🍃A Leafy Pile of Drawings and Ramblings🍃

This all started when a guy from our church announced that he recently found out he has cancer. My dad asked if there was anything he could do to help out and the guy asked if he could bring a pup to a potential buyer this weekend. Sounds easy enough. My dad agrees. Church guy gets some really bad news and has to be rushed out of state for emg treatment. He isn’t expected to live a long time, and he asked my dad to take care of all 8 puppies/Mama dog and sell them as quickly as possible. My dad goes to take care of the pups and sees that the guy’s house and yard is an absolute mess. There’s junk and trash strewn all over the lawn…and the inside of the house is just a straight-up hoarding situation. The collies are in a stuffy garage that’s equally crammed with junk. There’s used pee pads and dog waste everywhere. It reeks. Mama dog is absolutely terrified and growls at my dad. She doesn’t let him get close to her, but she doesn’t try to stop him from getting near the pups. As soon as I get off work, I head over there to see if I can make any progress with Mama. She immediately growls and hides from us. I found some old looking treats that I tossed her way. It takes a little while for her to come out, but she when she does, she gobbles the treats up and looks like she wants more. She eventually gets confident enough to take them from my hand, but darts away as soon as she’s got it. As bad as we hated to, had to leave them there that night. We didn’t have anything set up for them, and it was too late to get what we needed. Plus, there was no way Mama was letting us get her out of there without trapping her… Or so we thought. The next day, she slowly crept up to me while I was gathering up the puppies. After some baby-talking her, she snuggled up to me and let me pet her. I took more treats out, and slipped a slip leash on her while she was distracted. We got her loaded into a crate and then we all got the heck out of there. Thanks to a friend of mine, we found someone who raises border collies that was willing to take a few off our hands the same day. He was originally only going to take a female, but after hearing how bad their situation was and seeing for himself, he ended so taking 3. We all totally expected Mama to be unnerved and not to come to us once we got her home…but honestly, she just looked relieved. She let all of us pet her and she went to eating right away. She had this old leather collar on that was so rusty we couldn’t take it off, so we had to take a knife and cut it off her. Poor thing has a bald spot where that collar has rubbed it raw. Apparently, her name is Princess Sheba….they sure didn’t treat her like one. Their neighbor has been feeding the rest of their border collies. There all outside in their own small, filthy individual pens and on a chain at the same time. One of them is completely secluded from the rest and his cage is completely sealed off with tarp. He’s absolutely crazy. All of them are. They’re unsocialized and act aggressive. You can’t freaking treat dogs like that and expect any different though. They didn’t ask us to rehome them…I don’t think we could even if we tried. I’m pretty sure that’s where Sheba was kept while she wasn’t pregnant. It infuriates me. She so nervous and unsure—not been exposed to much. She’s smart though. Very treat motivated and sweet once she’s comfortable with you. She’s gonna make someone a great dog once she comes out of her shell. If we didn’t already have Izzy, I’d insist on keeping her. I’m afraid they’re not going to get along to well. We haven’t allowed them to meet each other. But Sheba can hear and smell Izzy when I take her outside to walk and she has a screaming fit. When I brought the puppies inside to give them their first bath. We allowed Izzy to meet one. And after a minute of careful sniffing, she decides puppies are terrifying and she bolted to the couch to hide from it. I don’t know if she was expecting Sheba to come out and attack her, or if she legitimately forgot what a puppy is, but she wasn’t having it. xD She’s usually pretty eager to see other dogs, so her reaction took us all by surprise. The puppies look SO much better now though. They went from looking like this: To this! The bath really helped to fluff their fur out, and they are soo soft now! We washed Sheba’s belly and legs, too. Didn’t go for a whole bath cause we were afraid to stress her out too much, but she did good. Poor thing is skin and bones right now. She would look awful right now if it wasn’t for her long hair. She and the pups are getting dewormer, vitamins, and all the food they want to eat now and think we’re on the right track. It’s a LOT of work cleaning up their messes…but I’m going to miss them terribly when they’re gone. Whatever happens, I will make sure they go to good homes and NEVER go back to that old lifestyle.