More Than Strictly Business

We often take extra time during this season to pause, take a step back, and reflect on things we're thankful for.  So we'll put business aside for a moment.

Meet Goldie and  her pup Lucky, CRT's resident greeters and shop assistants.  Goldie was likely less than a year old when we first met her, a stray who would stop by to say hello every few days.  We quickly learned that she was afraid of people and wouldn't trust anyone to touch her, however that didn't seem to keep her from visiting.  And while she'd regularly sit outside our office in the parking lot, reach out to pet her and she'd run off.   This went on for  about 6 months or so.  Eventually she became bit bolder and began to venture into the shop through an overhead door.  Although she remained very cautious, as long as you left her alone she'd often get comfortable and lay down.  What started out as sporadic visits for minutes at a time turned into daily  visits, often for hours.

Goldie before the pups (note how clean the concrete is)  :)

Soon thereafter we started to notice something.  Goldie was getting bigger.....as in pregnant bigger.  While watching her "grow" we began observing signs that she may be starting labor, causing a dilemma for us.  Do we continue to let her run free and risk her giving birth in a ditch somewhere, or do we attempt to keep her from leaving, something that would obviously stress her out?  We opted for the latter.

Since we didn't know when she became pregnant we had no idea when she would have her pups.  She was showing signs of labor and we were certain she had to be close,  and that coupled with the newness of being contained made us certain that this had to be very stressful time for her.  Goldie had grown to trust me the most for some reason (she would sit next to me and I could actually touch the top of her head) so I decided to help her.  Now I've been known to "live" at the office, however for the next 12 days I literally did just that, sleeping in the bed of my truck in our shop, positive each night she was going to have her litter.  When she finally did, she gave birth to 7 pups.

Mom and her pups on Day 1 (Lucky's in there somewhere)

We didn't fully know what we were getting ourselves into.  Being a stray, mom's diet wasn't the best and she didn't have a good supply of milk, which meant bottle feeding 7 hungry pups over the next 6 weeks.  Eventually they were old enough to start eating on their own and we began attempting to find them good homes. We were successful with 3 of them and everything was looking great for the others until the next challenge came.

Lucky

Parvo is a merciless canine disease, especially with puppies, and it wound up rearing its ugly head in our area.  The timing could not have been worse as we had planned on starting them with their first round of vaccinations not knowing when we would find them homes.  Unfortunately it hit before we could do that.  Literally within days this nasty disease took the lives of 3 of the 4 remaining pups, in spite of another succession of nights spent in the bed of my truck administering  meds while feeding liquid to them at 30 minute intervals (special thanks to Sandy and Earl for participating in some of that).  The last remaining pup, Lucky as she was later named for apparent reasons, looked like a skeleton and I had decided to put her down later in the day.  I just didn't have the heart to go through another night of watching her fade as I had watched the others.  But Lucky was a fighter and she began showing slight signs of responding.  The mere fact that she lasted more than a couple of days gave us hope and sure enough she turned the corner.  Of course we had to keep her.

I've been told Goldie waits at the window
 for me to get back from meetings

Today you can find Goldie and Lucky happily romping around our yard content to call our workplace their permanent home.  Goldie now begs us to pet her and Lucky is even showing interest in our industry.  She has had her nose (mouth) in everything from shop rags to equipment manuals to side brooms, and has even tried her paw at machine and trailer wiring.  She has the disassembly part down pat.

Honestly, they are a joy to have around.  I know they are thankful for us, and we for them.

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