The Puppy House

I wish I could say The Puppy House was our next purchase, but unfortunately we just found out that the bank has already accepted a contract on it, so it doesn’t look like we’ll be buying it.

So, you may be wondering, why does this particular house warrant its own name and blog post? Unfortunately, it’s because there’s a sad story associated with this house that we looked at over the weekend…

We were out on Saturday looking at houses, it was about 100 degrees out, and we were in a vacant foreclosed house that we really liked. My wife was downstairs and screamed for me to come down. In the basement bathroom tub was the tiniest little puppy I’d ever seen. It was a white pit-bull mix that couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. He was alive, but not in great condition.

It’s unlikely a puppy that age could survive without food or water for more 8-10 hours, so our best guess was that he was abandoned some time in the previous several hours; perhaps some neighborhood kids found him, wanted to keep him, but couldn’t take him home, so they broke into a vacant home and were keeping him in the tub?

Who knows…

We immediately gave him some water (which perked him up quite a bit), and drove to the nearest animal hospital. He was given a good bill of health (vet suspects he’s about 5 weeks old), with the exception of intestinal worms, an eye infection, and dehydration. We figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to find him a good home, but the vet suggested that he’d need constant care for another week or two while he got stronger and older; turns out he still doesn’t even know how to eat solid puppy food. My brother volunteered to take him while we tried to find him a home.

Sadly, last night, the puppy went into convulsions at my brother’s house. He rushed the pup to the animal emergency center where he was kept overnight. This morning, my brother talked to the vet, and they’re still not sure what’s wrong. It could potentially be the worms or another parasite causing the seizures, it could be malnourishment or dehydration, or could be trauma that he suffered at some point, etc.

At this point, we’re at about $1000 in vet bills for this little guy, and it’s unclear if he’s going to recover or not. But, we’re hopeful, and we’re still looking for a good home.

Here’s a pic of the sleepy little guy: