The moral of this tale is to present some insight into my love of and for animals and just how forgiving I can be, even when the critter is creepy, fuzzy, has eight legs and hates me. With this in resume, it is no wonder I stopped on my way into work one Valentine’s Day eve to investigate the squeaking and whimpering sounds I heard in the night.

I was pulling a graveyard shift that night and arrived at the jail at about eleven p.m. It had started to snow that afternoon and by the time I got to work it was blowing a pretty fair-sized blizzard for this part of the state. Still, it was very quiet and peaceful as I trudged through the yet un-plowed snow towards the rear of the jail to let myself in, and in the silence I could hear the distinct sounds of something small making pitiful sounds in the cold night.

I traced the sounds to a patrol car, which had been parked in its current spot for some time, considering the buildup of snow on it, and I got down on all fours to venture a look underneath. What I found there was a pile of assorted colors of fur, not really distinguishable in the dark. I managed to pull the lump of fur out into the light of the parking area and found a small, white, female poodle and five brownish colored pups.

The mother was a mat of mud, grease and tangles beyond recognition. She was also dead, either from having had the litter, from the cold or from starvation. Most likely it was a combination of the three causes. Two of her pups were also frozen and lifeless, but three of them seemed to be hanging onto life, like tiny, fuzzy balls of snow packed fluff. They must have had an incredible will to live as they could not have been more than an hour or so old.
The mother dog was wearing a frayed, filthy red collar but there were no identifying tags. I had one of the trusties come down with a plastic bag and wrap up mama dog and her two lifeless pups for a later burial while I carried the three remaining puppies inside and up to the jail.

I have no idea what the precise policy is for having puppies in the jail. At that time, some years ago, the only animals you might find there, besides the inmates and a few of the officers, were the drug and patrol dogs that were brought in to visit when their services were needed, or when their officer wanted to take a break and made a late night visit to the jail for a cup of hot, strong, jailhouse coffee. Otherwise, I do not believe animals were allowed. I’m not sure why.

So, officer Quayle to the rescue. I had three tiny, half frozen puppies in my jacket and the utter determination to make sure someone, somehow, helped keep them alive. The shift sergeant made it clear to me she wanted nothing to do with any of it, but if they happened to disappear into the depths of the Trusty dorm and were too quiet to be heard, what could she do about it?

For the following five weeks, those three puppies were hand fed and cared for by a dorm full of inmates. It would have made an incredible human interest story for any publication: a dozen big, tattooed, inmates caring for pups that weighed about as much as half a stick of butter, or less, bottle feeding them formula, first with eyedroppers and then with rubber kitchen gloves for nipples. The duties were shared equally, with each inmate taking his turn to miss sleep and feed his puppy. They were kept spotlessly clean and amazingly quiet and every one of the three, two males and one female, survived. There is possibly no image more heartwarming than seeing big, burly, tattooed men holding tiny balls of fluff in their hands and feeding them drop by drop.

But the media, and more importantly the Sheriff, never knew. Or, if the Sheriff did know he turned his head the other way and no mention was ever made of it. When the puppies were five weeks old they were put up for adoption to the officers. Well, the two males were. I took the female.

She became “The Mighty Face”; “Face” for short, and as I began to write this she was nearly fifteen years old and still going strong. Her fluffy, brown fur mutated to a rather mouse-color over the years, probably because her daddy was a wanderer of dubious breeding and Face’s genetic background is iffy, at best. Over time her tiny body widened so that she somewhat resembled a furry football, but she was still “Face”, the Jailhouse Dog.

Face and I went through a lot of times together, good and bad, including the death of my son, Kris, but she never left my side. I tried to always be there for her, as well. She had an incredible will to live that snowy night many years ago and it seemed the least I could do was to honor her love of life with a loving home, a full bowl of food and a warm spot on my bed at night. So I did that until a time nearing her 17th birthday when she slipped away in my arms. Face is buried under a boulder in my front yard where hollyhocks and morning glories bloom all summer long. I’m pretty sure she likes that.