Checking all the known puppy places

Aug. 1, 2002

Dear Patty,

We arrived at Amity Hills Farm Saturday morning trusting Mickey to take care of her three surviving puppies even though we have a few suggestions about how she could refine her mothering skills. We knew she'd moved the puppies under the foot bridge leading from the farm house to the south pasture on Friday so that's where we looked first.

To see under the bridge you have to lie down on your stomach and crook your head underneath. There was Mickey with only one puppy. Two three-week-old puppies were missing.

I began poking around in the snake-infested foliage beneath the bridge and heard tiny whimpers. Twenty-feet below the bridge, one puppy had been swallowed by the underbrush near the creek. Another was lodged between two thick fallen branches and couldn't move.

Finding them was a relief, but this scene was not encouraging to us substitute farmers. The donkeys and geese and pigeons and chickens -- the quasi-exotic animals -- at the farm seemed to be thriving, but a plain old dog had us confounded.

Our veterinarian had suggested we confine Mickey to make sure she is around when the puppies get hungry. The time had come to follow her advice.

Our gambit was to put Mickey and the puppies in one of the livestock pens in the barn. We set up a fan to keep them cool.

It worked for maybe a day. When I arrived at the farm the next morning, Mickey was outside limping around.

She had tunneled beneath the pen into another pen. Once there she somehow jumped out into the open barnyard, probably injuring her leg.

It was the beginning of a game in which Mickey moved around her puppies like chess pieces and we tried to anticipate each other's next stratagem.

Next I got out a pruning tool and weed eater and attacked the overgrowth in an old dog pen that has high cyclone fencing. The little shed attached to the pen has a hatch so the dogs can go inside out of the weather. Not wanting Mickey to hide the puppies inside, I blocked the hole with a heavy board and wedged a heavier log against it.

While I cleared the pen, Mickey moved two of the puppies into brush behind the tool shed and dropped off the third in the tool shed, a ploy to divide my attention.

A few minutes later, only one of the puppies remained in the brush, and Mickey was lying alone by a water bucket near the front porch.

I checked all the known puppy places: The inner sanctum of the tool shed, under a big bush beside the house, beneath the foot bridge. No puppy.

Leaning against my van, I coolly staked out Mickey so I could watch where she took the next puppy. She just panted by the water bucket and watched me back. We were stalemated.

Needing a new ploy, I edged along the van until out of sight and hid beside the house. Long minutes later, Mickey limped toward the new hiding place. That's where the missing puppy was.

Finally lodged in the old dog pen, Mickey and the puppies had water, food, shade from a small tree and hay on the ground for comfort. Leaving the farm I was assured I had won.

Part way home I had to turn around because a tree had fallen in the road. Driving back past the farm I stopped to check in on Mickey and the pups one last time.

Mickey was gone and so was one of the puppies.

She had pushed aside the log and the board and was cooling off inside the shed. The missing puppy had gotten lost in the hay.

The puppies are temporarily living on Lorimier Street now.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.