For the first week after Jake came home, he didn’t eat anything.
Maybe it was because his food had changed. Maybe everything was still too new for him. Whatever the reason, Jake just wouldn’t eat. Thankfully, he still drank water, so we worried a little less. But watching him turn away from his food worried the whole house.
My mom saw it too. “He’s just a little puppy who came to a house he doesn’t know,” she said. “How strange all of this must feel to him.”
Looking back, that was when things began to change. It was the first time my mom worried about Jake, and her first step toward accepting him as part of our family.
Then one day, my mom came home with a whole chicken.
I figured we were having chicken for dinner. But when I came downstairs, she had boiled it, and she was feeding it to Jake.
That was a very big deal. When my mom was little, she was bitten by a dog, and ever since then, she couldn’t even touch one. But she felt so sorry for Jake, who wasn’t eating, that she put on rubber gloves and fed him the chicken herself.
From that day on, Jake started eating.
We also found a food similar to the one he had eaten since he was a puppy. But I think it was my mom’s care that made the difference. I think that was the moment Jake realized, “This is my home now.”
From then on, Jake started to find his energy again.
To be continued.