As winter set in this year.. Tricksy had a little of 7. 5 of the pups were large and healthy… one slightly smaller than the others and the last one… extremely small.
Mom was often worried that the bigger ones wouldn’t give the little one a chance to survive.. She’d wake me up at odd hours.. call me all through the day just to make sure I talked to Tricksy while the little one fed… Strike one…
This errant pup would follow his mom outside the cozy haven we supplied them with… early one morning.. mom woke me up saying she could hear the pup, but he was not around… following his weak whine, I found him searching for his then agitated mom under the dressing table… Strike two…
A few evenings later… my distraught mom called me. The pup was no where to be seen and neither was he whining… Mom oragnized a search party consisting of herself and my cousins, but the puppy was not found. It was cold, dark and raining…
I reached home at 1am and searched all over … but not a sound was heard… and not a glimpse of the little one… I coaxed Tricksy into counting her pups and on finding one less she ran about in a frenzy trying to sniff him out, but she didn’t find him either. Mom’s fear overcame her faith… with so many odds against him, I didn’t hold it against Mom for thinking that way.
The next morning I searched again… mom called to check if I found him. I didn’t. Need less to say, we didn’t fancy his chances… Almost 20 hrs after he went missing… a call from my Mom announced that my cousin had found the pup in my neighbors’ garden. Home run!
Considering we have a gate that the puppy can’t climb over … and a wall that even I can’t climb over between our houses, none of us have any clue about how the puppy reached there. But he’s home now. I just held him… there isn’t a scratch on his body… he’s as gusty, as noisy and yeah.. as hungry as before this ordeal.
He’s small enough to fit in my hands when I cup them… but he stayed out hungry and confused all through that rainy night… he’s a little pup with the heart of a lion… I already have a name for him… a friend who followed his story very closely and added his prayers to mine that night suggested this…
“I’m Heart, Braveheart, but you can call me Bravo! “
Braveheart... aka Bravo
and i’ve named my little bundle of Joy – “SunShine”
