Counting down to Mother's Day - And here's something for the mothers who read this...

especially if you're a dog lover.

This is an original piece of mine, which will someday go into a collection of dog stories. I need not remind you that the copyright resides with me. Please contact me for permission to distribute it.





THE GOOD MOTHER


Today dawned bright and blustery; a fine Saturday after long, successive days of rain, heat and humidity. A good October day for going about one’s Saturday business, which meant for us a morning spent at the flea market and shopping in town. A stiff north wind swept away the cobwebs and brought us a welcomed, though unfamiliar, chill in the air.

We took another route home today, foregoing the highway for the more pleasant drive through greener neighborhoods, past the Muskogee Creek Clan’s ceremonial grounds, and the Department of Game and Freshwater Fish offices. A dam separates the spring-fed waters of Deerpoint Lake from the salt of St. Andrew’s Bay, and we often see something interesting - mostly dolphins feeding and playing in the quiet water of the bay; a turtle that needs moving off the road or an occasional alligator taking a stroll.

Today the whitecaps raced across both waters, and even the birds were staying close to shore.

And then I saw the puppies. At first glance at 50 mph, I thought they were Jack Russell terriers, two mostly white dogs, one with black markings on the head, the other with nearly identical brown markings. I turned around as my husband stopped the truck. These were puppies, and only about three months old. We couldn’t leave them there.

All alone they sat at the bottom of the embankment, intently watching something in the swamp that we couldn’t see. I got out quietly and walked slowly, speaking softly and trying to coax them to come to me. They paid me no attention, preferring to ignore me. Something moved in the dense undergrowth...a small white and tan hound. Their mother. Her teats indicated that the pups would soon be weaned, but they were still swollen. Mother, however, was extremely thin. The puppies, I noticed, were also thin, with distended abdomens that told of poor nutrition and parasites. I came to within 10 feet of the pups. One gave me a strange, sidelong glance - “If I don’t look at your eyes”, it seemed to say, “then you won’t see me, and I won’t be afraid”. Mother was pacing behind bushes, well concealed in the undergrowth. The pup nearest me stood and tested a fallen limb lying across a seep and picked its way across to its mother, the other following close behind. The three vanished like wraiths into the swampy gloom. I could no longer see them, but Mother gave three short, low-pitched woofs that warned me not to follow.

I walked back to the truck, holding my hands to my heart (and surely it would break if I didn’t) for these three brave small souls eking out their survival in this forbidding piece of real estate that is the southern swamp. A now-feral mother and two small pups, growing up wild. For all their days, few that they are, never knowing a full belly, a soft, safe bed, the gentle touch and kind words of a human. Their mother, apparently a hunting dog from what I could see - and in these parts, an expendable commodity - most likely had a home of sorts at some time in her life. She was probably kenneled in someone’s backyard, given little affection, a modicum of care, and hunted when deer season arrived. If she strayed from the trail, if she were separated from her owner or the pack, it is quite possible she was left, cursed and abandoned to fend for herself. Hunting dogs are easily affordable here and bred so that the litters are planned to give new owners time to train them before hunting season. After the season, many are left behind in the woods, to live by their wits and anything edible they can find. If they are lucky, they will be shot and left where they fall for the vultures, the opossum, the fire ants and whatever else that scavenges upon the corpses. That is a more merciful death than what awaits this hapless trio. To be fair, many deer dogs will find their way home, either by diligence on the owner’s part, or by their training, to return after trailing long miles to the spot they were released. But many more find their death on the roads and highways.

What happened to Mother? Did she wander off a trail because of youthful hijinks and the lure of exciting scents in the forest and therefore, abandoned? Was she not good enough to be waited for, gathered up and brought home? How did she fail her owner? How could any dog fail its owner! Did she stray from home and forget her way back? Was she dumped on the roadside because she was unwanted - her owner thinking that someone would find her at the little beachfront park a few hundred feet away?

Pregnant and alone, needing food and having to hunt for it in a mosquito- and snake-infested swamp, must have been difficult beyond our wildest imaginings. Whelping puppies somewhere in a makeshift nest in the heat and rain of summer in the company of alligators, coyotes and bear must have been a horror. Mother was not wild, and she did her best to protect her family to bring them this far. What does a cast-off domestic dog do to find food to feed herself and nourish her growing puppies, anyway? How many times was she chased away from yards and trash cans.

I telephoned the Humane Society when I got home. The voice on the other end was sympathetic, “But”, she said, “We get so many calls like this. These dogs are very hard to catch, but we’ll make an effort”. She was not hopeful.

I am not hopeful.

If angels watch over homeless, hungry, frightened, injured, abused, neglected, abandoned animals, I hope they are watching over two wild puppies in a north Florida swamp, and their good mother, who used to have a home.