Carrie Cox’s Corner

Y’all remember covid? Ha, just kidding, the whole world remembers it! Well, when it first came out, I kind of freaked out. I remember March 2020. We were on our way to Austin to visit a church there that had a Christian school so we could watch and learn from them. It was our spring break, and we were going to take a few days. On our way there we got alerts on our phone and on the radio that the Houston Rodeo was being shut down because of Covid exposure. Houston doesn’t just shut down the Rodeo. It makes millions. That freaked me out. We were able to visit the school there, but little did we know it was the last day of school for everyone in the whole country that week.  Ha, I remember Hunter Logan saying ,”How long is spwring bwake gonna last?” Good question, Buddy.

The unknown was really messing with me I had been teaching English online to some students in China the previous months, and I had seen from some of my students first hand how bad conditions were there. I actually got us all on vitamins early that year because of it. Not helping my fear was the fact that the first person I knew personally that had it ended up in the hospital on a ventilator, so I was just really nervous about how it would affect me with my congenital heart condition. I really gave into that spirit of fear. The constant news updates, the media; I let it rule my life at that time. I hate to admit it, but it’s the truth. I was scared. I prayed a lot about my anxiety. I deleted the news app on my phone (still happy about that decision), but I just couldn’t snap out it. “Lord, you’ve got to help. I can’t fix this,” I prayed. 

So now we find ourselves in the month of April, and we’ve finally realized our dog Sadie is pregnant. We were shocked. She was never out of our back yard or our house. How was this possible? It NEVER crossed our minds that our little morkie Snoopy would be capable of such a task! But as they say in Jurassic Park, “Love finds a way.” Ha, so we finally realized Snoopy was the father, and we were so scared. What mongrels these poor pups would be? What were we going to do? We thought we had a lot of time because she wasn’t big at all, but one morning during lock down our Sadie was knocking on our back door and jumping up and down to get our attention. Nathan noticed she was behaving very strangely, and he  went out there and heard a puppy crying! She had given birth and was freaking out! We brought her and the puppy in and she was very distraught. “Oh no, she’s rejected them. They are mongrels!” I thought. Nathan went and looked and found another one that was born outside on the patio. We thought it was too late, but after bringing it in, cleaning it, and warming it up, it pinked up and started crying for momma. Sadie was still distant, but then she went into her kennel and gave birth to another one! Oh my, she was still in active labor, no wonder she was acting weird. By this time some of the shock wore off, and we were able to get her more comfortable. I found a little pool and some blankets, and my puppy-midwife-motherly instincts kicked in. After she knew she had our support, Sadie relaxed and her motherly instincts finally kicked in. Poor thing. She needed some help! After she was settled, she did amazing and gave birth to three more pups,  six puppies in total!

But these little pups were sooo adorable! They were not the misshapen quasimodos we feared, but looked like miniature labs. They were all the same color: toasty vanilla, and they had such differing personalities. Watching them grow and play, seeing their personalities develop, spending time outside with them and watching them discover nature and each other really did something amazing for my spirit. All of a sudden my fear was gone. My anxiety had shifted to joy. The Lord used mother nature, and even a naughty father— Snoopy— to answer my prayers, to get rid of my fears.

The little pups stayed in the laundry room until they could escape their whelping box, and then we had to make bigger arrangements. Nathan had tried gardening that spring, but instead of growing flowers in the garden bed he had built, we raised puppies. What an awesome exchange!  Every morning I was outside with them in their pen. I spent countless hours outside in the mornings. I could see all their different personalities-the pups that were shy, the ones that were the instigators to all the fights, the one momma Sadie had to teach the lessons to, the ones that were the escape and climbing artists. What joy these little guys brought me. I felt like Farmer Fran or Mother Goose each morning. They knew I was the food lady and would follow me all over the yard. They would bite my skirt tail and chase my shadow. I would run and let them chase me and laugh. I discovered that I loved this!

When the puppies became old enough, we decided we needed to share our blessing and looked for homes. The response was overwhelming! Apparently during covid everyone realized they needed a pet, and we had some amazing families come for adoption.

After this a funny thing happened: so many of our puppy parents reached out and said that we had created the most perfect dog breed. These dogs had been loyal companions, were low to no shedding, quick learners, and the biggest question that we received the most frequently was, “When are you going to have more?”

 Our little accident became a happy blessing not only to us, but to everyone else who got one of our puppies. We had created a new breed: La’Morkies, and this is where Cox Family Kennel began-very humble beginnings, but through an answer to prayer. You know, I’ve learned something. Sometimes the answer to a prayer comes immediately, but a lot of the time, we have to wait for it. It looks like our prayers are being ignored, but apparently the clocks in Heaven are on a different spring forward and fall back schedule than ours. (Like a drastically different schedule!) I can look back now and see that the Lord knew what I needed before I asked and before I even needed it. Our puppies were born in the middle of covid, but they were conceived before it was much of a thought in America, yet the Lord knew that I would have a hard time when the world as I knew it was changing. When I felt like it was shutting down, and he sent a blessing in his perfect time right to my backyard. This blessing became not only  a help to me and my spirit, but also an opportunity for me and my family. 

The following years were spent working, researching, making vet visits, making mistakes, making lots of memories, doing testing. We were investing, growing, and learning as much as we possibly could so that we could breed, nurture, and raise happy and healthy pups. It’s not always been easy. Sadie’s last litter almost made me quit for good, honestly, but through the difficulties, the lessons that I have learned have been invaluable.

Next April we will celebrate 5 years of being a breeder, and today I’m thankful for the answered prayer that that first litter brought to us, and the opportunity that it presented that we are still enjoying today. 

What about you? What unexpected blessings are you thankful for today?