We rescued Zac when she was five from an animal testing lab. She recovered a lot in past ten years. From being a baby to bearing a few babies, we had seen it all. We had seen her childhood and her motherhood both.
A month ago when she had babies for the second time, she was a different personality. She was joyous and cheerful, but for some reason she changed a lot now. She became quite and depressed when we lost her last puppy.
We gave four of them up for adoption but the last one was lost a week ago. That was when we started noticing her change in behaviour. She became sadder each day and she grieved the loss of her baby.
She never ate the food, though she took it and went on hiding it somewhere we couldn’t find. She was acting strange, just lying down here and there lazily.
It was hard identifying her as the same dog as before. It became a challenge to feed her now. She used to disappear nowhere and then returned back after some time. For the week, we assumed that she was sad due to the loss of her puppy but the story was something different.
One day when another week started, we started following her from a distance. She headed to the mountains and we were out of thoughts for the first time in our lives.
What could she possibly do going there alone? We followed her further in the woods but she smelled our scents. She looked our way and started barking, before returning back to the town.
We got the idea that there was something fishy in the way she acted those days. So we fixed a camera in her collar to keep an eye on where she goes and why. More importantly, why she acted strange.
We soon had the footage of her making her way through the woods. The screen in front of us showed the track she lead and the trails she followed to reach a high altitude point. Once we saw what we saw, our minds were blown.
We saw the last puppy , who was lost a week ago, down in a cave. We started connecting all the dots but before that, there was something needed to be done.
We went to our cars the second the screen shuted off and stepped in the car. We followed the track the camera showed us and we reached the mountain. The track ahead was covered in woods so we parked the car and started our walk.
Soon we were lead to the area where the lost puppy, Happy, was spotted. We searched here and there but when we shouted his name out loud, he peeked his head out from the cave.
Zac came from the opposite side with a can of food in her mouth. Crossing the fencing, we reached the puppy and his mother, who seemed shocked to find us there too.
We connected all the past events together finally; the changed behaviour of Zac, losing the last puppy, the depression and insecurity of Zac. We knew that we missed the biggest hint that she gave us. She missed her babies and didn’t wanted the last one to be adopted.
She wanted to stay with them and spend her life caring for them like every other mother. She was so insecure that she went to the limits of hiding him in the woods. And we felt shameful. Shameful for not noticing her feelings and ignoring her affection towards her children.
We knew she deserved the love of her children and yet, we didn’t realised the paind we put her through. The regret was deep and thorough.
We took the pair of mother and baby back to the shelter with a decision to correctify our mistakes. We decided to not give Happy away on adoption so she won’t feel alone and desperate enough to hide him from us.
That was one of our best decisions as she spent her last days with her kid by her side and a smile on her face. She was back to being herself again and there was nothing more we could ask for.
A bond of a protective mother
We all know how protective families are. We experienced it once in our life. But it is different when it comes to a mother. She knows what is best for us and she do anything to protect us from the worse.
A mother is someone who would go to lengths to ensure the kid’s security. The same goes for the dogs. Their mother’s are not so different when it comes to emotions and love.
A mother is a mother indeed. At last, please take your time understanding your dogs, they might need your emotional support like Zac did. And it is never too late to change a few mistakes.