Pups in Tea Cups: Tales of Littleness Overcoming BIG Odds Read online

  “Yes, but he needs a sense of adventure. A sense of danger—or he’s never going to do it. Go home, set him on the first step, and then tell him “bad dog!” and make him get off. If he tries to go any further, really throw a fuss.”

  Dubious, and I’m sure, researching another veterinarian to take “Pumpernickel” to, they went home and did as I instructed.

  Nothing happened. He went back to his bed and lay down.

  Certain that I had lost my mind, they made an appointment with another vet for the next day. Someone had to figure out what was wrong with poor “Pumpernickel.”

  Then, as they were watching television, he got up and sniffed around the first step. Their daughter (much more willing to accept my odd treatment plan) wagged her finger at him, “Bad dog, bad!”

  He jumped to the next ledge. “No, ‘Pumpernickel.’ It’s too dangerous!” “Oh no, you’re going to hurt yourself!” “Please, please, please come down!”

  With each admonishment, “Pumpernickel” climbed higher and higher, farther and farther. Soon, he was running laps through his course, sometimes with grace, sometimes planting his nose in the pads that were there for just that purpose.

  Now, if he jumps on the back of the couch, they just tell him, “Good boy, good,” and he runs over to the “forbidden” course.

  “Pumpernickel” and his ‘daring display of dashing’ (don’t blame me, it’s my client’s term) are the centerpieces of their family life now. They brought back their handyman, and they now have three different configurations that can make over seventy-five new courses!

  They have entire parties that are just to dare “Pumpernickel” to try the newest course!

  That’s a Shih Tzu for you!

  The lesson here? Sometimes, if an activity is bad for tea cup pups, they will want to do it with all their hearts. If you want them to do something “good,” you need to make it seem “bad.” The “badder,” the better!

  Tales from the Tea Cup:

  “Charmin” and Her Near-fatal Attraction to…

  You Guessed It, Toilet Tissue!

  Remember how I warned you to be careful of what you named your pet, because it could create trouble that you didn’t want?

  “Charmin” is a perfect example. She supposedly was named for the fact that she was nothing but a big white puffball of a Maltese, and was so very squeezably soft.

  Then, the first thing she did when unattended was to go into the bathroom and pull off a whole roll of tissue and rip it into little, tiny shreds.

  When her mom first found “Charmin’s” handiwork, she couldn’t tell the difference between the pup and the fluff.

  It was pretty cute that first time. Then in the second round, “Charmin” decided to eat some of the tissue, which usually isn’t a big deal, except that “Charmin” ate half of a roll. That half of a roll weighed more than she did.

  There was a nice little vet bill to settle her tummy.

  At this point we discussed, at length, the fact that “Charmin” had not learned her lesson, and we would need to keep all tissue up and away from her, keeping the bathroom doors locked.

  After the third time, she ate the whole roll. She needed to stay in the hospital to make sure it passed.

  Her owners were certain that “Charmin” had some kind of nutritional deficiency. Clearly, one of her organs wasn’t working properly, and she was eating the paper to make up for it. I shook my head. The problem wasn’t in “Charmin’s” liver—it was in her head!

  She liked the taste! She liked the feel! She liked toilet paper, gosh darn it.

  Well, the owners still took home vitamins and assured me that they would make sure that “Charmin” didn’t have access to ANY toilet paper.

  It wasn’t a week before “Charmin,” tummy bulging, came back. An entire four-pack of tissue was gone. And it looked like much of it was in “Charmin’s” tummy.

  This time, surgery was a definite option. How else were we going to get all that tissue out?

  Luckily, I’d had a Schipperke with tissue obsession before, so I lifted “Charmin’s” tail. Sure enough, a little corner of toilet paper peeked out at me.

  After a patient ten minutes of gently tugging, we got a whole foot of paper out of her. We waited, fed her a little food, and pulled another foot of tissue out.

  All in all, we spent eight hours getting a total of eight feet of tissue out of “Charmin’s” booty!

  Next came the call to the handyman. He installed industrial-style dispensers that had locks. Just in case she figured that out, it would only put out eight sheets every minute, giving the family plenty of time to catch her before she got the whole roll.

  So it’s a little weird for guests to come over and have to be given a key to go to the restroom, but “Charmin” has been TP free for six years!

  Trust me, if little dogs can cause havoc to their digestive systems and your nerves, they will do it!

  Now “Charmin’s” parents thought they had the worst of it, but in this case, we are lucky our little ones, are so…little.

  If you will indulge me, I’ll relate the brief tale of “Bigness” that I told “Charmin’s” mom, which made her feel just a bit better about “Charmin’s” habit.

  A good friend of mine is also a veterinarian, and his Dalmatian puppy, “Mindy,” really liked his big couch in the living room. But that’s not where the dogs stayed while their dad was at work. They stayed in the laundry room with water and food and beds and a doggie door to go outside.

  Well, as I said, “Mindy” really liked that front room. Which just so happened to be on the other side of the wall.

  So one day she quite efficiently chewed her way through not just one piece of drywall, but the other side as well, until she made a hole big enough to get through.

  My friend came home to find her curled up on the couch (she really liked that couch). At first, he was puzzled. He could have sworn that he had put her in the laundry room. And if he accidentally left her out, why wasn’t her brother “Kirby” out as well?

  Then, with what is probably as big a shock as can come to an owner, he found the massive hole in the wall. And “Kirby” still on the other side of it.

  Now that’s dedication! So just be glad our little guys have such little teeth! At the least, our walls are safe!

  Tales from the Tea Cup:

  “Greta”

  Definitely Not Acrophobic

  Another quick story of hyper-cuteness that changed a life…I had a client bring in his new puppy, “Greta Von Cutie,” and she proceeded to climb up onto his shoulder, and then sit on top of his head, over and over and over again.

  Really, we couldn’t get the pup down from her perch on top of his head. The owner was of course frustrated with the wily pooch, yet when I asked how she was at the breeder, he just shrugged and said, “She did this.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Greta” had told him exactly who she was and what she liked to do right off the bat. It wasn’t “Greta’s” fault that he didn’t listen!

  After I finished up the exam (with her on his head—it was the only logical choice), we discussed how we might break her of her fondness for heights. What was supercute at first was losing its appeal after the fourteen-hundredth time.

  Now, “Greta” didn’t end up saving my client from brain cancer or anything. However, she did love to sit on his head. While he was watching TV, while he was typing at his computer, and at dinner parties.

  After he was married, his wife told him that she fell for him the first time she saw him… at a party at his house with a Chihuahua on his head. She supposed that if he had figured out how to live life with that idiosyncrasy, he could handle any of her issues.

  Score another one for “Littleness.”

  Tales from the Tea Cup:

  “Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream on Top!”

  Yes, that is the name of a Yorkie puppy.

  And the story behind it is even better than the name!

  You see, m
y clients went down to Mexico for Thanksgiving vacation. They had a cat, and had lost their dog about a year before, so this was the first year that they could really travel for the holiday. I had no idea at the time that they were having marital problems.

  Well, while they were down there trying to “spark” the connection, they actually made the decision to break up. ...Um, until a tiny, scrawny, ragamuffin puppy trotted into the resort, and then promptly collapsed.

  Oh my gosh! They knew enough to give it some Karo syrup to get its blood sugar up, but since there wasn’t a veterinarian for miles around, they decided to just jump in the car and haul his booty home to my clinic.

  Now, this pup had EVERYTHING a dog could have wrong with it. Parvo, parasites, mange, kennel cough. You name it. He had it.

  I warned my clients that I had no idea if I could pull the little guy through, but they wanted to try.

  To make a very long medical story shorter, I helped the little guy through just about everything, and he should have been on the mend. But, he would NOT eat. I mean, we were feeding him through his vein, but he wouldn’t even tolerate force-feeding.

  What were we going to do with the little guy? At some point, I needed him to well...eat!

  Needless to say, the man and woman both spent hours at the clinic keeping the puppy company and begging him to eat.

  I told them to take a break, go get some dinner, and come back so we could talk about our options.

  They came back—and had generously brought back a piece of pumpkin pie for me. So there we were, my clients tempting the puppy with baby food, turkey, NutriCal, and everything under the sun while I munched on the dessert. I leaned over to check his catheter when, all of a sudden, he jumped up and took a HUGE bite out of my pie!

  It all happened so fast. He downed the piece, and then jumped up for another one, getting a face full of whipped cream!

  We all started to laugh. Little dogs will decide what little dogs want to eat. Or was it not so much what I was eating—or rather, that I was eating it off of a plate of my own?

  We got another set of plates and each put “our” food (baby food, turkey, NutriCal—you know, all the stuff that the puppy wouldn’t eat a minute ago) and then pretended we were eating it.

  Oh my gosh! He couldn’t get enough of it. We even “tried” to keep it away from him. No way! It was HIS!!!!

  So that is how “Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream on Top” got his name.

  And in the course of caring for the puppy, my clients somehow realized why they fell in love in the first place. A few months later, they renewed their vows...in Mexico. With “Pumpkin Pie” standing right between them!

  Yep, you heard it here first. “Littleness” came to the rescue!

  Tales from the Tea Cup:

  “Penelope”– Party Girl?

  Sometimes it is the client who just doesn’t understand why little dogs think they are big…well, they are little!

  My clients had lost “Pugnacious,” their seventeen-year-old—yes, I said seventeen-year-old—Pug. He had been their heart and soul. They owned a small antique store, and “Pugnacious” went to work with them every day.

  They had a funeral for him, and over one hundred people and their dogs showed up. A hundred. I’m not sure if I’m going to have that many.

  It took them months to overcome their grief, but they finally decided they were ready and began looking again. I have to give them credit. They took all my advice—from getting a female instead of a male (to avoid the inevitable “he’s not the dog ‘Pugnacious’ was” syndrome), to waiting for exactly the right puppy.

  But that’s where their unwavering faith in my advice ended. I tried, I really tried, to convince them that not every dog could handle social occasions as well as “Pugnacious.” They used to host book fairs, and “Puggy” wasn’t satisfied until he had greeted every customer in person.

  I also reminded them that it had been a long, long, long time—nearly two decades—since “Puggy” had been a pup.

  Well, you guessed it. On the day that they brought “Penelope” home, they threw a HUGE party for “Penelope” at the store. Again, nearly a hundred people, their pets, and their kids showed.

  Balloons, punch, games of tag with little kids. They even called me to tell me “I told you so,” when the entire event went off without a hitch. “Penelope” had played and frolicked all day long without a single complaint.

  They had indeed picked the perfect dog for them.

  I congratulated them, but in the back of my mind, I was worried that they wouldn’t be in the clear until the next morning.

  Therefore, I was not at all surprised when I got a call from the emergency clinic. Poor “Penelope” had not been feeling well, and had some serious tummy trouble.

  I reassured them it was simply stress related, and that a night on IV fluids would do the trick. They were reluctant to leave their precious baby within hours of bringing her home, but they were also willing to believe me again.

  The next morning, “Penelope” came by my office looking as perky and happy as ever. She had wolfed down her breakfast and was ready to go home.

  Luckily, no worse for the wear.

  And it turns out that “Penelope” truly was the perfect dog for them. After her “house arrest” phase, “Penelope” was slowly worked into the store’s schedule. At first an hour a day, then two, and so on until she went into work every day and delighted both her owners and their patrons.

  However, she was her own dog, and they figured out that she did best if she had lunch around noon, and then took a two-hour nap in the back of the store.

  So yes, in the end, they worked out their “Littleness” issues.

  Now, occasionally, a pup staying home can get in trouble just as easily. And this isn’t even a little dog. This is a tale of a Labrador!

  Tales from…

  Well, Certainly Not the Tea Cup!

  “Tyler” – the Playaholic

  These clients listened to me to the letter. They found “Tyler,” the perfect Lab puppy for their family.

  They did their research.

  Since their other Lab, “Lizzy,” was a female, they picked a male pup. They warned their family, friends, and even their neighbors that the pup needed a few days to figure out his new home before they should visit.

  Then the day came, and they brought the puppy home! How exciting. They played, and played—and played, and played. I guess they forgot the part about the “quiet” day.

  They swam. They played catch. They swam some more. “Tyler” kept pace every step of the way with “Lizzy.”

  Then I got the call. The pup was flat-out. He wouldn’t eat.

  So even though “Tyler” was a good fifteen pounds, with a ton of roly-poly fat, he was no match for “Lizzy.” He was still just a pup. A dog foot shorter than his big sister. He had to run three steps for her one.

  The fact was, “Tyler” got “played out.” No worries. Since he wasn’t small enough to fit into a tea cup, he had a little more reserve than our portable pooches, so that we didn’t even need to hospitalize him. Just some fluids under the skin to rehydrate him, and he was good to go.

  I see “Tyler” all the time (allergy and ear problems—even big dogs have their health problems) and we still joke about it to this day. It seems unreal, since he now tops the scales at eighty pounds, and plays twelve hours a day with “Lizzy”—that he could ever have been tuckered out.

  Section Four

  Little Dogs = Big Miracles

  Don’t get me wrong—dogs of all colors and sizes can affect people’s lives. Miracles happen just about any time you allow a pet into your life.

  But over the past decade, as smaller and smaller dogs wiggled their way into our lives, I witnessed bigger and bigger miracles.

  As we discussed in the first chapter, there is something truly special about “Littleness.” A spark that can transform lives. A playful nudge toward happiness.

  This breath of fresh air ca
n come in many, many forms.

  Tales from the Tea Cup:

  “Mr. Wiggles” – Won’t Take ‘No’ for an Answer

  “Mr. Wiggles” is the perfect example of how that indescribable difference between “Bigness” and “Littleness” can make such a huge impact.

  One of my long-term clients has a daughter who has been a paraplegic since she was four. As she has gotten older, and the gravity of her situation has hit fully while in her teens, the girl has suffered from depression.