Elwood's First Night, in His Words
The following post was originally shared on Facebook, captured here for archival purposes. With small grammatical updates and fixes.
The story of Elwood's first night. As told by Elwood himself:
Moving is always traumatic, even for you humans. Now imagine that your life hasn't been that great, you ate only what you could scrounge and you had to fight for that. You were most likely hit. And you weren't given love.
That is a dark thing. A very dark place. Something which changes you.
Now, imagine that suddenly one day you are taken away from there. Given a bath. Prodded by someone strange. And only given some food. Granted, you're not fighting for it, but surely this won't last.
And then, you're in the hands of another person. A man. He holds you close and warms you in the cold air. It's nice there. It's easy to sleep.
After several hours dozing in laps of him and her, you're brought into this warm but bright place. It smells weird. Different. There's another dog here, hopefully she's friendly but in general she seems put offish.
They're saying words. It sounds nice. They sound nice. But I don't know yet. This is all strange.
The big one gives me food, small bits of meat. Turkey. That's nice.
After a while he picks me up and puts me in this crate. I begin to panic. It's confining and I'm by myself. I don't like this. I begin to cry and whine in hopes someone will come save me. And then, in my panic, I void my bowels. Oh it stinks. And I don't have anywhere to go. I cry louder.
The man returns, and lets me out. He's kind again even though the other person would have been mean. He wasn't.
I was put under warm water and rinsed, cleaned off and then dried of any filth. Then the crate was brought into the bedroom and I was set next to Mattie. And yet I was still alone. I heard noise but it was odd and didn't comfort me.
And then he returned, this time laying on the floor in front of me. I wasn't sure of this all, so I kept whining. But when I did he would reach his fingers through the grate and speak kind to me. Eventually I calmed and we all slept.
Our first night wasn't as smooth as it could be. Cleaning dog poop off a towel is not a great wee hour task. But it's what you sign up for with a puppy.
Sleeping on the floor with Elwood was good. I slept fine. I plan to sleep next to him again tonight.
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