Reason #43790 mama is going to kill all of us...

She has said emphatically that no more dogs can come here. She's gone too much. The kids don't help like they say they will. The adults don't come take care of them as they should.

But...

the other day my nephew went to take the trash to the dumpster and he found three itty-bitty puppies that someone had left there. Of course he had to bring the bedraggled little things home. Their ribs were showing.

Mama wasn't here. I was all, "Oh, no. WE CANNOT HAVE DOGS. You have to take them somewhere... as soon as you feed them and give them some water. But then immediately!!!"

And I resolved to ignore the puppies. Maybe just look at them out the door. Or, pet them only once. Use a really old pan to give them water. Buy just one bag of puppy food because they wouldn't be here long. They couldn't be--my nephew and I are both going back off to college in 3 weeks.

Then, Mama made it home. She fussed and huffed and shook her head. NO NEW DOGS.

Last night, as we were driving home, she outlined her very good reasons. Three dogs are too expensive on her fixed income. They need vet visits immediately. We don't have a doghouse anymore and it is blazing-ly hot (My mama is very much "Animals belong outside!!!" We used to get in the most trouble for smuggling puppies in because we figured they were too cold or too hot or too lonely. That's the reason this post is titled as it is; as you can see from the picture, Deuce is carrying on the smuggling them in when Mama is gone tradition :-). She's on the go several days out of the month. I nodded along. It's not like I'm going to volunteer to take 3 dogs back to my apartment, so fair is only fair.

We pulled up in the yard. She looked at the puppies. She looked at me. She looked at the puppies. She looked back at me. "You know if you've started feeding those dogs, they're going to want to stay."

Me, meekly: "Yes ma'am."

She shook her head and got out. "Feed the puppies. They're little enough already. But we are not keeping those dogs!"

Yes, we're all suckers.
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Seriously, we're in a rural area where we can't just run them to a shelter or a pound. Abandoned animals are just abandoned here. I have no idea what we're going to do. We won't just turn them out but we really can't keep them. My nephew is hoping that his other grandmother might have mercy on all of us bleeding hearts and take them in--she lives out in the country and already has some dogs.