The Puppy Farm

I’ve written before about my wonderful childhood puppy  (See Fluffy, or How I Got My Dog and Fluffy and the Alligator Shoes)  but sadly there is more to tell.

I’m sure today’s child rearing gurus would advise you to tell your kids the truth no matter how painful,  but I suspect my folks practiced the old school kind of parenting.

When I was 10 Fluffy was hit by a car and the really awful thing was I saw it happen.  I was coming home from school when she saw me from across the street and ran towards me.

I don’t know why Fluffy was off the leash that day,  or if somehow she had gotten out of the house alone.   I only remember the sound of screeching brakes on our usually quiet street,  my beloved dog lying motionless near the wheel of a car,  and my mother and my visiting uncle kneeling in the street trying to console me.

Eventually they led me to the house and told me the vet was taking Fluffy to a puppy farm in the country where she would get well.

I never saw Fluffy again and although we never got another dog,   we did have a succession of wonderful cats.  (See Missing Pussycats ,  Mr Bucco and the Ginger Cat,  Hotel Kittens,  and The Cat and the Forshpeiz)

Over the years I must have wondered if there was something a little fishy about the puppy farm story and whether city dogs who get hit by cars really do go to the country for rehab.   But I never questioned my parents because they were grownups and I knew grownups never tell lies.

And now my parents are gone and my uncle is gone,  and surely the vet is gone too,  and so there’s no one left who can tell me what really happened on a shady Bronx street one afternoon over half-a-century ago.

And so I choose to believe that Fluffy did go to that puppy farm in the country,  and for all I know she’s there still.   For in my mind’s eye I still see her running through the fields  –  the Elysian puppy fields.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Dana Susan Lehrman
This retired librarian loves big city bustle and cozy country weekends, friends and family, good books and theatre, movies and jazz, travel, tennis, Yankee baseball, and writing about life as she sees it on her blog World Thru Brown Eyes!
www.WorldThruBrownEyes.com

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