Alyssa, my daughter who is in the Army, is home on leave.  She absolutely did not want me to rehome the pups before Christmas because she was worried they would become "Christmas puppies", i.e. dumped a week later.  So I will start my little rehoming project this week, for a few of the puppies (I am keeping several).

Puppies never make good surprise presents.  The only time a person should get a puppy as a present is when they have asked for one, are aware of what they would have to do to take care of one, are willing to commit to taking care of the young pup, and love the little monster. 

Because for the first few months, that pup will be a monster.  A real monster.  The puppy will chew up everything, shit on your floors, piss on your Persian carpets, eat your favorite book, tear up that dissertation you worked on for a year, ruin the power cord to your laptop, and make a playtoy out of your iPod. The puppy may make you pretty miserable.  This is a temporary state, and will end when the puppy becomes a dog. 

What they bring to you is joy and love and happiness that will last for years.  But since most people don't seem to know how to handle those things, they focus on the negative temporary effects that even human toddlers go through.  If they could only see that back some decades ago they were the ones chewing on the furniture, maybe they wouldn't be dumping that puppy at the pound a week after Christmas.... 

I lived south of Alvin for fifteen years.  Some of those were pretty great years, and I really enjoyed raising my kids in the Alvin 4-H Club and in Top Dogs 4-H of Brazoria County.  The Brazoria County Fair has got to be the best county fair anywhere in the world.

What I never enjoyed was living right on Highway 35.  Not only did we lose some of our own animals to that road, but we often found abandoned puppies thrown out along that road.  And the people dumping those pups never realized they were condemning all those puppies to death either by car--or by parvo.

Parvo lived in the soil on that place.  There was no way around it.  Every puppy we had that ever got outside prior to its' first shot died or nearly died of the disease.  We only ever saved one of the dumped puppies from parvo, after paying a few hundred out of our own pockets for his treatment.  Even Blaze, Alyssa's show border collie, after his shots, came down with it around five months of age.  We almost lost him too.

Now I am paranoid about losing puppies to it.  So I always keep them indoors until after their first shots.  It is a huge chore cleaning up after them.  But it is better than watching a beautiful little puppy die. 

There is an added bonus to me; these puppies will always know exactly who I am, and they will be very socialized to humans.  Someday they will make someone wonderful companions; they will be friendly, happy, and healthy.

Some nutjob is chopping the left back legs off of dogs and leaving the dogs to die in Kansas City.  Here's to hoping the Kansas City PD can catch this sicko pronto.