the puppies and nutrition for her frail body.

We were still tube feeding Holly because she was having trouble getting enough to eat. Angel was running out of milk and the big one, Noel would push the others out of the way to eat. Holly often whimpered and made growling noises and we found that feeding her once or twice a day was helping.

At 10 days we were feeding bottles to Holly and Cindylu (Lulu), while Noel and Ivy were growing at enormous rates!

Angel was very good with them. She cleaned, nursed, slept and started to look like she was gaining some strength. She would go outside for potty breaks and run back to our house the minute she was done. Her desire to be with us started to show when we would close the door to the nursery and she would whimper, whine and bark.

I spent early morning hours feeding and loving everyone in that room everyday even though my own exhaustion had set in. The puppies were moving and at 2 am my husband had to build a make shift whelping bed to contain our little night crawlers.

The next day he went to Lowe's and bought some 8-inch wide boards and built them a more solid whelping bed that fit around their foam pad and blankets. He had thought it out carefully and doved each corner together so that the puppies would have no rough edges or the chance for their paws to slip between the cracks. This would remain their home for the next 2 weeks.

At the end of 3 weeks they had outgrown their whelping bed and we moved them from the bathroom to my office and placed the puppies in a kiddie pool with their comfortable well-washed blankets. Their eyes were open and they began to make dog noises instead of the infant puppy noises. Their faces began to change and look individual, and their personalities were forming very rapidly.

MORE of ANGEL'S STORY....