Part 3 Life Lessons from a Double Wide: It's a Doggy Dog World

We adopted a puppy from the Humane Society before we got married. She was tiny. A sweet, furry ball of puppy delight. She fit snugly in the palms of my hands. My thoughts... "she is going to make the best little inside dog EVER".

Wrong.

The tiny puppy delight ended up growing into a 35 pound dog. She's cute. She's sweet. We love her, but I thought I was getting a lap dog. Let me rephrase that, I thought I was getting a lap dog that would actually fit in my lap.

I was satisfied with one dog. That's all I ever wanted. She would stay inside the trailer with us during the evening and during the day she could stay outside. It was a puppy's heaven. Land for miles and miles. She never had to worry about messing up the neighbors yard. His name is after all Greasy, and you could just imagine what his yard looked like. It was tastefully adorned with rusty old cars, an old fishing boat filled with aluminum cans, and three trailers (only one of which he lived in.) She was set. And so was I.

After we got moved in, we noticed two dogs who were always around. A big german shepherd and a big gray spotted dog. We realized that these were our other neighbors dogs. Well, ok, Menne would have some dogs to play with during the day. That would surely be fun. Little did we know these animals would make our front lawn their home.

Then there were three.

We had noticed a little brown dog who stayed around our house also. She was a skinny little thing and she only walked on three legs. Who wouldn't feel sorry for this sweet dog? She was very shy and didn't like coming to close to us. So what do we do? We start to feed her (that should make her go away). She would come a little closer each day. Finally she got to where we could pet her. She even started coming inside at night. She became known as "Lady".

We are up to four.

Unbeknownst to us, sweet little "Lady" was pregnant.

The big gray dog from next door was responsible for this small, shall I say, inconvenience.

Two months after we moved into our little piece of redneckville, Lady had 8 puppies. Your adding is correct.

That would be 12.

We were becoming like the little old Lady who lived in the shoe, except we lived in a trailer and instead of children, we had four legged canines (well... one only had three legs).

The puppies were an adventure. Lady would move them out of their doggy home each time before it stormed. We would come home and find them and move them all back. I must admit, I actually did enjoy taking care of the little puppies. We named each of them. There was: Wilbur, Rosco, Elvis, Wynonna, Sandy, Joe, Daisy, and Santa Clause. They became my after school play toys. I would come home each day and spend hours taking care of them. Well, I didn't really take care of them, Jamie did. I just played.

We ended up giving all of them away except for Wilbur and Rosco. We decided to keep them because we thought four dogs just wasn't enough for us.

That makes six.

I'm not sure if dogs can be mentally challenged. But in my experience, and I feel like I am highly qualified to speak on the matter, I would say Wilbur was what you would call...a little touched. Bless his heart, he had seizures as a puppy. He just was never right after that. That and the fact that our neighbor shot him in the head. That is a whole other story. But he survived it. One day we came home and he was just gone. We don't know what happened to ol Wilbur. But I like to think that he is on a farm somewhere making some little boy very happy. I'll keep on thinking that.

Back down to five.

That is the number that we stayed at for a long time. We had Menne, Lady, and Rosco who belonged to us. Then there was Max and Rebel who were the neighbors dogs but thought they really lived at our house.

It is a little known fact that people like to drop puppies off in the country. "The Grove" seemed to beckon people to do this. I am still convinced that we had a huge flashing sign shining over our house that read, "Stray puppies will be fed here if you drop them off". Because that is what happened. I can't even count the number of dogs that got dropped off at our house. But I have a sweet husband who always took them in, fed them, and found them homes.

Life Lesson #3: Animals need homes too.

All animals ,that is, except for mice.