Hi, my name is Cricket and I live in Gadsden Alabama with my humans, Mum and Pops. They are so good to me and love me very much, but it sure did not start out that way for me. My new home is filled with interesting sounds and smells and I wake up very early each morning when my Mum’s coffee pot starts grinding beans very loudly! I jump straight up from my snuggle spot in their bed where I sleep under the big blue quilt that my Mum made.
Pops gets up with me to take me outside to “peep” and “poop” before doing anything else. We have a big backyard that has a fence around it to keep me safe from cars and other animals because I am so small. My doggie mom was a Yorkshire Terrier and although I don’t remember her, I have seen pictures of other dogs like her and I am sure she was very beautiful.
We don’t talk about my doggie dad because frankly, no one knows who he was. My doggie mom got loose from her own backyard before I was born and was gone from home several hours before her humans found her. A couple of months later, my three sisters and I were born. We all looked different from my doggie mom, and also different from each other, but she loved us just the same. She was always licking us and feeding us, but I don’t think her humans liked us very much. We got yelled at a lot and sooner than we wanted, we had to go away. The big ugly man put us in a dirty box and said we were going for a ride in his car.
We drove for a long time and then all of a sudden we stopped. We had never been in a car before and we were very scared. We cried and cried and that made the big ugly man even madder. When he stopped the car, he took our box and tossed us out onto the tall grass, box and all. One of my sisters bumped her head on a rock and the other two bumped each other’s heads while still in the air. I fell real hard on my nose and then everything went dark. I could hear my sisters crying and crying, but I could not see them. One sister found me and began licking my face. Ouch! It hurt so badly for her to lick. I know she was trying to help me, but why did it hurt so much? She kept on licking and finally I could see her with just one of my eyes. For some reason I could not see out of the other eye, but it wasn’t hurting so I got up and started walking around.
We were so scared because we didn’t know where we were or what we would do without our doggie mom to take care of us. We eventually found each other and all got real close. The box we came in was upside down so we couldn’t get into it to keep warm. We were shaking because it was raining and we were so cold. Eventually we got warm from snuggling so closely and we all fell asleep, but our tummies were rumbling; we were soooo hungry. It had been a long time since we had any warm milk and hard food. I don’t know how long we slept but all of a sudden we woke up when we heard humans talking. Some ladies had found us in the tall grass and they were talking to us. We were frightened because we did not know if they would hurt us like the big ugly man had done.
