Puccini
Tags: bichon frise
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Puccini was with us for 12 years. At obedience classes the instructor called him "the Wild One". He did his own thing. He wasn´t into learning many tricks. He could sit and shake a paw. But there was one thing he never missed. At the beginning o | |||||||||||||||||
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Puccini came to us in a rather unique way. My husband and I were out for a quick bite. It was late November and it was dark and raining. All of a sudden I saw this little white dog trying to cross the road by the Cedar Hill Middle school. I said to my husband that little dog is going to get run over. Before I had uttered the words we saw him being hit by the minivan in front of us. He was thrown head over heels across the road into the shoulder. There he lay for dead. We stopped our vehicle and jumped out. By this time he started to move and tried to get up. We were afraid he would try to get back on the road, so I gently picked him up. He did not seem to have any exterior damage and was not bleeding ,but was close to going into shock. Within a short time we had located the owners, by knocking on people´s doors in the neighborhood. The young man opened the door of the house he lived with his father and took one look at the little dog. He finally said :”Yes, that is my dog, but I can´t afford to take him to the vet . Then he looked up at us and said, you seem to be good people, You can have him if you want. Although owning a dog was not part of our immediate plans, we just couldn´t leave the creature with those uncaring people, so we bundled him up and rushed to the pet hospital. They examined him and told us that he did not seem to be seriously injured but would have to stay overnight for observation, so after all the paperwork was taken care of, we wanted to continue for our very late meal. However I started to get chest pain and ended up in Emergency at the Royal Jubilee, where I was also kept overnight. As the result of the hospital visit I received an angioplasty and a stent in one of my arteries. So in a way meeting up with Puccini was a blessing in disguise.
During the years he was with us he met up with one more disastrous incident. I was walking him on the leash; I had just left the cull-de-sac where we lived, when it seemed out of nowhere this big black German shepherd cross bounded over and started tearing away at Puccini. I started yelling and tried pulling him off of my dog and with the help of the owner we succeeded to free Puccini from her jaws. The poor thing was bleeding from several puncture wounds in his abdomen and neck and my husband and I rushed him to the pet hospital. This time he was in for three days as he had to undergo surgery and had tubes sticking out of his abdomen . The owner of the Shepherd cross was very sorry, his dog was not on a leash when he attacked Puccini, who was on a leash. He paid the hospital bill and was very remorseful. We were just happy that Puccini was still alive and recuperating well. When Puccini came in our lives, our grandson Nico was only three years old and they became the greatest pals. Nico would put Puccini in his little green wagon and pull him all around our little cull-de-sack neighborhood. Our neighbors would be used to seeing the boy and the dog trudging along almost every time Nico was staying with us. |