What was that? A cat? A dog?
Something small and alive hiding beneath a bondo heap parked at the curb. It had darted out and then ran back as my car approached. I made a U-turn and asked my passenger, my sister Birdy, to get out quickly and keep the little thing from running back into the street. Birdy was out of the car before I could slow down good despite the stinging cold and the run down neighborhood lining the main thoroughfare coming out of downtown Birmingham. No sound of breath or heartbeat came from the shut up houses. Midday, the sun was shining, but the cold weather kept people indoors.
I put the car into park. I opened the door and was sliding out when I turned and saw Birdy running toward the car, holding a tiny dog in her arms, close to her body. The little dirty, matted white dog had trusted a human being. Its hair was so long and matted that we could not determine if it were male or female. It stank! We thought its breed was either bichon frise or poodle. It had a large raw scrape on its neck. From where and from what had it escaped?
Using my cell phone, I called my friends at Trussville Animal Hospital to let them know we were on the way. To Trussville on I-20/59 from Birmingham would take ten to fifteen minutes depending on the traffic.
The parking lot was an ER scene. The clinic staff knew my car and was waiting. They ran with arms outstretched to receive our small passenger. My friend, CJ, reached us first. Birdy gave the little dog to CJ who ran back inside with Birdy and me following.
CJ had placed the little dog on the counter and was giving it a precursory exam. It was a toy poodle, a female. Inside her right ear on the tender pink skin is tattooed a number.
The left ear had been ripped by a cattle tag being jerked out of it.
The right hind foot is missing.
She had not made a sound and it is possible that her vocal cords have been severed. CJ and I looked at each other and nodded, “puppy mill”.
A human child in the waiting area had seen and heard CJ. “Mommy is the little dog hurt?” she asked. Her mommy answered her and told her that the little dog was safe now and would get better.
Birdy was as innocent as the little girl. “Puppy mill, what’s a puppy mill?” she asked me. I lowered my voice, mindful of the child, and told her. Shocked realization covered her face and then rage, a horrible outrage against the humanity that would commit such acts to supply the accessory pet for the latest trend.
The clinic would keep the little dog overnight. CJ had already taken her to be groomed and bathed. She would call me later.
The vet treated Wednesday (we found her on a Wednesday) for every kind of worm except heartworm. Luckily, she had no heartworms. Her ears were full of black infection. She is maybe four years old, according to her teeth and she weighs five pounds. Her body is deformed and shows signs of over-breeding. CJ thinks that she has been bred until she can’t conceive or that she delivers dead puppies. We grieve for her living puppies, as well.
Wednesday lives with me now. The scrape on her neck has healed. Her hearing and her bark came back. She follows the visitors to our home and asks them with a conversational bark their names. She never bites. She loves cheese. She plays the ancient wolf games of running, circling, snipping and wrestling with her new family of little dogs in our fenced yard. Asleep in her bed, never opening an eye or missing a snore, she’ll roll over for a tummy rub.
She has her own bed but ……. getting up during the night, I found her curled up on the floor beside my bed. Now, she sleeps curled up on the pillow beside me.
Permission was granted to use this real story on the Critter Haven web site by author, Theresa C.