Covid Puppies - Part III: The Pickup

Saturday 5th December 2020 rolled round so quickly; my head was spinning.

The transport left Alabama on Friday afternoon and their destination was Rhode Island. We were the only drop off in New York. They kindly agreed to drop Friendly off at a McDonalds car park at 6am in a town about 40 minutes from where we lived.

We set our alarm for 4:30am. The family woke up in a state of total excitement. I woke up unable to feel my legs. I have never had a panic attack before, but I think that morning I came close to it. I felt sick, dizzy, weak. My heart was racing, and I couldn’t think straight, other than wonder what in the actual hell I had done.

I didn’t know anything about dogs other than the toy barking one I had when I was 11 that I pretended was real to curry favor with a girl I hoped would be my friend. Everything I knew, and I knew a lot even after those five days, was out of a textbook. I had no practical experience to bring this small life into our home and not kill it. Basically, the same feeling I had about bringing my firstborn home from the hospital or an orchid from the garden center.

Somehow, I managed to get out of bed, get dressed and get into the car. Husband did the driving while I held a plastic bag open near my knees in case, I had a nervous puke. We had the back seat lined with towels in case the dog soiled itself on route and an adult diaper for me if I did the same.

We arrived early and as we waited for the transport truck to arrive, my leg was hammering like a pneumatic drill, and I was swallowing hard, so as not to barf hard. Twenty minutes of nervous anguish, which should have been twenty minutes of unbridled excitement later, the truck pulled in.

I honestly have no idea what came over me that morning but when they handed this freaking enormous puppy (didn’t do my research into how big Pointador’s can get) I just melted. 9 weeks of wriggling, licking, cuteness.

We dumped her in the back seat with the kids where she promptly pissed on the towels but luckily nothing more, drove the 40 minutes back home and began our new lives with this little creature who we had ripped from the mother and siblings she had been with for 9 weeks in the deep south to a New York winter with three humans, who didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing and one who did, but needed to change her pants.