Nine Puppies in a Box

Jean belongs to an online baking circle and has learned more than just how to make her own sourdough. We both believe that the Internet “used with caution” offers community in a world in which community is sometimes found wanting.
As in this story, a warm fuzzy if there ever was one. We don’t know who Randy is or where he lives, although Jean thinks maybe Vidalia. With little editing on my part, here’s Randy?s story:
“A mother dog had puppies deep in the woods near our house, about two weeks ago. A neighbor down the road told my wife at the store that the mother had been killed on the highway on Tuesday, and this was Friday. I knew where she kept going into the woods so I couldn’t go without trying to find them, thinking they would, in all likelihood, be dead, or taken by snakes or a hawk.
“A thin line of patted down leaves and pine straw gave me just enough trail to hack my way through the woods to a tree that had been blown down years back. At the far end, under the roots, I guessed I would find the dead puppies, having not heard a sound. Just before my last step a feisty, little Paul Newman blue-eyed puppy stuck his head around the corner of the tree and warned me not to come any closer.
My heart lifted.
Seven boys and two girls are in our care until we find them a home.”
Other members of the circle sent messages of delight and encouragement. One said, “Bless you all over your puppy-lovin’ body!”
A member of the baking circle asks if the pups were “warming up” to their Samaritan, and he replies:
“As soon as we put puppy food and milk down, we were in. They now cling around our legs as if we were their mother. We are a bit worried about Parvo with our two adult dogs.
“We took a 16" clay flower pot bottom and use that to feed them, making it quite funny to watch them find an empty spot. Sometimes we have to adjust them so they all get to eat. These are cute little poot machines that never seem to stop.”
Another circle member asks Randy to “flesh out the plot line” and tell how he managed to carry them out of the woods. “Details, Randy, please.”
“Once I found them,” Randy complies, “I wanted to stuff them in my pockets, load up my arms and fight my way back out of the woods lined with the skin-tearing briers and poison ivy, not to mention keeping one eye out for things with less legs than I have. But there were nine puppies, well, eight puppies and one that assured me he would bite every toe I had, should I get any closer.
“Back to the house for a sturdy cardboard box, big enough to keep the puppies in but small enough to get in and out of the woods. I counted the puppies before I left. Luck was with me, having just cleaned out the attic the week before it turned hot, leaving a box to be tossed when time permitted.
“When I got back to the dead tree, I wished there were more than myself to chase them down, but as soon as I went down on one knee, I was the best thing they had seen in days. Nothing to it, each one fussed, but went into the box with only a few wiggles. Each one that is until the guard, the one Mom must have left in charge. He wasn’t going nowhere.
“By now the yellow flies had found me. I had a box of eight puppies pushing the limit of the box’s durability, screaming for momma, and the last puppy peeking out from under the roots of that dead tree as if it were his castle. Each time I grabbed for him, he went deeper under the tree.
“I wasn’t going to leave him. I came up with the idea of placing a long stick in the hole and waiting him out. I closed the lid on the box and the captured puppies calmed down. Then I waited. Before long, he stuck his head out far enough to see what was happening. The stick came up and popped him on his butt and I had him.”
“What kind of dogs are they?” readers ask, and Randy fingers a neighbor’s cocker spaniel plus a mutt with smooth hair. There’s one brown pup, but the rest are “black with bits of white.”
Randy says he did not get much encouragement from his local humane society, although they did promise to help promote the pups for adoption if he would keep them at home. Numerous readers offered to help pay for the pups’ requisite shots. Randy declined graciously, adding that his veterinarian offered him a “Cheaper by the Dozen” discount, for one old cat, two adult dogs, and nine puppies.
Our Jean urged him to publish his story. “Randy, you write well. I wonder if your local paper would let you write a guest column about the dogs.
Your community will get a heart-warming story and maybe the dogs would find a home.”
“Keep us updated on the cute little souls and do not name them or you'll be trapped,” a circle member cautions Randy not to fall in love.
He responds, “Got to get them gone because the grip they have is strong already, but the expense would be too high to keep them all.
“A bit of a blessing came with the puppies. A good friend of the family is going in for cancer surgery tomorrow and needs something else to think about, so I called her and told all the good, funny things about our nine, furry poot machines. She laughed and laughed.
“So, life is good again and the puppies are fat and happy waiting on their new homes.”