Life Update

TL;DR We rescued a dog. Didn't know she was pregnant. Ended up raising 7 puppies and then finding each of 'em a forever home.

Hi every one! I wanted to share the reason(s) why I've been away for so damn long...
Around the end of July me and my wife rescued a stray dog. She first came to our building looking for shelter and food. She was very frightened and very cold (it was winter here in Chile).
Some neighbors and us started giving her food, some of us offered her some blankets but she trusted no one. To make sure she ate we had to leave her some food a step away quite a bit before she could even approach it.
It took us more than a week of doing this for her to trust us enough to let us pet her 😭 luckily she felt safe enough with our elderly dog Nina (13yrs).
One night, knowing it was going to rain, I managed to pick her up and bring her home with us, she was stiff as a board 😢. Once inside we gave her some space and then she went straight to Nina's bed for comfort; she stayed there all night.

We bonded for a couple of days, we named her Perita (which can mean little pear or wittle doggo) and then we took her to the vet. She was/is very young, round 1 and a half years old, still very afraid of everything and everyone except us and a couple of neighbors. The vet thought she might have had a uterine infection so we did an emergency ultrasound. The infection turned out to be 8 not so little puppies 💜💜💜 She must've been about a week pregnant when she arrived in our lives. We were extremely relieved that she was healthy but a bit anxious 'cause we knew raising puppies is never easy.
After several checkups the vets recommended doing a C-section 'cause the puppies were too big for her.
They were born on Tuesday August 13th at around 5 pm, all 8 of them survived. We took them home that same night.
Those first nights were rough, Perita hadn't bonded with the puppies yet so my wife and I had to take turns feeding them a bottle every 2 hours day and night, we were zombies 😖. Luckily she didn't take long to start feeding them on her own but we still had to be very hands on 'cause she didn't want to stay with them and away from us for too long, but we started to get used to the routine, until we noticed one of the puppies was not able to eat properly. She had trouble swallowing and the milk kept coming out of her nose, we immediately took her to the vet and she had to be hospitalized to be tube fed while they worked on her case. She spent 3 days there but her little body couldn't make it :C she wasn't prepared for this world, she died only 12 days after being born, we were crushed, all of this contributed to me having a lot of problems to concentrate on work. Around that time my wife got pretty ill as well, and it costed her her new job... It was a rough time.

The other puppies kept growing fairly healthily except for 2 who seemed to be always congested, but with treatment and patience we managed to nurse them back to health.
We had to adapt every week 'cause, my goodness, they grow up so fucking fast! and our flat is NOT AT ALL well suited to having so many dogs, tiny and cute and adorable as they were, everything was covered in pee, the carpets were ruined and they ate and played like goblins!!!
For 2 months our lives revolved around them and only them.

Then we started the process of giving them for adoption. We spent 2 weeks contacting and interviewing people to make sure they would treat the puppies right and give 'em all the love that they deserve 🥰.
 This was another trial, although we knew we couldn't keep any of them it didn't make it any less painful to say goodbye to 'em.
Five of them found their forever homes fairly quickly and the other 2 took another week or so.

The flat feels a bit empty now but we are glad we've recovered our space and although it was very difficult at times, with many ups and downs, we are very happy we were able to care for them and provide them with a home, nourishment and unconditional love.

We love you for ever Mumi, Kiwi, Kiki, Leoncio, Pepita, Pepino, Mumu and Dobi!