13 puppies Part 1

So these last two weeks have been kind of stressful! Week one, my husband was out of town ALL week so I was left to tend to our girls and our dog. It is a lot more difficult than it sounds. I have so much respect for single mothers and military wives! I needed a break BADLY.

One afternoon I was outside playing Frisbee with Ruca and I saw something strange in my neighbors kennel. I looked a little closer and I saw little bobbing puppy heads. A lot of them. I called out and said "You have puppies?" to which he responded "Yeah, from your dog!" I had to inform him that that was impossible because my dog 1)is female and 2) is spayed. Turns out it was another Blue Heeler that would frequent our neighborhood. We had to return him to his owners multiple times. It all makes sense now :)

Moonshine (the male Heeler) did not get one, but two dogs pregnant and now my neighbor had 13 little puppies. I went over to investigate closer and I immediately felt sad. These puppies were stuck outside by themselves ALL day. I checked outside often and I never saw them out running around and they didn't even have a dog house. They just had a blue tarp placed over the kennel that sagged and had holes that the puppies would get stuck in. I asked him if I could help find homes for the dogs and he said yes. All except one. He was keeping one-UGH.

I had been telling Kevin all about these puppies. I would have a hard to sleeping because I was so worried about them. Were the getting enough food? Are they just sitting in filth? Are they getting played with at all? I just couldn't handle it. When Kevin makes it home, we show him the puppies and we even end up putting a dog house in their kennel as it was POURING down rain.

The next day we take all of the puppies and bathe them in our daughter's little swimming pool and then place them in our kennel to dry off.

I wasn't want to offend my neighbor and make a real enemy out of him so when he noticed the dogs were gone we brought them back to his house, but continued to check up on them.

I posted pictures of them on Facebook and begged my friends to spread the word and help me find homes for the cute pups. Although, I have several people share my post I had ZERO responses through Facebook. I put an ad for them on craigslist and I had tons of responses. I had been told that was a quick way to find abusers and people that just want to harm puppies so I grilled most of them that responded and found some people I felt were really sincere and just wanted to help these pups find homes. I had reached out to several animal rescues, but it was several days before I heard anything back from them. I had to act fast.

At one point we toyed with the idea of keeping one. We even named him. Meet Whiskey. The son of Moonshine :)

The next picture will make my mom throw up. No I am not OK with her putting that ball in her mouth. This situation just made me laugh and I had to capture it. This is how these two would interact. Natalie was totally fine with Whiskey climbing on her. She would just push him off and he would keep on coming. Here they were fighting over the same toy.