The Immaculate Conception

At the risk of offending anyone with the title of my blog, it is meant to be tongue and cheek only.

Prologue

Pictured to your left is Nacoma. Nacoma has been part of the Hart family since early December. Even though my wife was strongly against it, we rescued her from the local humane society so Mr. Brady would have a friend to play with and wouldn't be so bored that he would have to dig holes under our fence and chew our patio furniture. Despite a couple of run-ins with Mr. Brady and stealing his food and his toys and his dog house and biting his ear, Nacoma treated Mr. Brady with the utmost respect for the first month and half of her stay. Things changed for us all one January morning...

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It was imperative that we get a female dog when we went to choose a suitable friend for Mr. Brady. Not for mating purposes, mind you, but for territorial purposes. Mr. Brady had never really been around another dog, so conventional wisdom says that a strange male dog would not be good. Mr. Brady was neutered, so he was somewhat calmer than he was before, so our new female friend would need to be spade so she wouldn't be throwing herself at Mr. Brady and he wouldn't have to be ashamed of not being able to respond. That could be embarrassing for him. Well, the professionals at the humane society said they had the perfect dog for us. She was friendly and calm and very obedient. Thus, one Saturday in early December, Nacoma came home with us.

Over the next six weeks, let's just say Nacoma added a few extra pounds. When we first got her she was lean and athletic looking. No fat on her. I would even say that she was a little underweight. Well, as I said, she packed on the pounds, but only around her stomach. That was the only part of her body that was growing. She looked like one of those real skinny guys who has huge gut. It's just noticeable. I kept telling my wife that we need to feed her less or run her more. I thought she had been eating Mr. Brady's food along with hers, but he wasn't losing any weight. We finally reasoned that since she had been at the humane society for the last year, she was just getting fed more and thus putting on more weight.

I came home from playing basketball about 7:00 in the morning on Wednesday, January 25. I went to feed the dogs as usual and when I walked out the door I heard something that sounded like two cats getting ready to fight. We had a lot of stray cats in our old neighborhood, so I just figured two of them had gotten in our backyard and somehow avoided getting eaten by Nacoma and Mr. Brady. When I opened the door, Nacoma didn't run up to me and neither did Mr. Brady. I saw him standing in the middle of the yard looking toward the corner of the house. I looked to my left and saw Nacoma curled up. When she saw me, she stood up and then I saw what the sound was that I heard. Under her were eight puppies, making the most God-awful sound I had ever heard. I froze. I turned back around and went in the house. My wife was in the shower, so I went straight to the bathroom and told her the news. I went back outside and we started bringing the puppies in the house. We knew we had a big responsibility ahead of us for the next six weeks. It was an immaculate conception. I joked with Davina that these puppies could the best dogs ever born in the history of the world...They may have been born without sin, so we should for sure keep them. They could teach Mr. Brady right from wrong and help he and Nacoma get along. She didn't go for it.

Epilogue

Sadly, three of the puppies died. Nacoma quit feeding them the first day. Davina, with her nurse's instinct, tried to save them and couldn't. She cried when the third one died. I buried them in our backyard and prayed Mr. Brady wouldn't dig them up. He didn't. The other five grew up and eventually moved into and ruined our garage. We found good homes for all of them, Nacoma got spade, we moved to a new house where there is a much bigger backyard where she and Mr. Brady play together every day. Seriously, they do. It's amazing.