Category: Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton, fosterdogs, heartworms, oph

A Real Rescue

Cara Achterberg

Where to begin? The cuteness? The adorable sounds? The AMAZING mama dog who has completely stolen my heart? So much to tell you!

We’ll start with the obvious. If you’ve joined the Another Good Dog Facebook page, you already know the 12 pups in my kitchen are addictively cute. I can spend WAY too much time just watching them ‘swim’ around the box.

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Their eyes and ears haven’t opened yet and they can’t support their weight, so they swim around, much like seals on land or fat snakes with appendages.

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Continue reading “A Real Rescue” →

Edith Wharton, fostering, puppies, Uncategorized

Expecting

Cara Achterberg

Not much has gone as expected for the past few days. Okay, well, a few things. My husband took off for France. Ian won his soccer game, and Addie got the part she wanted in the school play (of course it wasn’t the part I expected she’d get as she’ll be Blackstache instead of Molly or any other part normally assigned a girl in Peter and the Starcatchers). The tomatoes continue to produce, as do the horses, and now that school has started pretty much no one puts their dishes in the dishwasher. Those things I expected and they happened. Yay, life behaving itself.

What hasn’t gone as expected is most everything having to do with our 50th foster dog.

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I’d painted this lovely romantic picture in my mind of our 50th foster dog, Edith Wharton, giving birth to a handful of puppies in our kitchen as we all watched and were amazed by the miracle. What a great experience for our milestone foster. I was so ready.

I borrowed a really nice handbuilt whelping box from my neighbors (who at this point are probably beginning to wish they lived on a different road as I hit them up for pretty much every dog dilemma I have). We set it up in our kitchen and Nick ran to the hardware store and bought foam pipe insulators to cover the top edges so Edith wouldn’t rub her heavy belly on it when she climbed in. I set down a layer of soft things and puppy pads in preparation.

I looked through my calendar for the next week or so, making sure I could be home if necessary, already preparing my excuses (“Sorry, you’re on the own. Gotta go. There’s a dog giving birth in my kitchen…”)

I read about puppy whelping and even watched a few badly made YouTube videos of it actually happening. I gathered advice from my knowledgeable dog-breeder neighbor and made a list of the supplies I’d need. A box of some of those supplies arrived from OPH (thanks Gina!) and pretty soon I was ALL READY. Edith was due to arrive in less than 24 hours!

And then I checked my email.

Apparently Edith was not made aware of my preparations and my whelping box and she gave birth to the puppies at the shelter that morning.

I was disappointed and a little bit relieved.

Here’s the other unexpected news – Continue reading “Expecting” →