Pulled: Tuesday July 5, 2011 from Dillon County Animal Shelter/Middle Mutts
Adoption commitment: Saturday July 16, 2011 by Save-A-Litter Pregnant Dog Rescue
Meet Middle Mutt’s Kris, and my Chester Iva. Foster #9.
Since I’ve rescued and fostered dogs for Middle Mutts now, I’m on their email list. The good thing about this is that I like Middle Mutts, and I’m glad they like me too. Yay!
The bad thing about this is that I get heartbreaking emails about pups on death row, and Scott would divorce me if I took all of them. He would consider divorcing me if I took another one as a Fisk Foster, leaving us the responsibility of finding a home for him/her, since we’ve yet to find a home for Chester Edisto. So, after getting that first heartbreaking email, I responded to Kerri, one of my Middle Mutts contacts, explaining that I would gladly pull and foster any animal with an adoption or rescue commitment in hand.
Kerri emailed me back and asked if I’d be willing to take a very pregnant yellow lab. Chester Iva already has a rescue commitment. There is a rescue that works, particularly, to save pregnant mothers and their pups. The problem is that this rescue is in Philadelphia, and Chester Iva is due to deliver any day.
“Could you take her?” Kerri asked. “We’d much rather have her out of the shelter asap and transport her once the pups are a week or two old.”
“Of course,” I said. So, after a First-Year English meeting, the kids and I set off for the Dillon County Animal Shelter. When Chester Iva came out, I was so shocked by how very pregnant she was that I forgot to ask all the important questions: about age, about delivery expectations, etc. I just remember thinking that she looked like a goat, and also having flashbacks to the final days of my pregnancy with Jack. — during which time I looked a bit like a goat myself.
Whenever she panted on the two hour drive home, I thought, “Please don’t have your babies in the car.” Arina, trying to be helpful, would say things like, “Maybe she has to throw-up. Remember? Like you did, Mom? In a bag, in the toilet, in a bowl, [well, you get the idea].”
Since we’ve gotten Iva home, she seems to be enjoying her new surroundings. And I’ve never had a dog enjoy a bath so much. She would have let me scrub her with shampoo all day, I think. She’s a super sweet girl and an enthusiastic tail-wagger, though she is afraid of overhead bridges. She rode shotgun on the drive home, and ducked every time we went under one.
I’ve titled the photo, below, Iva’s official pregnancy photo. Here she is in all of her pregnant glory:
And here she is getting some much needed rest:
More details after the birth. Perhaps I’ll revisit The Adventures of Milo and Otis. I’m glad to know that I wasn’t traumatized by Sondra’s birthing scene for naught.
Fostering Chester 
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