Found Puppies:

In the spring I received a call from a man who had found two Lab puppies that had been dumped in a field in San Jose. He was able to catch them and had them waiting in his garage for me. When I arrived, they were both very scared and it took about half an hour to pull them out from under his car.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to break the news to my husband that I was bringing home 2, 4 month old pups. He had made me promise that I wouldn’t foster any more dogs.

When I arrived home, I closed the kitchen door and brought them both into the kitchen. This was really the first time that I was able to get a really good look at them. They were covered with foxtails, dirt, and grease from being under the car. They both ran as far away from us as they could, huddle up in the corner of the kitchen. By this time by husband was home and in the kitchen with me. We decided to just sit on the kitchen floor with some food and waited for them to approach us. We waited a very long time and they never came out of the corner. We finally approached them and one of them peed as we got closer. The other one had even more foxtails than the one that peed. We named them “Scarecrow” (for the one with the most foxtails), and “The Wiz” for the one that peed in the kitchen.

We finally had the pups in our hands and began pulling out foxtails and cleaning the grease from their coats. It took us well over an hour to clean them up enough to put them in the bathtub. A good bath, some flea spray and a good dinner and the pups were fast asleep. Over the next few weeks we socialized them and did some basic puppy training.

In the following weeks two families came forward and adopted the pups. “Scarecrow” went to a family in San Francisco and the “The Wiz” was adopted by a nurse that I worked with at Packard Children’s hospital. She and her husband had two small kids that were thrilled to have a new addition to their family and had renamed him “Hercules”. A few weeks ago she called to tell me the sad news that “Hercules” had died.

It seems like it was just yesterday that we had gotten them all cleaned up to go to their new homes…… but it was more than 12 years ago. I had lost track of time. Each December I would receive a Christmas card with a family picture which always included “Hercules” aka “The Wiz”. She would include cute stories about how he would be dressed up to attend Samantha’s tea parties, or when she would take Hercules to kindergarten for show and tell. As the kids grew, Hercules grew with them, ridding in his bother’s truck and welcoming him back when he returned from college on holidays. Hercules was a much loved member of their family and we were all saddened to hear of his passing.