Blue Bear's Sister & Brother

Blue Bear at 5 weeks

In the beginning ...

This is one of the early pictures of the pups. I am backtracking, tracing my steps of how I became a pitbull mommy --- taking on a job and dog I never sought.

Did it begin with The Dog Whisperer? I started watching the TV show about six months before this pitbull incident, and I felt empowered and encouraged with every episode. My empowerment and encouragement didn't have much to do with dogs; Daisy and Max were still as untrained as ever. I appreciated The Dog Whisperer more as a teacher and communicator because he had a simple message and was able to help most people he encountered. But through osmosis I did absorb some principles of being a pack leader and understanding dogs' needs of exercise, discipline and affection. I really thought about those needs in relation to my teenage sons (16 and 20). Parenthood had not been easy in the teen years (as my husband says, "I suck at it"); we tended to be impulsive and lacked calmness and consistency when dealing with our sons.

I became mommy of a breed doomed to destruction ...

In the beginning there were Daisy and Max. Daisy was a mixed breed "senior" of 8 or 9 years, and Max was a dominant dachshund of 3 years. Then in early December 2006, three pitbull puppies were dropped on my son Rob; they were about 2 1/2 weeks old and were sick from aspirating formula (bottle fed incorrectly). Rob was living in a farmhouse with a friend who owned two male yellow labs, and although he did his best to care for the pit pups, after three sleepless nights he brought them to me. I was unaware that pups so young could survive without their mother --- ah, their mother; it's a sad story; we'll leave it for another post.

We took the pups to the vet and they kept the two weakest ones for a day --- the black/white male and the grey male--- and gave them IVs for dehydration. They x-rayed them both using one plate and stated that the grey one had the most fluid on his lungs, slimming his chances of survival. Later in the afternoon I picked up the pups and the vet tech instructed me how to tube feed them since they were too weak to bottle feed. We were giving them 10cc s of puppy formula every couple of hours. All three pups sounded very congested.