Title: "Duende In Foster Cuddle"

Artist: Susan H. Sontag

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Dimensions: 21" x 16.5"

Animal Depicted is Duende and his story is below:

A street lined with nothing but dilapidated, abandoned houses and trash is where this mama dog had her puppies. She hid them well and protected them until they were old enough to start following her around. On a day we were out feeding, we spotted her on this street and could see that she had recently had puppies. She quickly ate the pile of food we had put down for her. As we searched each house, she followed us, barking. That's what a good mom does to warn her pups. We spent hours searching through the houses and piles of junk trying to locate puppies. As we searched, a gentleman approached, holding a small black puppy. In broken English he explained to us that he had seen the puppies and he could hear them at night barking, but the little one he held was shivering in the cold one night and it was the only one he could get.He told us he could not take care of it and could we please take him. He only picked him up to get him out of the cold and damp. He explained that he had not seen any of the other pups for about three days. We weren't ready to give up on them so we put the single puppy in the jeep and continued our search. Sadly, the only other puppy we found was deceased.

Apparently others had also noticed the pups. While were were there, a man approached with his dog. He told the dog "see, I told you we were going to go look for puppies today." His dog was not leashed and romping through the weeds. As soon as she spotted the mama dog though she hovered over her and started to attack her. We were able to get her to stop and told the man to get his dog. He wreaked of alcohol and could have cared less that his dog had gone after the mom. All he cared about was letting us know that he too was there to find puppies. We told him we had been looking for hours and had not spotted one single pup. We put a leash on his dog, handed it to him and asked him to please leave with his dog.

We were leery about leaving the mama dog, but because , but were not 100% sure that others had not already gotten to the rest of the puppies and mom would have been their only protection. We decided to set some of the trail cameras up overnight and come back the next day. When there was still no sign of puppies we decided to give mom her freedom ride too. As soon as she was in the jeep, she laid down on the blankets, put her head down and finally rested.

Duende immediately went to a loving foster home until he could be neutered, then he quickly found his forever home where he will have the life of love that he deserves!

Status: Adopted!

*If you are the winning bidder, artwork will be available for pick up from the Pine Street Shelter starting Thursday June 11th. If you are not local to the St. Louis Area, shipping will be an additional cost and will be calculated for each piece individually.