Suzi (Pomeranian)

This is a picture of my Pomer-people Suzi. Suzi is now 7 years old, and this picture was taken right before she turned a year old. I had Suzi's full sister Snuggles from a previous litter. At the age of 9 months, Snuggles managed to get into the bathtub, after my daughter forgot to drain the water out of it and drowned before we found her.

Heartbroken, I went to the woman who owned both of Snuggles' parents to tell her what happened. She then informed me that the mother dog was pregnant again, and that I could have first pick from the litter when the pups were born.

A week after Suzi was born, her mother nearly died. Unknown to me, the owner had let her have 3 litter of pups within a year, and she ended up with such a severe calcium deficiency that the pups had to be bottle fed. My vet tells me that pups who are bottle fed bond more closely with humans than they do with other dogs. So even though every dog I've ever had has informed me that they were a people, Suzi truly believes it!

I went to visit her when she was 4 weeks old and her nostrils were so full of mucous that she could hardly breathe. The woman informed me that it was simply because they had just finished feeding them, and that the pups "always get snotty after eating". She then went on to tell me that she had gotten so lucky because one of her friends had informed her that she didn't need to pay such a high price for the puppy formula she had been feeding them.

All she had to do was break open an egg, scramble in some canned evaporated milk and some Karo syrup and that would be just as good. Needless to say, I was appalled!

After I left, I called my vet and told him what I had seen and heard from the breeder. He told me that under the circumstances, he would highly recommend that I go ahead and get Suzi rather than leaving her there. So I went ahead and set up an appointment for her the next morning and went back after work to pick her up. That night the mucous in her nose was so thick that I sat up with her all night to keep it cleared out so she could breathe.

The next morning when I took her to the vet, he told me that she was so sick that if I hadn't gone to get her, he had no doubt that she would have died. She was running a fever and had a severe sinus infection, which was what was causing the mucous. Since she hadn't gotten antibodies from her mother's milk, he went ahead and gave her the first shot, gave her a shot plus a prescription for antibiotics, and also gave her some worm meds.

That appointment was at 8:00 A.M., and by 3:30 she had pooped a pile almost as big as she was that was nothing but a mass of dead worms! Yuck!

As you can see by the picture, Suzi recovered fully from the ordeal. She even recovered from breaking both of her front legs at the age of 7 months, when she was running in circles, and got both of them up underneath my son's door, and didn't pull them out before continuing her run! My husband and I were both working for his grandfather's propane business, and this picture was taken one morning when she was watching her Daddy intently as he hooked the hose up to the tank. Actually, she was driving through the gate he was holding open, but I figured you guys wouldn't believe that, so I made up the "watching her Daddy" story to hide her true talents! ;-)

By DonnaFreak