Taking Care of a Puppy Taught Me How to Take Care of Myself

The world’s pandemic puppies are going to start turning 2 years old soon. Of course, not everyone who adopted a dog in early-mid 2020 got a puppy. I certainly did though. A sweet little mutt with the bulging wet eyes and curly tail of a pug and the expressive ears and long snout of a rat terrier.

She was originally the pandemic puppy of another family: my wife’s aunt’s boyfriend’s kids. They realized quickly that they weren’t equipped to handle raising this feisty little creature and started asking around about who else might want her. My wife Liv and I had been joking just a day earlier about trying to find the oldest, crustiest dog in the shelter and naming it Old Crustbones. Now a real dogportunity (dog opportunity) had fallen right into our laps. She was the complete inverse of our imaginary Crustbones: brand new (the Humane Society estimated her age at about 8 weeks) and as spry and springy as Tigger.

We had to seriously ask ourselves if we were ready to become dog moms. Liv was out of work and I was working from home several days a week in those days. We’d never have more time together at home to socialize and bond with a puppy. We were in our late 20s and financially stable (hurray for being an essential worker). This dog seemed perfect for us: enough of a friendly little pug to be a good apartment dog, but enough of some longer-nosed breed to not have the health problems associated with brachycephalic dogs.

My biggest concern was if this would disrupt the life of our beloved cat Punkin, a beautiful tortie with white socks on every one of her feet and the tip of her tail. She had arrived in my life as another rescue by a coworker who found her as a pregnant stray but had too many of her own cats to keep her or the kittens permanently. I volunteered to take the mama cat because I figured the kittens would have an easier time finding a home. I lucked out because Punkin ended up being by far more beautiful than any of her 3 kittens. Each of them only inherited 2 colors from her, and none of them that gorgeous tortie pattern. And yes, I’ve always been a bit smug about how beautiful and friendly my cat is. I’ve always been more of a cat person than a dog person, so Punkin’s happiness was more important to me than life itself, and I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t feel safe and comfortable in her own home because she had a new rowdy sister of another species. I knew it would be a risk, but Liv had spent the last year as a professional dog walker and knew a great deal about dog behavior and training, and I believed if we put in the work, we could introduce the two gradually enough to avoid major conflict and friction.

So, we welcomed Stella into our home and changed her name to Heloise. That’s right, 2 accent marks cuz we’re pretentious like that. We were immediately in love. We got straight to work crate training her. It seemed like the best way to let Punkin get used to a new member of the household. Punkin would have free reign of the house while Ellie was in her crate and they could get used to each other’s sounds and smells. When Ellie was out of her crate, Punkin would go in the bedroom. As the weeks went by, we replaced the closed bedroom door with a baby gate so Punkin could come out and get a sniff of Ellie whenever she wanted but could easily retreat to safety if Ellie started to make her nervous. There was a bit of hissing and chasing in those early days. Punkin got into the habit of perching on top of the baby gate to swat at Ellie sometimes.

Ellie didn’t seem to mind much. She loved having a playmate. She was too rowdy as a little baby and destroyed every pair of jeans I owned with her needly little teeth. Liv and I worked on redirecting her energy and destructiveness into appropriate games and toys.

It was fascinating to watch this tiny dumb little person learn about the world. An eight-week-old human baby couldn’t even lift its own head, but this dog was running around biting, sniffing, and peeing on everything she could find. Sometimes her antics irritated me, but I tried to image what life was like from her perspective. She was literally learning about everything in the world for the first time. So many sounds and smells and sights she had no context for understanding. Her best tool for discovery was her mouth. She didn’t have the luxury of prehensile hands like a human baby to explore objects, and she gets most of her sensory information through smell and taste, so chewing or licking were the ways she learned about stuff.

Barrier training worked almost too well. To this day, this dog truly believes she has no power over doors at all. She will stand on one side of a partially closed door and whine until you open it rather than attempt to push it open with her own snout. It’s a bit of a relief, to be honest, since I never have to worry about her escaping through a hole in a fence or darting out a partially opened door.

She seemed so small and fragile. Paradoxically, it made me feel safe to curl my body around her tiny form and block the world away from her. She loved to nose her way under blankets between me and Liv and snuggle up directly between us. With one mom on either side of her, it seemed like nothing could hurt her. It was an illusion of control I needed in those early pandemic days. I couldn’t keep myself or my loved ones safe from disease or unemployment. But I could hold a sleeping puppy in my arms, provide her with nutritious food, teach her games and tricks to learn the appropriate ways to interact with people and household objects. I could give her a bath when she rolled around in another dog’s shit and cuddle her in a towel until she dried off. The simplest acts of nurturing made me feel like a superhero catching a kid from a falling building midair. As long as this little creature under my care was safe and happy, things didn’t feel too bad.

As I said, this feeling was an illusion and eventually I had to learn a difficult truth. By the following February, Ellie had grown to almost 20 pounds and she had developed a comfortable rapport with Punkin. Liv and I even caught them cuddling with each other sometimes. That winter was particularly snowy and many people across the country lost power for days or weeks at a time. We were fairly lucky to not get the worst of it, but when the pipes burst and flooded our apartment building’s basement, the landlord shut off the power to the whole building to prevent electrical fires until he could do repairs. We suddenly found ourselves without water or power at 9:30 pm and no idea when it would be restored. We scrambled for friends who could board us for a few days, but everybody we knew had too many pets of their own for us to feel comfortable bringing 2 more into the household. Our only option seemed to be to find a hotel for a few days.

It took several hours to arrange lodging, pack a few days of essentials, and drive out to the closest pet friendly hotel. It was well past midnight by the time we got there and tried to arrange our space as comfortably as possible. The room was tiny and drafty with a hard concrete floor and no door on the bathroom. There were cigarette burns on the bedspread. The bed itself was about 3 feet off the ground making it a hazard for Ellie to get on and off of. Liv could barely bring herself to lay on the stained sheets for fear of bedbugs. I gave the wrong address to the 711 app, so our food didn’t arrive until almost 3 a.m.

By the next day I was too tired and frustrated to go into work. When I did finally get up and attempt to drive out to get some groceries, the car was stuck in a snowbank in that terrible parking lot. Liv and I had to dig out the snow around the wheels and put cardboard under them for traction, and we could still barely push the Prius out of that rut. It’s a good thing we did it then, because by that night we needed to be able to make a fast exit.

By our second afternoon in the hotel, things finally started to calm down. I had the whole weekend off to make the place comfortable and livable until our apartment was ready. We all piled onto the bed to watch TV on my laptop and relax for the first time in 48 hours.

Ellie eventually got up and started whining. I assumed she needed a potty break, so I hopped off the bed and reached for her. She ran away because she doesn’t like being picked up. I followed her around to the other side, but she still darted away from me. “Alright, go ahead and get off the bed yourself then,” I said and stepped back to let her jump down. She did, and landed with a horrible thump and the most heart wrenching howl I’ve ever heard in my life. Liv and I scrambled over. Liv scooped her up and I saw how bad the damage was: her right front leg had snapped completely in half.

I was so used to cats being able to easily handle long jumps, it hadn’t occurred to me that the combination of the height of the bed with the hard concrete floor and the tiny room that only allowed a miniscule landing space would mean disaster for a dog. I immediately got on my phone to find the nearest 24-hour emergency vet. I called them sobbing hysterically and asked how quickly they could treat my dog tonight. They said it would be about a 3 hour wait once we got there and checked in. I grabbed my shoes without even putting them on while Liv cradled Ellie in her arms and carried her out to the car. I bawled the entire 20-minute drive and kept looking over at my dog and choking out, “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.” She was calmer than I was. As long as Liv held her still, her leg didn’t seem to be causing her any pain.

When we got to the vet, there was little we could do while we waited for them to see her. We all sat in the car together because nobody was allowed in the lobby because of covid protocols. I sat there for hours gently stroking Ellie’s ears to try to comfort her and myself. When the vet finally came out and took her away, Liv and I were left alone with each other and our horrible guilt at letting our dog get so badly injured. I wish I could say we took comfort from each other. Liv told me what we had done was unforgivable and I begged her not to say that.

A few hours later and we had our dog back, splinted and glassy eyed from the anesthesia they had given her. The vet told us she would need surgery as soon as possible and recommended a couple of local hospitals who specialized in this type of injury.

We still didn’t even have a safe home to take our dog to recuperate in. The hotel was clearly a terrible option, even for an uninjured dog, and we had heard no word on when our apartment would have power again. And even if we went back there, we lived at the top of a long, dark, narrow staircase. Who knew how complicated Ellie’s recovery would be and what kind of long-term mobility issues she would have from this? The only option that seemed available to us was to take Ellie to Liv’s mom’s house for her convalescence. It was a 2-hour drive away, which is why it hadn’t seemed like a good option when we originally lost power at our place. But now it seemed like our only choice.

We went back to the hotel for what remained of the night because we didn’t want to try to drive on snowy roads in the dark on no sleep. Ellie was too doped up to understand anything that was going on: why she couldn’t move normally, why she couldn’t fit in her crate or find a comfortable spot to sleep. Liv and I brought our blankets down onto the narrow slice concrete floor next to Ellie’s doggy bed to sleep next to her to make sure she didn’t try to get up and walk around during the night. That poor dog spent hours staring blankly forward and whining softly. The drugged confusion in her eyes was more distressing to watch than when she was just sitting in Liv’s arms while we waited for the vet in the car. At least then she was calm because she knew where she was and that she was with people who would take care of her.

The next morning, we packed everything we had brought to the hotel and stopped by the apartment once more to pick up extra clothes and supplies since we didn’t know how long we might need to stay with Liv’s mom. By the time we were leaving town, Ellie’s meds had worn off and she was clear eyed and lucid again. It was a relief to feel like we finally had her back.

To make an already long story a bit shorter, we got Ellie to her grandma’s house, scheduled her surgery, and planned for Liv to stay there with her as long as the surgeon advised. I took Punkin and went back to our apartment as soon as the power was restored. I continued working during the week and driving down to be with them on the weekends for the next 6 weeks.

Ellie got a metal plate screwed on to the 2 ends of her broken radius to stabilize the limb while it healed. With her fur shaved up to the shoulder joint, we joked that she looked like Edward Elrich with his automail arm. She was able to put weight back on her leg shockingly fast, but it broke my heart to see how her gait had changed. She needed a lot of attention and affection to keep her from getting bored and trying to run around too much and popping out the staples. It was a lot of emotional work to carefully guide her through her healing process. But it paid off in the end. Gradually she got stronger and more playful again. Her right arm is forever bulkier than her left because of the metal plate, but she gets around as well as ever these days.

The most important takeaway from all of this was seeing the slow process of growing and healing of someone I loved and was responsible for. It taught me to be a little gentler and more forgiving of myself when I feel uncertain or in pain. If I know not to expect a tiny baby dog to know everything all the time, or to recover from trauma immediately, I can extend the same grace to myself. It seems obvious, but I never really felt it on such a deep level until I saw someone so close to me experience these things.