Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Memories….Day Two Hundred, Sixty Six

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The date was October 6, 2004; Sampson was 9 1/2 weeks old and had been living with us for 12 days.

I got up that morning to find him in his crate covered in filth; he looked so sad and scared and I felt horrible that he had been alone and sick. I gave him a bath, cleaned up his crate and waited for the vet’s office to open.

I got the first available appointment, I was afraid that he had something really bad and I would lose him.  I remember thinking I don’t care if it costs $5,000.00 I need to save this dog.  He had already wrapped himself completely around my heart.

I drove the 10 minutes to the vet with him draped across my lap; vomiting.  The stool sample (if you could call it that) was handed over to the vet tech who said, “Oh yeah, he’s got gastritis” or something along those lines.

Thankfully, it was something very treatable, we went home with antibiotics and instructions to keep him on cooked hamburger and rice for a few days, at least until he had a solid bowel movement.

I cooked a huge box of Minute Rice with a bunch of ground beef and stored it in a plastic container in the fridge.  After a few days, he was well enough to go back to his normal puppy food and I thought, “What am I going to do with all this beef and rice?’

I decided I could add some sauce to it and make a version of the stuffing you put in peppers. When I took the container out of the refrigerator, Sampson barked at me, and he kept barking because he had already associated the container with his food and didn’t know why I wasn’t feeding it to him!

Hey, that's my food!

We laughed at that.

I was reminded of this memory last week when Sampson wasn’t feeling so hot.

As I prepared his dinner, I wonder how will he receive this bland beef and rice when he loves his raw food so much?

But as I placed the bowl in front of him, he looked at me; smiled and wagged his tail.

Then he dug in. I wonder if he was remembering like I was?

 

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  3. I am sure he was remembering. A memory from when they are that young will usually stick. Thunder still gets all excited over the sight of an empty plastic water bottle because that was his toy when he was a wee pup. He remembers.

      • He wants to play with them still, but he is too big and one chomp and it is over for the bottle.

        Here’s another thing to think about….when Thunder’s breeders have a litter of pups, they chime to them something like “pup, pup, pup, puppy-doo”. They do this from the time they are tiny first born until they go to new homes. They can see a pup they have not seen for years and all they have to do is chime to them and they remember. Tails wag and they come a running.

  9. So sweet, thanks for the story! And I always forget the wonders of rice and ground beef for upset dog tummies–this is a good reminder…maybe some bland food would be good for my poor seasonal-allergy-ridden Lamar.

  10. oh what an adorable photo of Sampson and cute story! No wonder you fell in love with that sweet face! My dearly departed Tika Molly was a very sickly puppy when I first got her, and that was the concoction I would have to actually force feed her every 4 hours through the night for several days until she was well again. That was the go-to feed throughout her life whenever she was sick, and she loved it. sigh.

    • Oh Kathy, I’m sorry. They touch are hearts so deeply, yet we don’t seem to have enough time with them. 🙁