AmericanLola

First, a little background. We live on a pretty busy street, and the house next door had a wall 12-16 feet high when we moved in. It had a big, equally tall, black metal gate, so we called the place, “Mordor.” We have two girls who live with us and are like our family; Marylan, a working student, and Caryl, who is recently married and her husband now lives here too. This story took place about three years ago.

When we moved in, the house next door appeared to be the home of a lot of unrelated renters. One day, they all left, and it appeared that repairs would be done on the house. A week or so later, I noticed that Marylan was buying bread, and taking leftovers outside our gate. When I asked, she said she was feeding a little dog, abandoned by the people next door. She said there had been two puppies, but one had died, and the remaining pup was laying next to his dead sibling. Oh my! Kaluoy niya! (Poor thing!)

I told her that if she wanted to save that puppy, we might as well do it right, by bringing it over to our house so we could take proper care of it. We already had two large dogs, Boss and Molly. This little dog was one of the most pitiful things I have ever seen! He was probably about 3-4 months old, but could barely stand. He was literally skin and bones. He was almost hairless and his back knees bowed in to meet each other. His skin was in bad shape too. Poor little guy! I slathered him in coconut oil for his skin (that is why he looks shiny in the picture) and we began giving him soft, nourishing foods. He was grateful, you could really see that! The girls named him ‘Precious’ because he looked like a doggy version of ‘Golum’ in Lord of the Rings. He really did!

He made good progress for almost a week, and then he came down with a raging fever. His tummy was bloated and he could not even stand up. I had warned the girls that even if we did our best, be might not make it, and here was a crisis. I had some penicillin tablets around the house, so I figured it was worth a try. I stuck one of those down his throat once a day for five days, and what do you know? He survived! From that point on he began to eat, thrive and put on fur. He is now probably one of the healthiest dogs in the neighborhood!

He remains a very grateful little dog and has become a much loved member of our household. It is still strange to me to have a male dog named, “Precious” and I keep referring to him as ‘her.’ The girls have attempted to fix this problem by calling him “Moments” or “Mr. Moments” and I do think that has some charm!

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