The Bee Gees and Me

The Bee Gees and Me

Seriously, all I think about the first 48 hours of caring for puppies is the song from the Bee Gee’s, “Stayin’ Alive, Staying Alive…”  Everything I’ve read and lived in the world of dog breeding emphasizes how the first week is absolutely critical to the foundation of healthy dogs.

Our first pup in this litter, Sebastian Cabot, I named him due to his black overcoat and white ruffle down the front, had an important role in helping his brothers and sisters being born.  Namely, nursing from his Momma.  Scientifically, that action on his part stimulates contractions for her to continue birthing the rest.  If it wasn’t that way, she’d just hunker down with him and nap.  And that ain’t the time for napping, let me tell you.

In my last entry which actually was written on Friday April 26, the day after the whelping, when I had two brain cells left, I explained how Artemus Gordon came at 2:05 pm.  The next boy, Sean Connery came around 3:30 pm.  Remember his outfit in the movie about King Arthur, the shiny silver boots?  My Connery has actually tannish-markings on his front paws.  I found out the next day when the black dogs all had dried off from birth (yes I did towel dry them Day One, but for them to fully dry took Madeline’s attention), that three of the boys have nice tan markings that I couldn’t see when the black color was wet and shiny at birth.  They are going to be handsome dogs.

My 4:30 boy came in with a cute pink nose.  His name is Bandit.  I fully expect him to steal someone’s heart pretty quickly.  Our final pup entered the scene around 5:30 pm, Mariette Joy.  It was the only time I ever really noticed Madeline Grace gobble an entire placenta.  It was a sight that made me feel like I got punched in the stomach, but I got over it.  Earlier in the day I actually grabbed a placenta off the lawn to get it out of her view.  While dogs, for health reasons, tend to eat them, also for health reasons, they should not eat ALL of them.  To quote St. Thomas Aquinas, “All good things in moderation.”  If the dogs eat too many of them, I will just say that like an encyclopedia salesman who thinks you are an easy sell, you WILL be seeing them again. 

So inside the world of puppy raising the next phase involves food, temperature, cleanliness and complete freedom from any other important responsibilities on my part.  As I said to a co-worker once, “When you’re raising puppies, that’s ALL your doing is raising puppies.”  I believe that this week I have already lost three pounds from running up and down the stairs and back and forth across the lawn.  I sleep in the finished basement with the dogs – it is quiet and den-like, but the futon is not a study in comfortable sleeping…. Especially the pipe that tends to run afoul with my spine. 

Madeline’s food intake has tripled, which means I have to feed her more frequently.  She needs protein, and her body needs to be able to regulate its use of calcium in producing milk for them.  I have to keep an eye on her that all of her systems are working properly.  Then, the temperature of the pups for the first week or two needs to be like, oh, BERMUDA.  Because the little space heaters are not a safe, full time solution, I only use them when I am home to babysit the process; otherwise, I turn the house heat up. Don’t ask how high.  Just think:  short sleeve shirts and flip flops.  In a couple of weeks, when their little bodies’ engines can regulate their own temperature efficiently, I won’t have to worry so much about a few more degrees.  Its ironic how my two big “basement interests” compete for temperature:  the puppies need to be toasty but in the next section of the basement, the wine needs to be stable and cool.  I worry less about the wine than I do my little guys though.

In case you were wondering:  Puppies’ cries are not generic.  When Madeline hops out of the kennel to get a drink – more often than not, I kneel in to bring her a drink – if they are not in a deep sleep they are CRANKY for her leaving them.  Even though they are yet without sight, they know her feel and her warmth and that their lives depend on her presence.  Just recently, little Connery was making his ornery wailing as his body produced one of its first Big Jobs.  He needed a bit of cleaning in the process so I took a paper towel and gently assisted him.  On the other end of business, If they are hungry, they have a particular noise they make to her.  And if they are chilly they whimper…. Trust me when I say, I do my best to prevent that from happening even momentarily.  My friend gave me an incredible disc that you heat in a microwave and it holds and evenly disperses warmth for hours on end.  This will be my god-send when I go back to work.  All of these details of care I have accumulated by reading, by consulting with other breeders, and by journaling my process with each litter so it is less of a shock to my system the next time I need to use it. It’s not exactly like riding a bike – you do need to refresh your memory on the particulars in order to be prepared.

I will honestly say:  This enterprise is not easy and it is not for the faint-hearted.  Things can go awry and get both financially and emotionally costly.  When I talk to potential buyers and they trigger something in me that makes me suspect they are going to re-sell my baby to make a profit (“Puppy Brokers”) or they are nit-wits that won’t take proper care to give the dog a happy, healthy life, it really jacks my blood pressure up. 

I had a woman call me about one of my boys in a previous litter.  I advised her that because his tail was tipped with white like a paintbrush I elected not to doc it.  It was so beautiful.  Consequently, he would have a full-length dog tail instead of an official cocker spaniel sporting look.  He was six weeks old at the time.  She said, and I quote, “I don’t want a dog WITH A TAIL.  Can you get rid of it?”   It would have been excruciatingly painful for him.  Her lack of insight was a level of ignorance that was inexcusably stupid.  Wanna know what I got rid of?  Her business as a potential buyer.  I said, “No.  I can’t doc the tail at this stage.  It would hurt him immensely.”  She said, “well, then I guess I will take Monte Carlo.”  (one of my other pups)  I replied:  “No actually he is not available.  So I guess I can’t help you.  Have a nice day.”  I turfed her.

Another guy called me from a nearby city.  He said, “yeah, I’ve got five kids so I guess I should probably get a dog.”  HUH?!  Since when is having a full house of kids the reason by which you choose to add a dog to your chaos?  I asked if he had looked at other dogs.  He listed off a variety of breeds that were so diverse it made no sense:  terriers (toy breed), spaniels (hunting breed), labs (sporting breed), you get the idea.  I said to him:  “What’s the age range of your kids?”  He had a hard time conjuring up believable figures for me.  I replied:  “I’m thinking that what you need is a golden retriever.  They are much better dogs with big families and active kids.  He got defensive and said he had to call me back.  I called him back a few minutes later and when he finally answered, he snapped and said:  “I told you I’d call YOU tomorrow!”  No need.  Jerk.  At that point you can safely surmise he was on the other line with the person he was trying to sell one of MY pups to as a broker.  He knew he was not securing the sale from either direction and thus the frustration.   

I remember the day Tiffany called me from Puppy Paradise.  That’s what it said on caller ID.  I asked her what that was.  She said, “We HELP YOU to find good homes for your puppies by matching the perfect buyer to your puppy.”  Guess what?  No need.  I told her straight-out:  “I don’t fly or ship puppies.  I want to meet the potential buyers face-to-face.  I want them to see that I am NOT a puppy mill, but a hobby breeder.”  I want to decide if the particular interested person is the right fit for my puppy that I put so much work and love into.  I will settle for no less.  Every ad I place going forward says:  “No Puppy Brokers, please.” 

Are these episodes with people reason to not get into dog breeding?  Not really, because any business has its quirky people and scheisters.   And every breeder I know will tell you that you don’t do it for the money because if you actually factored in the cost of the TIME you spend in addition to supplies and vetting etc., you don’t break even.  We don’t price our dogs to make a big profit margin.  We price them so that the average family that deserves a healthy, quality dog can afford one.  We have our buyers in mind as much as the best interest of our dogs when we decide who to accept as a potential customer.  I will say that given the amount of energy I put into it, and my particular sense of “partnering with God” in the process of birth and nurturing, I also believe that each of my dogs has a ministry. 

The ministry of each dog is different.  Each disposition has been created by God to help someone and bring joy to them in a way to which they can relate.  Remember the dog with the tail?  Guess who he lives with now?  (Me.)  And even though I have, by all sane estimations, “enough” dogs just by owning his mother and grandmother dogs, he completes the package.  He is full of joy and fun in a way that they are not.  Each dog brings something new to the table. 

And so as I hover over the little brood of five puppies, I wonder whose life they will fulfill.  I wonder what their gift is and how they will make the world a better place.  Sometimes I think dogs have a better shot of accomplishing that then we people.  But I’m biased:  I am in love.

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The Fun Begins at 12:15

The Fun Begins at 12:15

Sequel to the Sock in My Left Pocket

I am now on Dog Time.  Yesterday seems like it is a million miles away.  Today is for napping and eating and getting my head together (good luck to me) and going to the dump…. Every dog in this house is napping right now.  Well, except for the one that just squeaked, but maybe he is napping while squeaking.  The smartest two things I did this week were:  (1) I bought a nanny cam so I can actually see the Puppy Room from anywhere else in the house besides standing right there.  This is a huge advantage.  I can now go up to the kitchen table and eat without wondering what is going on down there and who is squeaking and why.  If you want to understand a portion of this maternal anxiety for my puppies, download a You Tube of the episode of I Love Lucy where their son Little Ricky is a baby in the crib and Lucy hovers over the crib to make sure he is still breathing.  Finally, she can’t stand it and she pinches him.  That’s the maternal psychosis that starts to take over if you are not careful, or supported by people who can say, “Let me be your helicopter; you need to drive out somewhere and get a cheeseburger.”  Which leads me to the second smartest thing (I believe) that I did this week.

In my last entry you remember me talking about watching the sunrise with the dog who just couldn’t seem to let her puppies get born.  She was panting and walking and doing all the other routine, earthly things dogs do to cooperate with whelping.  Perhaps she was making progress internally, but externally, I was starting to wear around the edges of sanity.  She was at least one, maybe two, days beyond her due date.  I actually put a lawn chair on the grass at 6:45 am and sat there in my fleece-lined coat looking at the morning MOON.  Madeline Grace ambled over to me and put two paws up on my knees.  This, too, was more than a friendly gesture.  It would help the pups move down into position for their Journey.  She did this when she was still talking to me.  At present, 24+ hours later, she has not really forgiven me.  In the haze of the late morning I decided to ask the question WWTVD?  “What would the Vet Do?” 

My experience has been that if you panic and run to the vet, you end up with a caesarean section.  I was trying to avoid that.  I KNOW that Madeline is physically capable of birthing a litter of puppies without intervention because she did it the first time she was bred.  It was the second time she did not … because she had only one pup and he was a hefty 10 ounce guy who didn’t want to let go of the grapevine and jump into the lake of life.  So the vet had to go in and get him via c-section… four days after his due date.  He made it, and grew up to be a spunky little rascal now in a great home with a little boy who loves him. 

In this case, I just washed my hands and put two fingers in the back door to see if anyone was stuck in the birth canal.  And like most non-veterinarians or brand new ones, I said, “I don’t know what the heck I’m feeling.”  Needless to say, Madeline was non-plussed by this intrusion.  I put her in her kennel so we could just continue waiting until I had a better idea, grabbed a can of spray paint and went and painted my milkcan that my mailbox sticks out of.  I painted it red, mostly because I’m tired of the plow hitting it in the winter.  Fifteen minutes later, I went in to check on Madeline and there she was cleaning up her first born puppy.  12:15 pm, the fun had begun.

Text exchange between my friend who owns the litter’s daddy continued.  She said, “I start to panic if a second one isn’t born within 40 minutes.”  I remembered the first litter I attended where I waited ten hours for the second one to come and that required a shot of oxytocin by the vet.  About five minutes before 2pm, I picked up the phone to at least talk to the veterinary technician.  In the middle of me explaining progress or lack thereof and her talking over her shoulder to a nearby vet in the office, Madeline pushed the door to go outside – I let her onto the grass and as she spun in smaller and smaller circles, I saw the tip of legs begin to protrude.  I went to her and eased him out.  Whopping boy #2 whom I named Artemus Gordon because although he was an important character, he always seemed to follow James West on the show The Wild, Wild West. 

From this point we had a 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm delivery of boys, boys, boys.  A vague idea of a house full of boy puppies crossed my mental grid.  I’m going to have my hands full when these guys reach 8 weeks.  At this point, my Puppy Socialization Specialist came home from her day at high school.  She visited with me over the back fence for a while and then went home for a bite to eat.  She came back around 5:30 pm, and again Madeline wanted to go to the back yard, and birthed our beautiful girl Mariette Joy.  Our final birth count being five puppies, my attention now shifts to, as the song said, “Stayin’ Alive, stayin’ alive….”

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The Sock in My Left Pocket

I’m drinking my coffee left-handed this morning.  The dog in labor is making small circles in the living room alternately with sitting at the kitchen table at my knee panting her brains out.  The waiting is not easy when it gets to this point.  At 4:30 am I was standing outside watching her sit and stare up at the morning stars, again, panting.  After two days of NOT panting like this, I recognize this as progress.  My mantra all along has been, “We sell no wine before its time.”  But the reality is, my heart has been ready for this litter for a while. 

I can’t explain why I long for this series of events, and yet when it comes, I am sometimes “sore afraid.”  The one place I do not want this journey to take us today is the veterinary office.  It seems that when a dog in labor gets to the veterinary office something has gone awry and it ends up in a caesarean section.  It’s not that it is pricey, which it is, that takes my breath away at the thought of it.  It’s that the dog looks like HELL when the surgery is done and they give her zero pain killers and then pop a bunch of puppies in my willow basket with the heating disk and tell me, “call us,” or the equivalent thereof.  I’ve seen that movie twice and didn’t enjoy it either time.  It takes a dramatic labor and turns it into a medical event.  The dog has to nurse her puppies to get them to stay with us – or they won’t make it because I absolutely stink at hand-feeding anything.  I’m lucky I am able to feed my ownself.

This particular labor has been an exercise in patience no more than the rest.  The one thing that is different is I feel older and due to lack of sufficient Vitamin D in me, I started this game exhausted.  Two days before today, when I thought the original due date was, I was lying on the futon I had made up for myself downstairs near the whelping room trying to take a nap.  My whole body hurt.  Not like flu-ish.  Like my arms particularly were just tired of being arms.  Thankfully at late morning the temperature that day was moving up towards a beautiful mid-day 70 degrees.  I put my sneakers on, clipped a lead on Madeline Grace and headed out to walk the track at the farm next door.  The next day (which was yesterday but feels like last year somehow, again courtesy of my Vitamin D level being in the toilet) it was in the 40’s with a cold, biting wind driving across the pastures and paddocks.  I put on my fleece lined winter coat and brought Madeline on a Labor March again.  In my right pocket was the cell phone in case of emergency…. But I’m not sure who I would call on a work day.  In my left pocket was a sock.  Not just any sock.  This is an extra soft, something like terry cloth sock, with a loose-fitting band.  It is not a lucky sock; that’s not why it was in my pocket.  It just bears the distinction of being the perfect size to pop a 7-ounce newborn puppy into should she decide to drop one on the track as we walked.  And, no, that wouldn’t alarm me. 

I like dogs.  Dogs tend to like me.  But I draw the line at letting the dog birth puppies on the futon WHILE I’m sleeping in it.  I snuggled with Madeline Grace and helped her feel more comfortable, giving her a back massage and stroking her face.  She has done this labor-thing before and clearly doesn’t remember the doula mantra of “pain-with-a-purpose.”  She only knows in her sweet dog brain that she is uncomfortable and something is pushing inside her that feels out-of-sorts.  Actually, this time it will be a few somethings, or rather, someones.  This time, she is clingy like Velcro-dog to me.  But getting her OFF the futon, where she finds it comfortable isn’t something I can convince her to do.  I have given myself over to the idea – which is essential for dog breeders – that there is a lot of laundry in my near future.  So, I leave my place of rest and go upstairs to proceed to get dressed for this day.  The time of that maneuver was 4:30 am or thereabouts.  This is a time frame I am completely unfamiliar with, except for cases where I needed to go to the airport.  I am surprisingly un-tired now, despite watching an episode of Bull and one of Blue Bloods last night back-to-back until maybe 11 pm. 

I moved my activity upstairs toward the goal of getting dressed for the day at this prehistoric hour.  Then knowing that where this day would take me was uncertain, I toasted two slices of apple strudel bread and booted-up the Keurig with a cup of Hazelnut coffee.  Tiny bits of dry dog food are littered around the dishes of the three dogs.  Apparently when I fed them rice and scrambled eggs last night, they were less interested in the kibble so they just sorted it out on my floor.  I knelt with a dustpan in hand to begin the clean-up.  Even I am surprised at how un-stiff I am today at this time of the morning.  My brain, typically close to comatose on any other day at this hour, wants to write.  Madeline Grace is making small circles on my living room floor.  She meanders into the dining room area and begins walking lonnnnngggggg until she has stretched out her body to the floor.  It must be hard to get comfortable lying on your belly when it’s the size of a typical summer watermelon.  She repositions herself again.  I am almost running out of words and it is 5:33 am.  All I hear is the steady panting of an amazing dog in labor.  I swig the coffee that is now rapidly approaching room temperature.  Its bitterness makes me wonder how I was too lazy to open the new container of creamer with amaretto in the refrigerator.  Then I remember what time it is and how foreign operating this side of daylight is to me.

She has moved back to the dining room table area just to be near me.  The other two dogs are not far away from us.  She rises again to begin the pacing.  She now sits at my knee.  Valor has woken up and stands for a moment with two front paws on my knee.  He has learned to talk this year.  As he yawns, he makes the distinct sound of “hellll-oooooo.”   I get up and look at the low-lying horizontal stretch of clouds over the house diagonally across the street from mine.  It is breaking and the sun is rising a purple-pinkish color in streaks of glory and I am grateful.  Madeline begins up and pacing in the living room, I don’t have the heart to move this downstairs.  She is ready and soon she will drop a sweet little bundle of fur on my floor.  All the clean up will be mine, but so will all of the love.  My stomach feels nervous for these last few moments.  My eyes have tears stinging at the corners – I live for this – and she continues the relentless panting. 

I realize that a breath of fresh, crisp morning air would do us all good.  The three dogs and I bound down the basement steps and out the door.  Madeline circles and circles and I wait.  I find myself clenching my jaw a bit.  At 5:55 am the sun may be rising on the one side of the house, but on this the back side facing south, the moon hangs boldly in the center sky.  It is sliced decisively in half against a soft blue backdrop.  Madeline sits to watch the moon.  I observe my breath, her breath, Valor’s huffings of mist from our lungs into the cool air.  We sit.  We wait.  I drag her inside because my nose is cold. 

We return to circling and pacing.  It is now 6:35 am and she sits at the door giving me, her Village Idiot, the message – let’s go out again.  I rise, the slave of her morning activities. 

An unproductive hour passes outside.  I attempt blowing “smoke rings” with my breath.  It does not work.  Her efforts buy her more time in the process.  I wonder what is the hold up inside her.? At one point I thought she was minutes away from just pushing the next Lion King out her back door.  The next minute she is sitting to provide herself counter-pressure.  Inside only a few minutes, she is sitting by the door asking to go out again.  I am reluctant to step back into the chilled air with her.  Other dogs it seems do their business in the whelping box and all is right with the world.  My dogs seem to need to pace throughout the house like an expectant mother in the maternity ward hallway. 

I relent; we return outside.  The morning has warmed up and I go inside to snag a cup of vanilla ice cream for her … which she politely refuses.  Don’t lose your faith in me, I took a spoonful for myself before I offered her a portion.  I got the bright idea of putting a lawn chair outside and sat there sunning my face as she … did very little.  So more time elapsed with little visible progress.  But birthing, like all other mysteries, involves interior work that can go on for an extended period of time before the fruit of labor is born.  I brought her inside to narrow our area of work a bit.  And we wait.  Still.  10:45 am.

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