The first I heard about Ava was an email in mid-January from the dog warden that said "just picked up a Golden mix and 10 10 day old puppies."
Yikes!! While that particular dog pound is clean and heated (some Ohio pounds are neither), sleeping on a concrete floor in large kennel run is no place for young puppies! We moved quickly to get them out of there. I assumed they were owner sign-offs, that someone had decided feeding her was too much trouble and dumped her off. I was surprised to find out she was picked up as a stray.
In the car on the way back to my house, Ava was so concerned about her puppies, she tried to fit herself into the cardboard box with them! Once I got her here and settled in, it became apparent she was a really great dog, sweet, calm, loving. She had clearly been someone's pet. She was housetrained, knew commands, and had nice manners. And the puppies were so well cared for! Their eyes had just opened. They were chubby and inquisitive and didn't mind being handled at all. We made sure she had time to feel comfortable and then my kids "met" and picked "A" names for all 10 puppies: Archer, Anabelle, Aubrey, Angus, Alex, Alvin, Amethyst, Arin, Avery and Ayden. Ava and her puppies soon went to a foster home.
A day or so later, I went back to the pound for another dog. I told the dog warden I couldn't get over what a great dog she was, and how nice the puppies were too. I said they were all in such great shape, they had to have been just dumped off. He said "No!" and told me her story. The farmer who called about her had an old truck cap clear back behind his barn, alongside a field. It had sat there for so long the windows were all broken out of it. She had found it somehow, and dug a hole in the dirt underneath it, as a den to have those puppies. He said, "No one was feeding her either!" It became apparent she was going over to the nearby barn and eating what field corn she could find, to produce the milk needed to feed her puppies.
You have to wonder, how did she end up out there like that? Did she run off and end up too far away to make it back? Or did her owner decide "some nice farmer" would take her in, as they pushed her out of the car on some country road? Did they know she was pregnant? How long was she on her own? It had to have been at least 2 weeks, long enough for her to find a place to have her puppies and care for them for 10 days in the dead of winter.
Ava's story is exceptional and by all accounts, she is an exceptional dog. And yet in some ways, her story is exactly the same as so many of the dogs we see. They're all wonderful in their own ways, and still they've been tossed aside like useless trash by someone. When we hear of a dog like Ava, we are thankful once again that rescue was there to care for her and find her the perfect lifetime home. We are truly blessed to have had the chance to know a dog as special as Ava.
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