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Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family
Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family
Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family
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Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family

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Named a Best Feel-Good Book by The Washington Post

In the tradition of the beloved New York Times bestsellers Marley and Me and Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love, a charming, inspirational memoir about empathy, resilience, kindness, and an adorable deaf blind pink dog.

When Connecticut veterinarian Melissa Shapiro gets a call about a tiny deaf blind puppy rescued from a hoarding situation in need of fostering, she doesn’t hesitate to say, “yes.” Little does she know how that decision will transform her, her family, and legions of admirers destined to embrace the saga of the indomitable pink pup.

One of the most anxious dogs Melissa had ever encountered, the traumatized Piglet weighed under two pounds upon his welcome into the Shapiro household—which included Melissa’s husband Warren and their three college-aged kids, plus six other rescued dogs. After weeks of reassurance, and lots of love, Piglet connected, gained confidence, and his extraordinary spirit emerged. Melissa soon forged a powerful bond with Piglet, allowing the two to communicate without sound or visual cues.

Two months later, when the day arrived to say good-bye to the now dashing, six-pound pink boy dog with the larger than life spirit, Melissa faced a heart-wrenching decision. Could she hand him over to someone willing to give Piglet the full-time attention he required or could she adapt her schedule and her household to make a permanent place for him in her life and work? Of course, the answer was simple: love would find a way.

Curious, engaged, and incredibly eager to learn, Piglet quickly became part of the family. What started out as a few simple Facebook posts of Piglet and his pack rapidly evolved into a global celebration of Piglet’s infectiously positive mindset. Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family fully illustrates this heartwarming story of one special little puppy with a purpose to teach the power of empathy, love, and kindness.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAtria Books
Release dateAug 3, 2021
ISBN9781982167196
Author

Melissa Shapiro

Melissa Shapiro, DVM, is a veterinarian, a lifelong animal welfare advocate, and mom to three children and many disabled rescued dogs and birds. Since bringing Piglet home in 2017, she has used his social media platform to educate, advocate, and inspire others to adopt pets with special needs. Her nonprofit organization, Piglet International Inc., supports the Piglet Mindset Educational Outreach, a free downloadable educational program that teaches growth mindset, acceptance, inclusion, empathy, and kindness to students and others in the community, as well as various animal rights causes. She lives in Connecticut with her husband Warren, six rescued dogs, three rescued birds, and Piglet, the deaf blind pink puppy. 

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    Piglet: The Unexpected Story of a Deaf, Blind, Pink Puppy and His Family by Melissa Shapiro is a 2021 Atria Books publication. This book wins inspirational story of the year! Melissa Shapiro, a veterinarian with a thriving practice, a busy family, and a large pet and bird population of her own, agreed to temporarily foster a little puppy that was blind and deaf. Melissa never dreamed she would eventually give Piglet, his forever home, much less see him become a superstar social media sensation. His journey was one that require a great deal of patience, a whole lot of work, and loads of love and affection- but this little dog’s spirit would teach and inspire countless children to meet the challenges they faced. This little guy is just adorable, and his story will absolutely melt your heart!! Follow him on Instagram and Facebook- but also read his book. Knowing his journey will help you appreciate just how far this little guy has come and what a wonderful, vibrant disposition he has. He does great work- but he couldn’t have done it without Melissa and her family. They, too, are inspirational and I’m so glad they recognized Piglet’s potential. Melissa, her family, and Piglet have touched so many lives and should be an example to us all. I am absolutely smitten with Piglet!!

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Piglet - Melissa Shapiro

PROLOGUE

A MOST UNEXPECTED, VERY SPECIAL GUEST

THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2018

ANNA WARE JACKSON SCHOOL PLAINVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS

We’re almost there! I announced with a small sigh of relief as I caught sight of the street sign that promised we were nearly at our destination.

Almost there, I repeated a little louder, turning around from the passenger seat to reassure our canine population in the back—two of them buckled in on the seat, and the littlest two, each asleep in their own carriers on the floor, that as soon as we get there, everyone gets to go pee!

Our two back-seat passengers both pricked up their ears, each turning their heads in my direction with their version of dog smiles.

From as far back as I can remember, probably as young as five or six years old, I have always talked—and listened—to animals. That was around the same age that I realized with lasting certainty that when I grew up I was going to become a veterinarian. For some it’s a profession, for me a calling—the only one thing I ever wanted to do.

My husband glanced over to give me a skeptical look, as if to ask, Didn’t you say we were almost there about fifteen minutes ago?

After a beat, Warren—whom our three kids and I all think kind of looks like Will Ferrell if he wore glasses, only more athletic—shook his head and laughed, being the good sport that he almost always is. This was not how he’d hoped to spend a Thursday during one of the more demanding times of the year for his high-pressure job working at a major bio-pharmaceutical company.

With a hopeful nod, I promised, You’ll see, this will be fun. It’s gonna be worth it.

The two-and-a-half-hour trip from our house in Westport, Connecticut, to Plainville, Massachusetts, to pay a surprise visit to a classroom of third graders had looked like an easy drive on our GPS, but we had hit a few traffic snarls and the trek was now taking forever. The day itself had begun gloomily with overcast skies, but the dogs don’t change their routines just because there’s bad weather. We still started the day as we always did, making sure that all seven members of our dog pack were up and out to do their morning business—in two groups—and were fed and accounted for before we loaded up the van.

Our morning routine is elaborate, though pretty well set, and everyone knows the drill. Unless the weather is irresistible, we don’t do too much playing in the mornings—especially not on a day when some of us have to get on the road by nine. On this particular day, once inside, everyone lined up to be fed, each in her or his self-proclaimed spot. After eating, the dogs waited at attention while I prepped food for my birds—each canine watching intently as I cut up the birdie veggies and pieces of cooked eggs. The little scrambled egg pockets that I use for dispensing pills to the different dogs who need them were, as usual, the featured delicacy of the morning. Moving faster than normal, after I fed Lukita, our blue parakeet, I ran up the stairs, cleaned the cages of the three rescued house sparrows—Sunny, Betty, and Blind Boy Willie—and filled their dishes with fresh food and water. Before it was time to leave, I let everyone out again, all the while talking to them and letting them know the agenda for the day.

I’m always amazed at how the dogs pay full attention to me when I’m talking, carefully listening for words they recognize. On such hectic mornings as this one, I do sometimes wonder whatever happened to our two-dog MAX (as in maximum) rule. Somehow we make it work.

The hardest part this day had been reassuring the animals who weren’t coming with us that we’d be back before too long. Each of our dogs has a job, and one job they all share is to support one another, as I reminded Dean, Annie, and Gina. Dean is our handsome Lab mix who loves car rides but also enjoys being a couch potato. Annie is our exceptionally sweet, shy, tan terrier mix. And Gina is our beautiful white Australian shepherd/border collie mix, who is deaf in one ear and has vision deficits, along with separation anxiety when I’m not nearby.

Each of the three watched me go with stoic resolve while Lukita, chirping away, put in his foreign-flavored two cents as I ran out the door into the morning mist.

Once on the road, the clouds finally began to lift, and the sun broke through by the time we exited the highway. We picked up speed briefly, but as soon as we made it to the local streets of Plainville, we hit a maze of stop signs, right turns, left turns, and wrong turns. Just when I started to get nervous that we might never arrive, we came around a corner and spotted the elementary school.

We’re here! I announced as we pulled into the crowded parking lot and began to scout around for a vacant space. A couple of tails began to wag. Susie, our gray terrier, the sweetest and most senior of our seven dogs at twelve years old, shook herself into an alert position. She understood that it was time to go to work. Next to her, Evie, our five-year-old vivacious white poodle/terrier mix, also seemed to beam, craning her neck to look outside and confirm that I was telling the truth about our arrival.

Before I’d gotten a chance to get the littlest ones out of their carriers, I realized that there were other cars parking and excited-looking adults hurrying toward the entrance to the school, many of them dressed in some shade of pink.

Pink? For a split second, I thought that was odd, maybe just coincidental. Was there something else happening at school that day besides our planned surprise visit to the classroom of Tricia Fregeau? As I glanced down at my own pink T-shirt, it occurred to me that the other adults in pink could be connected in some way to our arrival. Well, not our arrival, so much as that of the very special guest of honor.

Hmmm? I heard Warren say from outside the van, where he was pulling out leashes and setting up the stroller, clearly having the same thoughts as me. From inside her carrier, Zoey, a six-pound three-year-old chocolate Chihuahua/Yorkie-Maltese mix, let out an eager bark, which sounded close to Let me out! I want to play and be part of the action!

Last but not least, I opened up the carrier holding tiny Piglet, who yawned and stretched, waking up from his beauty sleep. With a gentle tap—over his shoulders and back—to let him know it was time to go out and find a spot for peeing that was to his liking (never easy), I couldn’t resist getting in a couple of kisses and snuggles. Even though I am keenly aware that he can’t hear a word that I say to him, and though I know he will never be able to see me, I have always talked to him out loud with gestures and expressions. In his own way, I am convinced, he understands.

Piggy Lee, I asked, using one of my umpteen nicknames for him, ready? Everyone’s waiting.

If a dog could shrug, that’s exactly what Piglet did, with a kind of amazing confidence that made me imagine him saying, Ready? I was born ready! And then, holding his leash as I set him on the ground alongside Zoey, we started to follow Warren, who was pushing the stroller and holding the leashes attached to Susie and Evie. We turned toward the main entrance and I watched the five-and-a-half-pound Piglet—handsome in a striped, collegiate kind of red-white-and-blue T-shirt—pause, take a moment to compose himself, and then let loose with a twirly, wiggly dance.

Unbelievable. He almost seemed to know he was a rock star and that this was his day, that he had come on a long car drive with three members of his Inclusion Pack (as we later dubbed it), with his human Dog-Mom, me, and his Favorite Dad, to put smiles on the faces of children who had no idea that they were going to get to meet him in person.

Like everything else that had happened over the previous fifteen months since the tiny, one-pound, deaf blind pink puppy had entered our lives, this entire outing had come about in the most unexpected of ways. After having Piglet for a very short time, I had started posting videos and pictures of him on my Facebook page. Within a month, at the suggestion of friends and family, I created his own page and called it Piglet, the deaf blind pink puppy. One of my main goals was to get the word out about the importance of fostering, adopting, and caring for special-needs animals and about the little-known condition that had caused Piglet’s disabilities. As a Chihuahua/ dachshund mix, Piglet was the product of two dapple-colored (multicolored or splotchy) parents. Dapple-to-dapple breeding results in a twenty-five percent chance of the offspring being born double dapple—a mostly white color pattern linked to congenital ear and eye defects that commonly result in partially or completely deaf and/or blind puppies.

To my surprise, the Piglet posts gained a lot of traction. There was something about him in his pictures and videos that gave complete strangers a feeling of connection and license to express their emotions in text. There were dozens of comments on any one post, and I took the time to read each and every one. I got to know many of Piglet’s followers quite well. One comment by Tricia Fregeau stood out, and I felt compelled to respond.

TRICIA:

The fact that Piglet is able to be successful in spite of his limitations is a testament to the patience and hard work of his human parents. Thank you for taking such good care of him and letting him see this side of humanity rather than the side that he started life with! I can’t wait to show Piglet videos to my third-grade students so they can see the amazing things that can be accomplished no matter who or what stands in your way!

PIGLET, THE DEAF BLIND PINK PUPPY:

I can provide you with a personalized video for your students if you’d like.

TRICIA:

I would love that!

A short time later, in the fall of 2017, I created a PowerPoint presentation called The Story of Piglet, the deaf blind pink puppy and posted it as a video on YouTube so it was easily accessed by Tricia and eventually other teachers. I had no idea exactly what Tricia had planned until she reported the response to the video:

TRICIA:

They love him!! We finished his story this week and the students brainstormed about Piglet’s mindset in overcoming challenges. Thank you! We love our little pink mascot!

Soon after that, I received a photo from Tricia that showed me what her third-grade students thought about Piglet and his mindset. On a large white poster with a photo of the deaf blind pink puppy in the middle of it and a caption at the top reading, A Piglet Mindset is…, words and phrases suggested by students were printed out in bright pink marker:

POSITIVE—FRIENDLY—PROUD—BRAVE—TRUSTING

OPTIMISTIC—NEVER GIVING UP—HARD-WORKING

CONFIDENT—UNIQUE—COURAGEOUS

SMART—STRONG—EXCITED ABOUT EVERYTHING

LOVABLE—ENERGETIC—HAPPY—LEARNING NEW THINGS

MAKING THE MOST OF WHAT YOU HAVE—PRODUCTIVE—KEEP TRYING

NEVER STOPPING—FOLLOWING DREAMS

Their creativity inspired mine. Over the course of the school year, I created three more PowerPoint videos to illustrate specific examples of Piglet’s positive attitude toward facing his challenges. The students and Ms. Fregeau would often send messages together with questions and comments about how Piglet had made a difference in their lives and how he was helping them believe they could make a difference for others. She kept a basket in the classroom filled with handmade soft pink, floppy Piglet ears on headbands that the children could wear to get into a Piglet State of Mind. Parents loved the program. One mom reported that whenever her daughter was acting out, she’d overhear her asking herself, What would Piglet do? and that would calm her down long enough to come up with her own way to cope with whatever was bothering her.

Tricia offered to let me share her lesson plans and aspects of her program on Piggy’s pages, which in turn inspired other teachers to introduce Piglet to their students. As the daughter of a teacher, I was thrilled to honor my mother’s passion and talent this way. We began to discuss the possibility of a visit to the classroom from Piglet and me. As a backup plan—because schedules and logistics could always change last-minute—we settled on the idea of a Skype session. The closer we came to the end of the year, though, the more determined I was to make a live-and-in-person visit happen. Soon the elements for the surprise came together, along with the added idea of throwing a Pink Party to celebrate everything the students had learned from adopting a Piglet Mindset.

There would be pink balloons and pink refreshments, and all the students in the class would be encouraged to wear pink. Naturally, for the Pink Party, all the third graders could wear the pink felt Piglet ears in solidarity with their tiny pink mascot. Tricia would inform her class that they were going to do a Skype call with Piglet for them to watch on the SMART Board—a projection screen—in order for them to include him in their party.

We devised a plan for the students to be seated on the carpet in front of the SMART Board, waiting for us to appear on-screen, so that we could discreetly enter from the back of the room and call out, Surprise!

From the minute we approached the main entrance to the school, it was clear that every adult—from the administrators, teachers, and staff, to parents and other special visitors—was in on the surprise. With Piglet posed in a proud, seated position in his stroller, lined with plenty of cozy blankets to make him comfortable, you would have thought that royalty had just arrived at the Jackson School in Plainville. A handful of parents and office staff were right there in the lobby and gathered around to have their own viewing, some of them snapping selfies with the little pink celebrity and with the other dogs too.

When I checked to see how Warren was enjoying himself so far, I could tell he was warming up to the experience. But nothing could have prepared us for what happened next, when we were shown to the door of Ms. Fregeau’s third-grade classroom.

There were parents and teachers standing all around the perimeter of the room, holding up their phones to capture the kids’ reactions. And there was Tricia Fregeau, who was in the middle of announcing that the Skype call was about to start when she signaled to us to enter.

Every adult in the room called out, Surprise! as Piglet rolled in, sitting up at attention in his chariot. While I pushed the stroller, the three dogs—Susie, Evie, and Zoey—bounded in with Warren in tow. The reaction was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before or since. Warren said it was as close to the first time the Beatles came to America as anything he had experienced in his own life.

Every single child, and almost every adult, in the room began to cry. I cried. Ms. Fregeau wiped her tears. All the parents cried. Warren did his best to maintain composure, but he joined the tear fest as well. It was one of the most breathtaking, heartwarming, tear-jerking, and unexpected experiences that we had ever had. That is saying a lot because Warren and I have three children, now college-age and starting their real-world lives, who are each extraordinary in their own way, and who have given us untold numbers of proud moments.

As the visit went on, I felt a level of pride that could not be put into words. Throughout our time in the classroom, Piglet was calm and regal, demonstrating with poise and elegance all the things he could do. The Piglet Show, as we call our performance of tap-signal tricks, was a smash hit. His three sister dogs, whom I would always prep by telling them, You’re going to be in the show today! really got into the scene.

The children stayed seated in sheer amazement, barely making a sound, so as not to miss anything. We began with the basics, demonstrating sit—which each dog would do, one by one. I would say, Zoey, sit! and she would. Susie, sit! and Evie, sit! Next, I said, Sit, Piglet! even though we all knew he couldn’t hear me, but at the same time I tapped him lightly on his lower back, right above his tail. Piggy responded to this familiar tap signal with an impeccable sit, lifting his head for the cookie that he knew was coming.

Piglet can do just what the other dogs can do! one little boy exclaimed. A chorus of agreement followed.

We moved on to demonstrating wait and how I could call each dog to come to me by name—Susie, Zoey, and Evie. Piglet sat waiting until I offered his tap signal to come to me, a gentle swipe under his chin. He came right over to join the other three dogs in a sit, at which time each got their treats. Next, we did a brief Q&A; I could not have been more impressed by the thoughtfulness of the questions from the third graders. Hands shot up in the air, and each question showed a striking amount of empathy and the desire to know about what it was really like to be Piglet. All four dogs sat looking out at the children, as though they were answering questions right along with me.

After the Q&A, I sat in a chair with Piglet in my lap, wrapped in a blanket, and all the kids lined up so they could come and meet him—one by one. Each child had a story to share. I have a blind dog too. We just adopted a puppy from a shelter. He’s very smart! One of the last children to approach us was a little boy with a blond crewcut and a big smile. He put his hand on Piglet’s head and then on his own. I asked, What are you doing? and he said, We have the same haircut.

Toward the end of this amazing day, I thought of something our daughter Rachael had said the first time she met Piglet when he was so much tinier, and so anxiety-ridden, and so very, very pink.

We had gone to help her move from one apartment to another in New York City, and we had brought Piglet along. Rachael, brilliant and beautiful, and a formidably gifted pianist, who was getting ready to start a promising career in the field of investment banking, had lovingly taken tiny baby Piglet in her arms. She looked down at him all snuggled in her coat and then looked up and said, I feel like I gave birth to him.

I totally understood how she felt. Holding him and caring for him is unlike my feelings for any of my other dogs. It’s not that I love him any more. It’s that I actually feel the tug of protectiveness and pride that I can only associate with motherhood. It’s just an inexplicable, almost embarrassing emotion that he elicits.

That was what I was feeling during the end-of-the-year Pink Party for Ms. Fregeau’s third graders. It was a rite of passage for Piglet, the deaf blind pink puppy. He had come so far, unexpectedly, and had touched so many lives in ways I never would have imagined.

In those moments, I like to think this book was born—a reminder to the world of how much we can accomplish by caring for our fellow beings, human and nonhuman, whether disabled or not, or simply an individual searching for a little extra consideration and kindness. There will always be too many abandoned and neglected animals in need of rescue or just overlooked and unwanted. But Piglet definitely came into our lives to teach us lessons. Just when you think you can’t open your heart any more than you already have, something can happen to help you discover that you have more to give. And what you get from being open to the unexpected in animals and in humans is the greatest gift you can ever receive.

There’s a Buddhist saying most of us have heard at one point or another that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In my experiences and observations—certainly with musical training and in my educational/professional journey—that proverb has been right on the money. But with Piglet, the unexpected twist was that ours was a case of when the teacher is ready, the student will appear.

Piglet, the deaf blind pink puppy, was that very student who showed up with such a capacity to learn, he put me on notice.

How did it happen? How did Piglet make his way into our lives, and how was he now getting ready to spark a global movement? The craziest part of the story is that, statistically speaking, it’s a miracle that he even made it into our care alive.

That’s the story I decided to write that day in Plainville—about a miracle puppy who dared to live.

PART ONE

RESCUE

Chapter 1

MEET THE SHAPIROS

Why say no, when you can say yes?

—Harold and Arline Foodman

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 2017

MILFORD, CONNECTICUT

There is very little I’ve forgotten about the winter day in early 2017 when I drove the twenty-five minutes or so from our house in Westport up I-95 to Milford, Connecticut—to the local Petco, where a pet adoption event was underway and where I’d promised to arrive around ten thirty in the morning.

Compared to how Saturdays usually go in my line of work as a house-call veterinarian, my list of concerns for the day was short and the schedule of things to do was relatively light. That may be exaggerating. Let’s just say as a mom of six dogs, four birds, and three human kids—ages seventeen to twenty-two whose well-being I tracked on a consistent basis—I recall greeting the day with an unusual sense of calm.

There was still snow on the ground from weeks of on-again-off-again heavy snowfall. From the moment I got out with the first three dogs of our six-pack—Susie, Annie, and Zoey—it felt like the temperature had dropped from earlier in the week. As they explored the backyard, even though it’s fully fenced in, I kept a watchful eye on each of them, as is my habit. The secret for tracking the six dogs and varying number of indoor birds that I have found most effective over the years is to count them. Literally, I count our dogs, naming them too, numerous times during the day and into the evening to be sure everyone is safe.

Outside—whether on a walk or in our fenced-in yard—I keep myself from being distracted by doing periodic head counts. That Saturday morning, cold as it was, nobody seemed to mind if we didn’t stay out super long, but they were also dawdling and sniffing around. What were they so interested in? I had to go check. We had been getting a lot of deer coming into the yard and leaving messes that our dogs considered a delicious delicacy. In the winter, the deer would come right over the fences as if they were on the track team doing hurdles. Easy in and easy out for them, while the dogs chased the deer like a pack of wolves.

There were plenty of hidden dangers that kept me on the lookout, especially with the smaller dogs who could suddenly be hauled off by one of the hawks or coyotes that were often spotted in the vicinity of our woodsy neighborhood. In late spring and summer, any one of our dogs might eat the highly toxic mushrooms that we could never fully banish from our grassy yard. That’s one reason why I began taking them out in two groups—to make sure they were supervised, and then when it was time to go inside, nobody would accidentally be left outside in the yard.

Lately, I had been keeping an extra eye on Susie, our scruffy gray terrier mix, who just seemed to be moving a bit more slowly. When I had first heard about Susie, ten years earlier, I was actually looking for a puppy for a client and had connected to Pet Matchmaker Rescue, run by Morgan Sokolow Gall, the daughter of a longtime client of my vet practice. It is common for Northeast rescue groups to partner with rescuers and shelters in the South, where the dog and cat overpopulation is exponentially worse than it is up North. Some Southern rescues have partner rescue groups all over the country. Morgan’s rescue organization, which was based in New England but later moved to California, worked with a number of rescuers and shelters in Tennessee. When I called, she told me about a volunteer named Trudy, who’d heard about a little scared gray dog that had been spotted hiding under a barn next to a kill shelter. After five days, Trudy—who named the terrified terrier mix Susie—set out to capture her. Trudy laid on the ground singing for hours until Susie, starving and covered with burrs, finally came out of hiding. Susie never made it into the shelter. Instead, Trudy put her in her car and took her home to foster. She cleaned her up, fed her, and weeks later, sent her off on a transport to Connecticut, where Morgan was holding a dog adoption event.

Five months earlier, we had lost our black Lab, Edie, which left us with two dogs—Lucy, a deaf border collie, and Wendy, a whippet. After some discussion, Warren and I had decided that we were happy with two dogs and with abiding by the so-called two-dog MAX rule. We were busy, my list of veterinary patients was growing longer by the day, we had a full house of very active kids and fragile birds, and two dogs was a good balance.

But after hearing Susie’s story, despite Warren’s insistence that we had to stick to the rule, I couldn’t resist going to see her at Morgan’s adoption event—held in front of her aunt and uncle’s liquor store near the train station in Darien. Just to get another opinion, I took our eight-year-old daughter Ellie with me. The moment I met Susie and saw how she interacted with people and other dogs, wagging her tail nonstop, I fell in love with her—and so did Ellie. There was no question. She was meant for us. Ellie and I couldn’t imagine driving home without her.

Warren was not receptive when I texted him on my old-school flip phone. He emphatically said, NO! Do not bring another dog home. I do NOT want three dogs!

Certain that Warren would fall in love with Susie as we had, Ellie and I decided to bring her home anyway. And of course—he fell for her pretty much instantaneously. Susie was the small, sweet, adorable terrier he and I had secretly been looking for—just not admitting it because we were trying to be practical.

The three dogs were all great friends. Whenever we went out, the three would go downstairs in the den to lie on the couch together and keep each other company. Lucy the border collie, Wendy the whippet, and Susie would often come to work with me. Sometimes when I’d bring just Susie alone, she’d miss the other two. Years later, when Lucy died during the summer while the kids were away at camp, Susie bonded even more closely with Wendy, who was already fourteen and not doing well. Just two months later, we lost Wendy, leaving Susie, a pack dog, very depressed. She moped around all day, only perking up when she met another dog. Clearly, Susie didn’t want to be an only dog. So, after two months of watching her pine for companionship, Warren finally said, It’s time to add dog number two. That turned out to be Gina, a white Australian shepherd/border collie mix who was deaf in one ear and had mild vision deficits.

Gina had come from a rescue organization in Georgia run by veterinarian Dr. Gloria Andrews. At four and a half months old, Gina was wild and skittish. In addition to not being able to hear out of one ear, which led to her not being able to tell where sound was coming from, Gina had been through a terrible ordeal before we adopted her. Susie seemed to understand that Gina had disabilities, or at least that she needed extra patience and loving attention. It was so sweet to see our little gray Susie taking such good care to make the bigger white dog feel comforted and at home. They played together, slept next to each other in dog beds and on the couch, and were nearly inseparable. Susie was so nurturing to Gina. It was nice to witness their friendship, which was so important to little Susie. I felt very happy with our two dogs—the little gray eight-pound terrier mix and the (eventually) thirty-two-pound, tall, white herding dog.

The next four dogs arrived in much different ways. We weren’t necessarily looking, but each of them found us anyway. Dean (a thirty-five-pound black Lab mix) joined the family after Gina, and then there were three. Annie (our tan twelve-pound terrier mix) and Evie (another twelve-pounder and a white poodle mix) came next, followed by Zoey (the tiny chocolate Chihuahua/Yorkie-Maltese mix), giving us a total of six. Susie was the heartbeat of the pack, more like a den mother than an alpha leader. Still, as far as I was concerned, she ruled the roost.

As I count the dogs—as I did with the second group that morning of Dean, Gina, and Evie—I typically give them the plan for the day, letting them know, for instance, Okay, everybody inside. I’ll be going out to do errands, but I won’t be gone long. How much of this they understand from language alone, I never know, but they pick up a lot from paying close attention to subtle nuances in my tone and behavior. It’s amazing to me that I might say something like, I’m just going to cut the dogs’ nails before we go for a walk, and Gina, who actually hears well despite being deaf in one ear, deciphers the conflicting pieces of that message—walk and nails. Any mention of a nail cutting is enough for her to go running for cover, forgoing the walk proposal until it’s safe.

While I waited for the dogs to finish up outside on that March morning, I did a casual head count. Do you know where your dogs are? is a mantra worth adopting to be sure everyone is where they need to be during transitions throughout the day. It’s helpful to visualize them when you leave your house and when you return. Whenever I leave the house, I give everyone a treat as a way of making contact with each, knowing where everybody is in the house, and I do the same for whoever is coming with me in the car. Once I return, we all get to go out in the backyard again, which gives me a chance to make sure everyone is home safely.

Counting can prevent dogs from getting lost or running off, or even the tragic consequences of being left in the car in the driveway on

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