Back in the Saddle (Oops, I Mean Whelping Box)
Part Two
I left off last month with Millie having come in season. Okay, by then I was committed to the idea of raising a litter of puppies. Now to get her bred.
I’ve never had trouble getting a Springer bitch bred, and I’ve bred a lot of them. They are normally social and agreeable with the boys, and actually Springer bitches are known for managing to get themselves bred even when their owners are trying NOT to get them bred. They have a lot of ingenuity. But apparently Millie didn’t read the Springer courtship manual.
I had to borrow the stud dog and bring him to stay at my house for the breeding as his owner was going out of town for shows. No problem, easier for me I figured, I only had to make an hour’s drive and bring him home. Andy is an easy-going fellow and moved right in. I gave him a day to settle into the routine, and on Millie’s eleventh day all signs indicated that she was ready to breed. (I’m an old fashioned dog breeder; I figure that two healthy dogs should be able to figure it out without the aid of progesterone tests). Andy is an experienced stud dog, and so I turned them loose together in the run and stood by to watch.
It all started out fine. They seemed delighted to meet, did some play bowing and sniffing, and then Andy tried to get down to business. At which point Millie said a resounding NO, and she wasn’t kidding. Okay fine, maybe I was a day early, we’ll try again tomorrow. When tomorrow came, I enlisted my husband, who has held many a bitch during breedings, to help. I was sure this bitch was ready to breed. I let them play a little and she was the model of decorum, kissing him, flinging her butt in his face, and even going so far as to mount HIM. Oh goodie, I thought. John and I got hold of opposite ends of her and I encouraged Andy to mount her. When he did, Millie let out a roar like nothing I’ve ever heard, managed to get out of John’s grasp, and whirled around showing her pearly whites to Andy, who backed up and sat down with an extremely hurt look on his face.
Now I was getting annoyed. I had no doubt she was ready to breed, but to double check I ran her up to the clinic for a smear, which showed she was 100% cornified and should be standing like a rock. But my sweet, adorable, cheerful gets-along-with-everybody and everything bitch apparently had a mind of her own about this process. She adored Andy UNTIL he put his feet on her. Then she turned into one of the Witches from Eastwick. It looked like she thought she should be able to breed Andy, not the other way around. Just what I needed.
Of course, it was Saturday and I couldn’t get in to the reproductive specialist for a transcervical A/I until Monday morning. I made the appointment for Monday and hoped it wouldn’t be too late to get her successfully bred. Now that I had decided to do this, I really wanted this litter of puppies and I had a long list of prospective buyers waiting.
We had no success on Saturday, even with Millie muzzled and being held, because as soon as Andy would get on her she would start roaring and he would get off and go sit in the corner. By Sunday I was beside myself, but so was Andy and he had gotten up his nerve and I managed to get a tie. I wish you could have heard her yell when he tied her. What was fascinating was, as soon as he got down and turned around, she turned back into the little lamb she has always been, and spent the half hour they were tied kissing up to him.
This was behavior for the books, as far as I was concerned. Apparently, precious Millie doesn’t like to be dominated. I only have three dogs, and there is no question that Millie is the boss, but she’s always been a benevolent leader and one of the cutest, sanest, most sensible dogs I’ve ever owned. She just didn’t want that dog on her back!
On Monday morning I called the specialty clinic and cancelled the appointment for the A/I. I got another breeding on Monday and a third on Tuesday, but we went through the same scenario at each. I knew by Tuesday she was heading out of season so I called it quits and really wondered if I’d missed her. By the end of the week she was totally out and she and Andy were play buddies, running in the yard together for hours. It seemed she had forgiven him his transgressions.
I made an appointment to have Dr. Schultz ultrasound her at 24 days. He likes to do them early and has a reputation for being able to very accurately count the puppies. I figured I might as well get the agony over as soon as possible, and if she wasn’t in whelp, I could go on with other plans for the summer.
But then, a week before the ultrasound, summer decided it had other plans for me. My husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I’ll spare you the details of the process we went through over the next two months, and just tell you that it all ended up fine, he had robotic surgery at Ford Hospital in Detroit, his pathology reports are all clear, and he’s recovering nicely.
Back to Millie. Now I had a husband I had to get through cancer surgery and recovery, and a maybe pregnant bitch that would whelp in the middle of it. I almost hoped she wasn’t pregnant. I took her off to Dr. Schultz for her ultrasound and the minute he put the probe on her belly he declared her in whelp. He said based upon the size and shape of the placentas, which he thought were 26-27 day size, she must have been bred late and her follicles were ripe and implanted immediately upon the first breeding. Bred late? No kidding. Okay, start counting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. NINE? Do it again, you must have counted some of them twice. He did it twice more and came up with nine every time. Do you remember that breeders used to say that if you bred a bitch early you would get girls and if you bred them late you would get boys? As I walked out of the clinic all I could think was, great, I’ve got a very pregnant bitch, bred really late, and she’ll probably have nine liver males and I have a waiting list full of people who want black girls.
I had never had a litter of more than eight Springer puppies. Melanie had a litter of eleven at her house earlier this year, which is really large for a Springer, and while they did great she had to supplement them twice a day, because a Springer just isn’t capable of feeding that many puppies on her own. Millie is a substantial girl in the prime of life, but I figured that on top of everything else, I would be feeding puppies. Thank goodness I know how to tube feed.
Of course, John’s surgery got scheduled for August 1, which would make the puppies exactly a month old when we had to be gone to Detroit for four days. I was stressed to the max trying to figure out how I was going to find somebody I could trust to house and dog sit, take care of the puppies, keep the other dogs organized and the cats fed and put in and out on a regular basis. I have a girl who house sits occasionally but she has a job and there was no way she would be capable of being at my house for the number of hours a day I wanted her there with a litter of nine puppies.
Mercifully, daughter Melanie decided that she wouldn’t mind an all expense paid vacation from the Georgia heat and humidity and offered to fly up and stay a week to help. That took a huge load off. (Of course now I owe her boyfriend a week’s vacation because he stayed home and took care of HER seven dogs, eight cats, two Cockatoos and two pygmy goats while she lounged by the pool at my house.) Compared to the zoo she has at her place, taking care of my critters was a walk in the park for Mel, and I knew she would do a wonderful job. One thing to quit worrying about.
With the whelping box ingeniously built right into the corner of the dog room, all whelping aids on hand, and the recipe and ingredients for formula in the kitchen, we settled in to wait for the birth. As due day approached, Millie stayed happy and active and I kept thinking that, while she was pretty pregnant, she really didn’t look like a bitch that was about to have nine puppies. She’d had a textbook pregnancy (thankfully, since she certainly didn’t have a textbook breeding!), and I had no reason to think she had resorbed any of the puppies, but I kept waiting for her to get miserably huge and uncomfortable, and she never did.
Dr. Schultz said she would whelp on July 2, and right on schedule her temp dropped on July 1. You won’t want to miss the whelping adventures, so stay tuned for part 3 of Back in the Saddle.
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