We had our 5lb toy poodle bred a few years ago. She has papers and the full deal, so we went to a local breeder and told them what we wanted to do. They told us that they could do it one of two ways. Either we could pay them a stud fee of several hundred dollars (their male was some sort of champion or something) OR we could allow them to have one puppy out of the litter. We chose the second option and had the deed done. It worked and she got pregnant.
About a month before she was due to have the pups, I was getting ready to go to a men's leadership class at the church that I lead. We always have snacks and it was my turn to bring them so I made brownies. They were still hot, so I set them out on the table on the deck to cool while I was gathering stuff up to go. Somewhere along the line, I let the dog out and she managed to climb up on the table and eat 1/4 of a 9X13 pan of brownies. That's a significant amount of chocolate for a dog who only weighs 5lbs soaking wet.
The next day, the dog was jumping up and down at the door and every time she jumped a tiny little puppy fell out. The chocolate, which is a poison to dogs, caused her to loose them. We found 3 little puppies, each about the size of a small mouse, all still born. We called the vet, who confirmed that is was the chocolate that did it but said that our dog should be ok. Finally, We called the breeder and told her there would be no pups. I felt horrible that I had let the dog get to the chocolate.
Two weeks later we noticed that the dog was still eating like crazy and gaining weight and getting clumsy. We took her to the vet, who was amazed to discover that she was still pregnant. Later she gave birth to one completely healthy puppy. The vet had never seen a case like it where some, but not all the puppies were lost.
We were so excited, the kids were beside themselves! There was one problem though. We had agreed to let the breeder have one of the puppies. Now there was only 1 puppy, what were we going to do? The first thought (temptation!) was to just not let the breeder know that there was a puppy. But no, that wasn't right.
We called the breeder and told her the story. She was also amazed at the whole thing. She told us that in spite of our agreement, she would let us keep our puppy for $100 (I'm actually not sure what the price was, it might have been $150 or $175- the dog was probably worth closer to $300-doesn't really matter.)
The deal was we could buy back or REDEEM our puppy for a RANSOM price. She was my puppy and yet because of my failure I had to buy her back.
1:7 in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
We are God's children and yet because of our sin, God had to redeem us. He bought us back with the RANSOM cost of the blood of Jesus. It wasn't cheap and it wasn't easy, but He chose to do it because of his great love for us!
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