April

APRIL'S STORY

April, nicknamed "Tadpole", is DeeDee's
first-born daughter, named after the month in
which she was born. Our desire for a second
hairless Chinese Crested led us to the decision to
breed DeeDee. Even though DeeDee's pregnancy
and delivery of the puppies was a disaster, April
was one of the blessings of that pregnancy.

April was a fairly good-sized puppy at birth.
She immediately reminded us of a little football.
Because of all the problems with her sister,
Angel, (see next story) April had her mother all
to herself. She was able to nurse any time and
food was plentiful. The outcome of this was that
April just kept getting bigger and bigger. After
her eyes opened at about 2 weeks of age and she
started crawling around in order to investigate
her surroundings, DeeDee couldn't even lift her
(and she tried so hard to lift her) to return her
to the safety of the crate.

April wasn't handled very often during the first
few weeks of her life because of all the time
required to look after her sister. Whenever she
was picked up, she would start to tremble, almost
reaching a point where I thought something was
wrong with her. It just turned out to be a fear
of being lifted off the ground. She overcame
this fear as she got a little older and is surely
making up for it now. She insists on being picked
up and hugged almost constantly.

As much as I hate to admit it, April turned out to
be the "ugly" one of the family. One of her ears
won't stand up and she has a very noticeable
overbite. Most of her teeth are either missing or
crooked, as is common in the hairless Chinese
Crested. The funniest part of this is that she is
missing almost all the teeth on the right side of
her mouth. Because of this, she has a lot of
trouble keeping her extra long tongue inside her
mouth. Most of the time when her mouth is
closed, her tongue is just hanging from the corner
of her mouth. Add this factor to the
uncontrollable floppy ear problem and you get
quite a picture of something resembling a gremlin.

April is a very good canine companion. She is
very loving and loves to cuddle. I don't recall
her ever getting into any normal puppy mischief.
Her mother taught her well. April will be three
years old in April of 2004. She is still very
attached to DeeDee and I'm sure they realize
they are mother and daughter even though April
is much, much larger than her mother. This seems
unusual to me because both DeeDee and Timothy
(April's father) are very small. But then again --
once a football, always a football.