Hi, my name is Cricket and I live in Gadsden Alabama with my humans, Mum and Pops. They are so good to me and love me very much, but it sure did not start out that way for me. My new home is filled with interesting sounds and smells and I wake up very early each morning when my Mum’s coffee pot starts grinding beans very loudly! I jump straight up from my snuggle spot in their bed where I sleep under the big blue quilt that my Mum made.
Pops gets up with me to take me outside to “peep” and “poop” before doing anything else. We have a big backyard that has a fence around it to keep me safe from cars and other animals because I am so small. My doggie mom was a Yorkshire Terrier and although I don’t remember her, I have seen pictures of other dogs like her and I am sure she was very beautiful.
We don’t talk about my doggie dad because frankly, no one knows who he was. My doggie mom got loose from her own backyard before I was born and was gone from home several hours before her humans found her. A couple of months later, my three sisters and I were born. We all looked different from my doggie mom, and also different from each other, but she loved us just the same. She was always licking us and feeding us, but I don’t think her humans liked us very much. We got yelled at a lot and sooner than we wanted, we had to go away. The big ugly man put us in a dirty box and said we were going for a ride in his car.
We drove for a long time and then all of a sudden we stopped. We had never been in a car before and we were very scared. We cried and cried and that made the big ugly man even madder. When he stopped the car, he took our box and tossed us out onto the tall grass, box and all. One of my sisters bumped her head on a rock and the other two bumped each other’s heads while still in the air. I fell real hard on my nose and then everything went dark. I could hear my sisters crying and crying, but I could not see them. One sister found me and began licking my face. Ouch! It hurt so badly for her to lick. I know she was trying to help me, but why did it hurt so much? She kept on licking and finally I could see her with just one of my eyes. For some reason I could not see out of the other eye, but it wasn’t hurting so I got up and started walking around.
We were so scared because we didn’t know where we were or what we would do without our doggie mom to take care of us. We eventually found each other and all got real close. The box we came in was upside down so we couldn’t get into it to keep warm. We were shaking because it was raining and we were so cold. Eventually we got warm from snuggling so closely and we all fell asleep, but our tummies were rumbling; we were soooo hungry. It had been a long time since we had any warm milk and hard food. I don’t know how long we slept but all of a sudden we woke up when we heard humans talking. Some ladies had found us in the tall grass and they were talking to us. We were frightened because we did not know if they would hurt us like the big ugly man had done.
We tried to run but they picked us all up and put us into the dirty box lying beside us. We began to cry and instead of hurting us, they picked us up and pet us and kissed us and talked so nicely to us. No one but our doggie mom had ever been that sweet to us. One of the humans kept looking at me and saying something so sadly about my eye. One of the ladies was crying about it too. I wanted to tell her it didn’t hurt but I knew she couldn’t understand me.
They talked and talked and soon they put us into their car and we were riding again. One lady kept her hand in the box and we got real close to it to stay warm. I sure was hoping they would bring us back to our doggie mom, but I sure didn’t want to see that big ugly man again. We rode a little while and I wanted to fall asleep but I was so afraid. Finally, the car stopped. The lady with her hand in the box picked me up and the other two ladies picked up my sisters. We were being carried into a very big house.
As soon as we were inside, the smells became so strange! I had never smelled things like that before. The sounds were strange also. I could hear lots of crying, yelling, and screaming from behind the big green door. It sounded like there were other dogs back there, and then I heard a stranger sound, “meow.” I sure hoped we would not be staying there. The three ladies talked to the nice man behind a desk and they seemed to be talking about my sisters and me. They kept looking at me and touching my face and shaking their heads in the strangest way. They looked us over and over and then the most horrible thing happened! They took my sisters behind the big green door and I never saw them again. Then the three friendly ladies said goodbye and the man took me through another door and put me onto a cold hard table. I shook and shook, partly from cold but also because I was so scared.
But then a nice thing happened. A small little lady came over to me and began to talk to me and then pet me. She looked at my face and talked to the man from behind the desk. They put something into my back and I fell asleep right there on the table. When I woke up, I wasn’t on the cold hard table anymore. I wasn’t in the dirty box anymore and I surely wasn’t with my sisters or my doggie mom. I was in a small gray metal box and there was some food and water in a clean dish right there beside me. I was lying on a soft towel. But there was something on my head. I could not see what it was, but the eye that I couldn’t see out of was hurting. I cried a little bit when I woke up but as soon as I smelled the food in the dish, I got up as quickly as I could to eat. My tummy was so very hungry and my mouth was thirsty too. The food and water was yummy to my tummy!
After I ate, I went to the front of my box and saw that I was not the only puppy in that room. There were boxes everywhere with other puppies in them. They were all crying and barking. Some sounded scared, some sounded lonely, and some sounded like they were missing their doggie moms and her good warm milk just like I was. Another dog across from me had something wrapped around his leg and he seemed to have trouble walking. In the box underneath him, was that funny looking “puppy” that said “meow” over and over and over. She had something around her middle that looked like the thing I could feel around my eye.
I decided that this must be where all the broken animals lived. The nice small lady came into the room and went to each metal box and talked to everyone. I wondered if she would talk to me also. Sure enough, it was my turn at last. She talked a long time to me and although I could not understand everything, I felt so much better when she was there. She made me feel as though she really cared that my eye was hurting and that she really cared about all the broken animals there.
Part 1 | Part 2
