There are photos of me as a small kid, sitting on the floor of our two story house on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, surrounded by pups, cats and Ben, my recently arrived younger brother. My mum used to joke that she had no idea whose piles of poops or pools of piss were whose. Chaos seemed perfectly normal. The verandah doors were flung open, the house filled with light, and the terracotta tile floors as easy clean as you could get. Only my Dad's precious Afghan rug truly suffered under the endless deposits upon it. I always wondered why, in later years, my mum used this beautiful and fading fast rug in her kitchen where any vestiges of pride it may have had were eradicated under the spillage from the pots and pans on the gas stove above. It probably wasn't hard for my dad to lose the rug in the divorce. He may have looked at it and seen the signs of abuse and shrugged 'Ah, yes - that was my life as a married man and father. Good riddance'.
But I digress. Of course. That would be me. Fast forward 50 years. Ouch. My small house is filled with light, I try to fulfil my yearning to have a home where indoors and outdoors are contiguous, and where animals scamper in a kind of aimless pursuit of joy, or lie in unexpected places trying to get some peace. I am often claustrophobic in other people's homes, and hotel rooms are like suffocation. I loved working in the theatre in the 70's, especially matinees, when the dark enveloping gloom was punctuated with brilliant exuberant light and sounds and then at the end of the show, after prepping the stage for the evening show, I would burst through the stage door into the light of the afternoon. Darkness is not me. Unless we are talking the darkness of my soul.
I was called 'one of the most polarising people I know ' by someone the other day. This description doesn't upset me now. Not like it used to. I have come to understand that polarisation is one of the most effective ways of exploding the status quo. And it isn't that I don't have a vision to go with the laser beam focus that I bring to the debate. Which brings me to puppies. Really.
One afternoon in late June I was standing around, like I do, at the animal shelter. A young guy, with bruising and cuts on his face walked in holding a dark red chihuahua which was convulsing, her legs and head twitching, she was panting, in obvious distress. The animal control officer began asking the usual questions: what is going on, is it your dog, where did you find her...and the young man got more tongue tied as the dog flailed in his arms. At first he said he'd found her on the freeway the night before, but couldn't remember the freeway or the city, then said he had been mugged and didn't remember much, then that he had been to a vet but couldn't afford the $300 the vet had wanted to charge him for treating the dog. The man was nervous, said he had no money and the vet had suggested he surrender the dog to a shelter.
But no-one asked him about the puppies. So I asked. 'Where are the pups?' The dogs breasts were hugely engorged and droplets of milk hung at the ends of them and dribbled over the man's fingers as he held her. He said in almost a whisper 'in my motel room', and I said 'so you didn't find her last night on the freeway'. He seemed in despair and the officer behind the desk said 'where's the motel' and after he said Richmond, the game was over. Because of the insanity of 'jurisdiction' and 'boundaries' one animal shelter won't officially take in a dog from another jurisdiction (though the end result is that on an almost daily basis people lie about where a dog or cat is from or stuff animals in the night boxes so as not to have to face the questions). I offered to take the dog and get her to a vet at my expense, but he had to agree to give me the pups which were two weeks old. He hesitated, he said he could raise them, and he and I went outside to work things out.
When we got outside I asked why he'd lied and he blurted out that he was afraid to get into trouble, that he watched Animal Planet and was afraid of the dog police, that the vet told him to come to Berkeley and not to go to the local shelter because they would probably have euthanised the dog. After much discussion, he agreed that he would have a hard time hand rearing the pups, he didn't realise for example that at that age the mother still expresses the piss and poop by licking the stomach and genital area to stimulate the bladder and bowel. We drove to my vet where the dog was immediately hooked up to IV fluids and calcium - her condition was diagnosed as eclampsia, a fairly common condition in nursing mothers who are simply unable to create enough milk for the pups and still retain enough calcium for herself. Poor diet is a primary cause and Chihuahuas it turns out are more prone to the condition than other breeds. The vet said she would have been dead within a few hours. Once the condition is corrected and the dog can receive proper food and calcium supplement, she usually recovers with no ill effects.
With the mother dog lying weak and thin hooked up to IV's, I followed the young man and his friends in a van with out of state plates to a motel in Richmond and with a moment of nervousness creeping in, called the animal shelter and told them to call the police if I didn't check in in an hour!
In a warm motel room, with bags, clothes and video games everywhere, 5 little pups huddled in a corner. I loaded them into a cardboard box and within 10 minutes I was racing back to the vet for them to be checked out. That night, in contrast to everything I have ever said about having pups in my home, I had a momma chihuahua and her five pups in a puppy pen within 5 feet of my bed, so I could respond to any emergency.
That was 7 weeks ago. I haven't slept through the night since the pups arrived, I have spent a ton of money on the initial life saving emergency vet visit for Frida the mom (which was heavily discounted by the vet), good dog food (and thanks also to my small local pet store which routinely gives me discounts), milk replacement formula to supplement both the pups and mama's food, wet dog food, high end puppy kibble, fecal sample tests, de-wormings, flea treatments, and am grateful, so incredibly grateful that the vet has let me come in every week to weigh the pups, trim their nails and check them out when I have been worried, and that the Berkeley animal shelter has given vaccines for free to help me out.
But more than that - I have learned more than I ever thought I could about dogs and pups. And even as I have fallen in love with each and every one, and have now started adopting them out to wonderful homes I am more convinced than ever that they should never have been born. For me - these beautiful, magnificent individual and unique lives are my poster pups for spay and neuter.
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