My love of 13 years has left me, or should I say I let her go?
It's unbearably painful. I've spent 10 years crying over others' pets that had passed, and now it's my turn. Writing about Caprice may take days, between the crying, but I will tell her story.
Right before I retired from teaching, I knew it would be a good time to get a puppy. I had gone without for quite awhile, ever since I lost Persi to kidney failure I think. Knowing nothing about finding a good breeder, I looked for breeders on the Internet, those close enough for me to pick up a puppy. Nothing in Albuquerque. I didn't know much about finding a breeder or the questions to ask. All I thought I knew to ask about was sebaceous cysts. I found Ash's Mystical Poodles in Las Vegas. This was a big breeder with lots of beautiful dogs on her page, and she had puppies and one for me!
The time to pick her up was right after I retired from teaching, May 2006.
My niece Michelle took me to visit her the day before she would come home with me. Caprice was the last of the pups to leave her mother, Monet, so there she was in the room with her mom. I cried when I saw her; I was so glad to have a poodle girl again.
I don't remember much about the flight home, with my little treasure below my plane seat. Her hard crate and goodies from the breeder, were checked in with luggage. What I do remember is that Michael fell asleep before he was to pick us up, and I sat in an empty airport at midnight with this beautiful little girl and a huge crate beside me.
She came with an umbilical hernia, not unheard of, but not mentioned by the breeder, and, as I discovered in a few days, worms. Both fixable, but questionable.
She was a love to watch. She chewed, she barked, she destroyed. I was in love!
She was an independent little cuss. So independent and full of energy, that I decided to get her a brother three months later Rondo (who's his own story).
No comments:
Post a Comment