The only person who seemed visibly missing from the equation
of dog breeding this latest round was Charleton Heston dressed as Moses. At one point, I remarked to a friend, “So
many hard things have happened this year that I’m kind of waiting for the
plague of locusts.” A week later, the
dogs found a stink bug in the bathroom.
That’ll do.
Last winter I took Madeline Grace eastbound on the thruway
to a stud dog. I can’t explain fully
what place you have to be in within your brain to do this. Consider taking your dog to the home of a
person you don’t know, introducing your dogs to each other and then watching
them copulate in the kitchen. There is
an attempt at normal conversation, the getting-to-know-you piece, and then it
stalls out. The woman was standing
leaning on her kitchen counter, I was sitting at the kitchen table holding my
dog’s head so she wouldn’t snap at her suitor.
The woman and I both began laughing:
Yeah, it’s kind of awkward holding pleasant conversation in the middle
of this.
She looked at the clock and said, “my gosh, I have to pick
up my daughter!” And I replied, “well
the dogs seem kind of done, so I will just go home.” I took my dog out to potty on the front lawn
before we drove away. Now I wonder if
she pottied-out the donation because 8 weeks later when I took her to the vet
to see why I saw no signs of labor … their x-ray said she wasn’t pregnant. I had taken the day off for a delivery that
was not going to happen. I sat in the
car in the vet’s parking lot and had myself a good cry.
My dog had just gotten 8 weeks of pampering (French toast
for breakfast) and special treatment for no good reason other than I’m easily
conned by dogs. We were past the
fertility window and I had to hunker down and wait for the next bi-annual heat
period to come. ARGH!!!
So in late summer, I drove out to Western Massachusetts to a
different stud dog. This time, the stud
owner was a man my age. Talk about
ramping-up the awkwardness. I will skip
all the details. He gave me
directions: don’t let her out to potty
before you get home (2.5 hours drive!).
And he kept re-iterating that he thought the timing was too early. Darn it all to heck. Last time I was too late; this time I was too
early. We got five weeks into the
gestational period and I declared, “I think you are right; we missed the
window.” Again, my bad, had I left the
dog for the weekend it could have happened – I just wasn’t comfortable with
leaving her in a stranger’s place without me.
He was kind enough to mail back the half of the stud fee that I put
down.
A week later, the dog was passing through my kitchen and
turned away from me and I realized: “Holy
smoke. She is getting ready to nurse
puppies” – she looked like a dairy cow from the back end! I said nothing to him and just waited out the
next 2 weeks of gestational period. She could be fooling me.
I took off the calculated delivery date from work. <62
days from mating.> I waited all week and although she was large and
panting, no puppies came. I brought her
into the vet’s office after that week of waiting. They took an x-ray and saw one single puppy
inside, making no moves to come down the canal.
Long story short, the vet did an emergency c-section on that Saturday
morning in late September. She was doing
surgery, while I was in the other room burying my face in my sweatshirt and
crying my heart out again: I hate
surgery and I am always afraid that I will lose my dog or her puppies.
The little guy came out at something crazy like 11 ounces
and change. That is quite big for a
cocker spaniel puppy – they are typically 7 or 8 ounces. Having dealt with the c-section after care
with Bethany Pearl in a prior litter, I was ready to help Madeline Grace do her
recovery simultaneous to nursing the new little guy.
We settled the new momma and her pup into the well-equipped
pen in my finished half of the basement.
For people who think dog raising is no big deal, here’s the scoop. Sanitation and safety become my two main
concerns. My hands and fingers are very dry
from washing the floor of the pen, and the tray in the kennel a million
times. I slept down there in the
adjacent room for around 2 weeks just listening to the sounds of the night,
making sure it was all good. Whomever
invented pipe frame futons needs to be put in jail. That’s all I’m sayin’ about that. There is a heating pad I place under the pups
that clicks off every 20 minutes so I am repeatedly clicking that back on to
keep them comfortable. The dog experts
say the room needs to be in the high 70’s for that first week, as their little
bodies aren’t that adept at maintaining heat.
A cooled puppy is an at-risk puppy.
So it was September and October outside, and my house inside felt like I
lived in Bermuda.
The momma dog’s appetite soars. I am feeding her dry puppy food, some canned
dog food to keep her interested, and cottage cheese as we near the week when he
begins to wean. The other two dogs don’t
want to lose my attention so there are other shenanigans that unfold. Week one or two, the whole house went on
strike for French toast. Bethany Pearl
wandered into the pen at week two, to grab some dry dog food and Madeline
mistook her intentions and roared out at her.
It was not play-fighting. No
sirree, Bob. But I didn’t think it was
anything other than corrective on Madeline’s part.
A week later, Bethany could barely put weight on her front
paw and her chest and collar bone area became mysteriously swollen. I panicked, and thought it was cancer that
struck out of nowhere. I ran her into
the vet’s office and they found actual bite marks that had infected on her
chest. So a new addition to my daily dog duties was
wound cleaning. And then I had to
organize myself to give her the antibiotics consistently for over two
weeks.
Just a few nights later, I stepped into the unfinished
laundry area of the basement and noticed something on the open cat box. The cat box that my cat doesn’t use. Ever. I
stepped closer and identified a little mouse sitting there looking freaked
out. I took him outside and tossed him
into the snow. He crawled up to the top
of the green snow fence and sat there looking cold. I went inside. Have I mentioned the increased population of
hawks in my area? Somewhere I could hear
Elton John singing, “The Circle of Life.” I had a word with the cat: “Whatever you do, do not drop these things on
my futon or upstairs.” The next morning,
I woke up to see the cat lying opposite the futon on a carpet…. And two feet to
her left was another freaked-out looking mouse.
My battle ensued to ensure sanitary living space.
Among all this other hoo-hah, include the Day 2 vet visit
with the Little Puppy to get his tail docked and dew claws removed. In the
puppy pen area, I have a small digital scale and a notebook where I weigh the
puppy twice a day until ounces turn into pounds. Then there’s a well-puppy visit at about 6
weeks that good breeders do so the new owners and I all know that the
little guy has been vet-checked and is good-to-go. And the 4 doses of puppy
wormer that gets fed to all the dogs at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8 to make sure everyone
is well.
All of the activities it takes to produce a healthy,
well-adjusted litter are like a Dog Symphony.
I tell my friends any time I approach the delivery date of a litter that
I will be mostly off-the-grid, and now on Dog-Time. The needs of the litter and my dogs have to
come first. I get tired. I also get nostalgic and teary about a week
before the going home-day, but I am determined to conduct this orchestra. Not everyone can manage being an Arthur
Fiedler, but then again, not everyone has the opportunity to conduct the Boston
Pops.
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