The pups, a dog and bitch, both red, will be three weeks old at the end of this week. Preparing for their arrival involved a whole range of administrative tasks, largely related to the due date being the weekend following the end of the first week of term. Chief among these were pre-recording lectures to cover for my absence in the event of an early or late arrival, working out a schedule of checking in on the dogs in the days leading up to the event (for which I owe thanks to the harvestparents, who much helped with this), and broaching with due tentativeness the subject of whether my vet might be available after hours should a caesarean—the bane of the short-legged breeds—be required.
Things turned out well. My new vet—surely one of the few remaining who would make such an offer—gave the “call me any time of the day or night for dog emergencies” okay. (Now in non-dog circumstances, through which I sashay with free-floating irony, I might make light of this, but it was a weight off my mind.) When push came to shove early Friday morning, all was organised enough for me to excuse myself from the coffee queue with a cheery “my dog is going to go into labour”, give my early lecture and make a salutary exit thereafter.
The drive across town felt surreal, in the sense that the previous time I did it it was at around three in the morning, when I was still unaware of all the worry I was heading into. This time however it was all textbook at the vet’s, to the extent that the dog pup, the first to arrive, was born on the table at the surgery while instruments were being organised for a caesarean, and the bitch, breech but fine, an hour or so thereafter. From start to finish, perhaps three hours all told. Not too shabby, for Millie or for me.
Since then there have been no real worries save the arrival of a foster pup, of the same breed, a few days later, and even she has adapted well to life with an adoptive dam and quickly begun thriving. All eyes are open now, and all three little ones beginning to explore the world, with enough distinguishing characteristics for me to begin speculating as to their eventual character. Thus far it seems that Eddie will be the mama’s boy and Fern the placid one, while Fina, our interloper, scoots around the basket on her own independent course.
How much easier this has all been the second time around, not only for familiarity with the planning and preparation involved (and wistful thoughts of hardier breeds who whelp outside, in winter, in half a metre of snow) but more for knowing before the fact how it would feel, and that, for all the potential risks, I have one hardy dam on board. Too many photos of the pups’ first few days are here.
None of this goes any way towards answering the question of why an otherwise high-functioning professional should want so many dogs (Fern stays with the household and Eddie will be “run on”—kept while I see how he turns out) or indeed why I should prefer the daily pack life to most forms of human contact at day’s start and end. Even if the root of such an affinity is in dysfunction I can’t see that it matters much, since any maladjustment that finds its expression in husbanding small hairy terriers can’t be wholly bad.
