Christmas Puppy

My mother-in-law has been wanting a puppy for as long as I can remember and so I decided that for Christmas we would get her a puppy. I went down to the Little Rock Animal Shelter (that's where we got Koen) and found this precious Shepherd Lab Mix. He was only about 8 weeks old and he was soooo tiny! Josh and I kept the puppy at our home for almost 2 weeks before Christmas and it was wonderful and of course I got attached and cried when we actually had to give the puppy to Brenda. Brenda was extremely surprised and absolutely LOVED the puppy! Keith (my father-in-law) loved the little dude to! I failed to mention that the little guy didn't get off to a good start with having worms, mange, and a bacterial mouth infection. After Christmas, the puppy kept getting worse and developed kennel cough which turned into Phenomia. It broke my heart that we gave Brenda a "sick" puppy but he was just so cute and I wanted to save him from the shelter. On my little sister's birthday (January 9th) I got the call from my mother-in-law that she had to put the puppy down because he had Distemper. Distemper is a contagious, incurable, often fatal, multisystem viral disease that affects the respiratory, gastrointestinal, and central nervous systems of dogs. Young puppies between 3 and 6 months old are most susceptible to infection and disease and are more likely to die than infected adults. So I am very sad to report that the puppy didn’t make it and it was heartbreaking. He is in doggie heaven now, but I can assure you that he had the best last weeks of his life with a loving family! I think that Brenda and Keith will be getting another puppy later on this Spring when it’s not so cold outside…. So the whole reason for this story is this…I told my mother-in-law that she needed to call the shelter and let them know about the puppy. The shelter is reimbursing us for not only the adoption fee but for ALL his doctors visits! Can you believe it…I was totally shocked! Maybe Brenda cried to them over the phone and they felt really bad. It’s about $580 something that Josh’s parents and we spent on this pup. RIP Moses!