Puppysitting

I'm a pet-sitter, and one of my clients, Cathy, is also a rescue volunteer and foster home. Her specialty is underage puppies. She has two dogs of her own: Lucy, the first mother dog she ever took in as a foster, and Nemo, a puppy from a litter she raised about a two years ago. Lucy is a large black Shar Pei with some behavioral issues, which Cathy and her husband Bob have done a great job to address. There were a couple of times when I pet-sat for Lucy and Nemo when Lucy wouldn't come in the house unless I was in bed. I had to sleep with the bedroom door open to the back yard so she could creep in at night to sleep in her dog bed. Now she is much calmer, will take treats from my hand, and will even come ask me to pet her when I'm sitting quietly. It took a combination of behavioral modification, training, and medication to help Lucy, all under the supervision of a veterinary behaviorist. Cathy and Bob have also been working with Nemo, still an enormous puppy at two years old, who wants to guard the house from strangers a little too vigorously for a couple with an active social life.

Despite his bull-in-a-china-shop exuberance, Nemo is an excellent foster-brother to the tiny puppies Cathy cares for. For two weeks at Christmas, Nemo (and Lucy) helped me care for 4 orphaned puppies. They were between 4 and 5 weeks old when I started, and still drinking formula from a bottle at least 4 times per day. I would take them from their pen one by one, sit them on a towel in my lap, and try to hold them still while they wiggled in excitement. They liked to sit up on their haunches and push their front paws up against my hand on either side of the bottle while they fed, eyes rolling back in milky ecstasy. Nemo would help by licking up any milk they dribbled down their chins or splashed up onto their noses. His head was bigger than an entire puppy.

The puppies were just reaching the age where they needed to exercise their legs and explore a wider world than their pen, but the weather outside was appropriately frightful for the season, so a couple of times per day I would let them out of their pen and hover over them with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Formula 409 in my hands, ready to clean up the numerous "puppy bombs" they dropped (both solid and liquid) as they romped and scooted around the living room, dining area, and kitchen. Tiled, thank God, with a few utilitarian area rugs that could take a good scrubbing. Nemo would help supervise the puppies, trotting after anyone who tried to escape down the hall to the bedrooms, even picking up in his mouth any pup who tried to disappear under the Christmas tree. He was also an effective lure for keeping them all within my sight. I would spread a throw blanket on the living room floor, and Nemo would lie on it and let the puppies pounce on his tail and ears.