I whelped my first litter of puppies when I was just a teenager, still living at home with my parents. They were Golden Retrievers; I don’t remember how many puppies there were in the litter, and I suspect that even though they were technically ‘mine’, my mother probably did most of the work. I’m sure nothing sunk in about just how much of a hassle it is to raise a litter of puppies.
When I got married and moved to Georgia I started showing Springers, and my first litter of Springers was born in 1975. And with them came a rude awakening, because at three days of age their mother developed an infection and I ended up bottle-feeding eight puppies. Interesting, isn’t it, how I remember exactly how many little mouths there were in that litter! I also remember a lot of sleepless nights, followed by a sense of satisfaction that I was able to raise the entire litter, keep them healthy and send them happily off to their new homes.
The next twenty years found me heavily involved in Springers, showing from coast to coast and breeding a litter once every other year, on the average. I was never one who absolutely adored the process of raising puppies, but since it’s hard to get homebred show dogs without them, I gave myself up to the process and muddled through each successive litter with the typical failures and successes and trying to deal with the stumbling blocks that nature throws in the road to test every dog breeder. Some litters were a breeze, others weren’t, but overall I consider myself very fortunate as a dog breeder as I rarely lost a puppy and many grew up to have great success in the show ring and bring joy as companions to my family and the many other families who bought them. Throughout my years as a active breeder, I never lost an entire litter, I never had a bitch that required a c-section, and I only hand raised one other litter, which all adds up to a pretty good track record.
In 1994 I bred what would be my last litter for a long time. Some changes in my life occurred and I had the opportunity to travel a great deal with my husband. I was basically burned out from showing dogs literally all my life, so I took the lifestyle change opportunity as a sign that it was time to seriously scale back the dog activities and go in a new direction. I even went so far as to sell my van. I cut back to a handful of dogs that we kept as pets and ventured off to new horizons, jetting here and there with my husband as he pursued a new career.
I was happily ensconced in my different life, and for a number of years honestly thought my dog activities had come to an end. I stopped reading dog magazines, stopped attending dog shows, and phased myself out of the day-to-day chatter that all dog people seem to be involved in. My new hobby became flying around the country to attend Vince Gill concerts, which has resulted in my attendance at over 100 of his shows. (And don’t cross your eyes and look at me like I’m nuts, how many dog shows have YOU been to in the past 18 years? That’s how long it’s taken me to get to 100 concerts.)
I honestly didn’t miss dog shows or staying in Super 8 motels in the slightest. I figured I had given the dogs my all for 30 years, and now it was time to move on. There was just one little detail I forgot to factor into the equation. That would be my daughter, who had grown up in dogs and had great success as a teenager, finishing titles on dozens of Whippets and Irish Wolfhounds that her father and stepmother bred, winning groups and best in shows and going Best Junior Handler at Westminster Kennel Club.
When Melanie aged out of Juniors and graduated from high school, she too took a sabbatical from the dog show world. She took some college classes, got a job and married fairly young. When that marriage failed after a few years and she moved and found herself settled in a lovely new house on two acres, she came to me and said ‘let’s breed Springers again’.
Yikes. I couldn’t say that was in my long term game plan. It was the year 2000, the old dogs from my long time breeding program were gone, and I knew getting started again and gathering up dogs that descended from my best dogs wouldn’t be easy. Mel was adamant that she wanted to do it; she would house, show and raise the dogs, and all I had to do was mentor. Okay, sounds simple enough on my part if we stick to the plan.
Problem is, of course, I couldn’t stick to the plan, because once I had found a couple of beautiful bitches to start over with, and bred them to dogs that were heavily linebred on my best stud dogs, I started getting the itch to have a new puppy to raise and show. I found out the old competitive spirit and the desire to breed a great one weren’t dead, they had just been well buried for a while and soon came bubbling to the surface again. My husband knew he was sunk when I traded his pick-up truck for a mini van.
In the past eight years, Melanie has stayed true to her word and she has raised and expertly cared for nine litters of puppies. I’ve had the fun of picking and choosing and advising, and somehow ended up with a beautiful bitch living at my house that has 11 crosses to my foundation stud dog, who was the sire of 66 Champions. Of course, she became my princess and when time came to breed her this spring, no way was I going to let her go to Georgia to have puppies. I told my husband I was going to be back in the whelping box. Problem was, I no longer had a whelping box. Or a puppy pen. It had been 14 years since I raised a litter of puppies. Is it like riding a bike? Was I going to remember how? The end of April rolled around and Millie came in season right on schedule, and it was bite the bullet time. Stay tuned next month for the continuing saga of Back in the Saddle.
|
