Do You Believe in Miracles?
Imagine having pets all your life then suddenly being told completely out of the blue, that there will be no more dogs in your house. I could not have been more surprised nor dismayed when my husband told me this after we lost our 14-year-old dog, Rusty the year I turned 50. I was like, what do you mean, no more dogs?! My dogs were my fur babies and since we had no children of our own, I was devastated and distraught, my heart breaking at the thought of never being able to care for another dog. There was no consoling me and I remember crying every day.
Mama
If you’ve ever had an animal, you know what I mean when I say I kept expecting to hear the clicking of nails on the floor or the tinkling of tags on a collar, but there was nothing to be heard, nothing but silence.
A few weeks after my husband announced this, I sat down and asked if we could discuss his decision, asking if he meant we would never have any more dogs. He hemmed and hawed around then said, “Well, I will consider it after you retire”, knowing full well I had five years until I could retire. I countered with, “How about if something happens that we know is just meant to be.” He laughed at this and replied, “Sure.” I knew that in his mind he didn’t believe. Do you believe the Universe is listening to our heart’s desires?
Do you believe in miracles?
Saturday, April 7th, 2012 it had been a relatively cool day; the sun was out for a short period of time early in the afternoon when my husband and I were relaxing on the front porch of our cabin in southern Ohio. He pointed down the drive and said with a sigh, “Well, there is your dog.” I immediately perked up. There was a reddish-golden colored dog sauntering across the drive about 150 feet from the cabin. I called out to her and she stopped and slunk down into a submissive-like state. We called out to her and after a few minutes she eventually made it up to the cabin.
She looked half starved to death. You could count ever single rib, her hip bones stuck out noticeably, and it was then we noticed she had been nursing pups. The condition of this poor mama broke my heart. I told my husband we had to feed her and asked him to please go get anything we had in the frig for her. While he was fixing her some food, I sat on the ground and petted her, she was such a good and loving dog. She even let me look in her mouth at her teeth so I could see possibly how old she might be. To my surprise there was no tartar on her teeth at all. She had to be around just a year old. She lay down and rolled onto her back, begging for her belly to be rubbed. Her poor teats were bloody and raw where her pups had been trying to nurse. I kept petting her and telling her we were going to feed her and when she got done eating, we would go find her pups.
She seemed to understand every word I said.
My husband came back up a few minutes later with a nice size bowl of food. We had leftover scrambled eggs and potatoes, two venison medallions and about 2 cups of BBQ venison he mixed up in the bowl. She gobbled the contents in four huge gulps, with me trying to get her to slow down. After she finished eating, she lay down on the drive and rolled over wanting another belly rub. Satiated, she closed her eyes and dozed off for a short nap.
When she woke up, she sauntered down the hill on the side of the cabin. I whistled for her a couple times and when she didn’t come back, I got up and went down the hill. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t behind the cabin, nor in the woods, nor up the right side. I went back to the porch…she was gone. The sadness enveloped me. She would have made a very good dog. Someone at one time had obviously loved her and she had an awesome disposition.
About an hour or so later we were sitting around the fire ring. We had eaten dinner and were drinking a beer chatting away when I heard it… so faintly I thought I was imagining it. I listened again then turned to him and said, “I hear puppies.” He, in his mocking way said, “You’re nuts!” I said, “No, I hear puppies, I swear I hear puppies.” At this point I am looking all over the woods area below and both sides of the fire ring. I listened again then turned my head up towards the driveway. “OH MY GOD”, I cried out loud. My husband stood up, immediately reaching for his 380 said, “What?” Pointing to the driveway I said, “Oh my God! “
“Look, I’m not crazy I really do hear puppies!"
Unbelievably walking down the driveway was the mama dog with three puppies trailing behind her. Two nipping her heels and one big fat one crying the whole way because it couldn’t keep up. I got up out of my chair and went half way up the hill. I sank to the ground and waited as mama walked by me and the two pups at her feet scrambled into my lap. Tears of absolute joy were running down my face. “Oh my God, are you kidding me” I kept saying over and over again. Laughing and crying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Pure JOY!
Puppy feeding frenzy!
Our thoughts really do manifest our realities!
There were two girls and a boy. The two girls tried to venture over towards their mama, but she growled at them and wouldn’t let them near her. I held onto all three puppies at once and we took them into the basement kitchen of the cabin and fed them milk with rice, which they gobbled right up. I, of course wanted to take them all inside with me for the night, but that was not going to happen, so we got a tall box for the puppies and lined it with towels and left them on the back porch. We pulled out Rusty’s bed and put on the front porch for mama. It was difficult for me to sleep knowing they were all outside, but I finally fell into a deep slumber.
When I woke up, my husband was on the front porch drinking his coffee and smoking a cigarette. I looked around for mama, but she wasn’t there. “Where is she?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. “She was here when I got up and first came out. I went back inside for my second cup of coffee and came back out, and she was gone.” He explained. “What do you mean she is gone? She is the dog you said I could keep!” By this point I was getting emotional and ran around back to check on the puppies. They were all still in their box excited to get out for the day. I fixed them some food and got them out to eat and play, keeping a keen eye on them, lest one of them stray off, but they weren’t going anywhere. I put them back in their box, happy and satiated, they all curled on top of one another and fell asleep.
I went back up to the front porch, where my husband announced we would go find the mama dog. We searched for seven hours that day, looking for her and when it started to get dusk, knew we had to leave since driving in the dark in the dense forest was difficult and I had to work the next morning. We packed up our belongings including all three puppies and drove home.
If it had been up to me, I would have kept all three puppies.
But I knew he would never let me so I kept telling my husband he had to let me keep one of them, that he had promised!
Buddy today
Once we were home, I told him he could pick which puppy we could keep knowing full well my preferences were males and his females and trying not to show favoritism to the little tan and white male who had already captured my heart. He finally acquiesced and said we could keep the male, but I had to find homes for the other two. I literally burst into happy tears. My prayers had been answered, and I was once again a fur baby mom to a beautiful little boy, named Buddy!
A cousin took the larger female and a co-worker the smaller one and when I took Buddy to the veterinarian that Wednesday, he announced Buddy was six weeks old. That day was exactly six weeks to the day that we lost Rusty…
I already believed there are no coincidences, but that beautiful mama dog who bought me her puppies made me believe in miracles. She came to us on that cool spring day to check us out and decided we were worthy of her puppies. We never saw her again, but I thank her and the Universe daily for bringing me my precious Buddy.