Dogs with Jobs

I am a week into my annual retreat from the daily grind of life.  I tend to take this time to get a head start on typical New Year’s Resolutions like healthy living and this year is no exception.  After spending most of the year dealing with dislocating bones I have finally made my triumphant return to morning yoga and meditation (Chuckle of the day: Spell check changed meditation to medication… which is ironic as that is how my mornings have started for at least the last six months,,, thank-you makers of Tylenol). 

I love the 10-15 minute yoga clips that Yoga with Kassandra produces on YouTube.  As it has been over 8 months since I last did one of her video’s I totally forgot about her encouragement to set an intention for the upcoming day… something that I hoped to encounter or embody.  My word for today is joy and what brings me joy… 

DOGS! Especially puppies!!!!

GoldenPride Norah X George Litter

During Covid I started fostering a Mom for GoldenPride Kennels.  It was the best decision of my life.  Not only did I get to expand the herd by one, I also secured unlimited access to puppies.  

GoldenPride Whisper X Nigel Litter

GoldenPride Whisper X Sebastian Litter

Puppy Snuggles!!!!

The disadvantage of this arrangement is there are points in time when the Mom is away from home and the house feels empty.  However, I have found a coping mechanism to get me through it all… I choose to look at it as the Mom is away on a business trip and we get to meet up at least once a week at Disneyland aka the whelping box to debrief on how our week went.  I complain about work, the amount of snow I have had to shovel and lack of time to partake in all my preferred extracurriculars and she laments about the pain of birthing a litter, sore nipples, how tired she is and how it is all worth it for unlimited access to food.  At the end of the visit we part ways vowing to meet up again and hoping for the best for each other in the week to come. 

My fostering of the one Mom led to fostering of three more future Mom’s, and recently one of the future Mom’s became a Mom.  Yup, Lyndy is now a Mummy!  I will admit I was nervous about how she would take to motherhood, as she tends to be a little persnickety about change and she is not as open to meeting other dogs as the rest of the herd is.  Over the last two years she has tolerated having various puppies in the house, but she doesn’t actively follow them around and engage with them like Hazel and Wee.  I spent the whole of her pregnancy hoping for the best and trying to guess how many puppies were bipping and bopping in her belly.

She was due Nov 20/21st and the hope was that she would hold off until the weekend to have her puppies.  Well that was the Breeder’s hope.  I on the other hand couldn’t wait for her to head to the farm for her lying-in period, as she was up every hour to two hours each night needing outside to use the washroom.  Maybe it was my anxiety about work or her impending motherhood, but once up, it was hard for me to get back to sleep and in a 48 hr period I was lucky if I accrued a grand total of 6 hours of sleep.

Well Lyndy decided to extend my sleepless purgatory. The night of Nov 20th she was restless the entire evening, panting so hard at times the entire bed shook… not conducive to sleeping.  I couldn’t handle it and got up to create a “den” for her in the smallest most zen like room in the house.  She initially settled, but about an hour later she was up vomiting and then had a poo accident.  It became apparent that I was not going to get much sleep so I let her come back to the bed.  

As she made herself comfortable in the blankets she stuck her nose up in the air and made a noise that was part belch and part grunt.  After the second one I started wondering if it was gas or a contraction.  I was humming and hawing about calling the Breeder when I just happened to place my hand on her stomach as she did it again.  

Just the cutest dang Contraction Face!

DEFINITELY A CONTRACTION!

CRAP!!!!

Why had I not prepared the back of the truck for this? What if she started birthing while I was driving out to the Farm??? I threw extra absorbent mats and towels down on the floor of the truck, loaded Lyndy in and started driving like a wailing Banshee to the Farm.  It did not help that a torrential rain storm was happening at the same time.  I got to the turn off for the highway and there was a Police car parked waiting to catch speeders.  I momentarily considered pulling over and asking for a Police escort, but decided that most likely would be a waste of time,  so  I slowed it down, at least until I rounded the corner, and was out of radar range.

Truthfully I couldn’t go to much over the speed limit as the standing water on the highway made it hard not to hydroplane when travelling more than 10 km over the speed limit.  I went with the safer option of taking it slower and arriving alive vs having Lyndy giving birth in a car wreck on the edge of the highway.  

I interrupt this regularly scheduled blog to play a little game.  Here is a picture of Lyndy 5 days before her due date.  How many puppies do you think are baking in her belly?

Bonus points if you can guess the final count of boys and girls

We arrived at the Farm around 2:45 am.  Although the rational part of my brain was telling me to drop her off and head home to get some sleep; the emotional part couldn’t leave her angsty and unsure as to what was going on, so I settled into a comfortable position in the whelping box and the waiting game began.  

Lyndy was in a semi-crouched position when the first one shot out around 3:30 am. The look on her face was priceless when she turned around to see what happened and spotted the baby.  She didn’t know what had come out of her back end, but it definitely wasn’t poo.  She started warming up to the puppy, as I cleaned and interacted with it and it wasn’t long before she was licking and nuzzling her (in case you are playing the game… I’m giving you a freebie here!). 

A little while after the second puppy arrived I took Lyndy outside for a washroom break.  Unfortunately I was a little too slow getting my shoes on and she had a Hershey squirt accident in the house.  Sorry J!  We headed outside just in case there was more in the tank and there was.  

Picture it, I’m standing out in the pouring rain holding a washcloth and a flashlight that is trained on Lyndy’s backend in case a puppy shoot out instead of poo, when I notice something long and green hanging down from her back end.  What was it?  I definitely knew it wasn’t a puppy.  Could it be a placenta??  Highly unlikely as she had already delivered the placenta’s with the first two puppies.  I knew this as I had to squelch my gag reflex while watching her attempt to scarf down each placenta.  She would start chewing and trying to swallow the placenta but as it reached the back of her throat she objected to the texture and it would start coming back up.  A scene that is not for the faint of heart nor for those that are easily grossed out.  Eventually we gave up on Lyndy being able to eat the placenta and bite through the cord and we had to cut the cord and discard the mangled placentas in the garbage.

Okay not placenta… what could it be?  Curiosity got the better of me and I gingerly took a hold of the end  and gave a gentle tug. It started to move.  I pulled some more…  more came out.  I pulled and pulled and pulled and it just kept coming.   

What in H E double hockey sticks is this????

It wasn’t until the entire length came out that I realized what I had been pulling out of her was the end of a roll of poo bags.  

Yup!  

The yahoo ate poo bags!  Maybe it was a misguided attempt to pre-package the poo to reduce my clean up, but her experiment did not work and thank the Good Lord she didn’t end up with another obstruction.   Yes, this is not her first trip to the I ate weird stuff rodeo.  In fact she has earned a long scar for her ability to eat and not pass weird stuff.  I tossed the three bags on the grass and we headed back in for Round 2. 

By the time we made it back inside the two littles were squawking up a storm.  They missed their Mom and man were they hungry.  Lyndy didn’t appreciate being greeted with mewling and refused to get close to them, let alone lie back down.  Gentle coaxing couldn’t entice her to leave the safety of behind my back.  We eventually resorted to lifting her over to the puppies, as she vehemently refused to go on her own.  As soon as the puppies settled on teats she was back to thinking these little beings weren’t so bad.  The night progressed with a puppy every 30- 45 minutes until the last one made an arrival at 7:30 a.m.  

There is something to say about formal obedience training!  Right after she had her first one I told her she had to be done by 7:30 so I had enough time get home and get to work.  I love that she took my suggestion to heart.  I stayed with her until I knew she wouldn’t miss me and then I was in the truck, rushing back to town for a Mickey Dee’s breakfast, a change of clothes and then it was off to work for the day.  

There were doubters that I could put in a full day of work on zero hours sleep, but little did they know I have had years of training thanks to chronic bouts of insomnia and summers working nights to pay for school.  I was 100% alert and lucid while assessing and observing.  The one thing that I couldn’t do was chart.  As soon as I started typing out notes I felt my eyelids drooping and my head nodding.  More than once I know I drifted into a one second nap right in the middle of typing.  Re-reading what I had typed, I realized that there was a huge risk that any notes made that day wouldn’t make sense, so I decided to fore go typing and relied on taking detailed handwritten notes, as handwriting didn’t have the same effect of lulling me into slumber.  I finished off my day and it was home for a rest, but not before checking in to see how Lyndy was doing.  

It seems all my angst about her ability to adapt to motherhood was misplaced.  She and the little litlle’s were all doing well.  Secure in the knowledge that she was embracing her new job, I head to bed for some much earned rest and puppy dreams!

We have reached the end.   Do you have your guess as to the number of puppies and how many of each locked in?  If not, I will give you another second or two to make your choice.

FROM THIS

Little Lyndy

TO THIS…. THE GRAND UNVEIL!!!

The “Hart”land Litter (GoldenPride Lyndy X Tyco Litter)

Bonus Points if you guessed 9!

As Lyndy was named after one of the characters from Heartland, the quintessential Canadian Horse Woman show and the Breeder’s last name is Hart it seemed fitting to name the puppies after Heartland characters.  Here is the break down of who is who:

Pink Collar: Amy 

Purple Collar: Lou

Blue Collar: Ty

Yellow Collar: Katie

Orange Collar: Georgie

Red Collar: Jack

Dark Green Collar: Mallory

Light Green Collar: Jade

Black Collar: Caleb

6 Girls and 3 Boys.  

The puppies are now three weeks old and are up starting to move around and their eyes are open.  Lyndy  is going to be one busy dog over the next five weeks and Grandma is going to be one happy camper!

THE END

Tiny Mallory toes!