Innundated with Dogs

We’ve been inundated with a down pouring of dogs this week. On Monday, June 15th (the day after Grandpa Hoitt’s birthday) Molly whelped eight squealing little pups—three male, all badger colored; five female, four badger and one white. Pups squealed to be fed and squealed louder to get Momma off of them. The good folks at Windy Meadow Farm in Ohio had warned us that these Great Pyrenees bitches have a tendency to sit or lie on, and crush, new pups. At the time I had imagined having the leisure to spend hours with a new momma dog, perhaps even setting up a cot beside her to be available through the night. Reality provided no such liberty on my part.

Molly’s pups were whelped in what was the barn’s office, a damp, musty, carpeted little room filled with piles of potentially-lethal objects: tool boxes, metal shelving, a bit of exercise equipment. I spent an hour or two that morning relocating her to a spacious, airy, and safe box stall. Heidi supervised as I lined the stall floor with flattened cardboard boxes, a layer of waste hay, and a topping of fresh, clean straw. She observed me stealing away with one pup after another, moving Molly’s new litter to the opposite end of the barn. When she came closer to supervise, Molly came out growling and barking, protecting her offspring from their doting Aunt Heidi. Yelling at Molly didn’t disabuse her of the notion that Heidi posed a threat, but Heidi seemed to understand both Molly’s message (it was difficult to miss) and mine. That Heidi is one smart dog.

Six days later, this morning, Molly is comfortable leaving her seven pups (one died the day she was born, likely inadvertently smothered by Mommadog) to come out for water, social contact, and a change of scenery. Eyes still closed, the pups squirm about the stall, slithering to new sleeping spots with regularity. Molly still barks half-heartedly at dogs approaching her pups, but I suspect Luther has actually been in to see them, and even BullyBob the goat popped into the stall one time to see what all the fuss was about (and to examine the kibble in Molly’s dish) and emerged unscathed.

Yesterday I prepared a nesting place for Heidi in the barn’s corridor, far from Molly’s view, in the shaded safety of the building, with various flimsy barriers to hem pups in and discourage goats from investigating. This morning I found Heidi firmly ensconced in one of the dogs’ chosen shelters: beneath a tarp-covered collection of prized white oak and sassafras boards filling the island of the driveway’s turnaround. Her ferocious barking when Luther or Molly trotted by alerted me to her motherhood status. Standing halfway across the gravel drive, I witnessed Heidi ministering to two dirt-blackened pups. The dogs have created cooling dugouts beneath various caches of boards, spots where the shaded earth helps keep them cool on these scorching-hot days. The particular dugout Heidi chose for whelping offers a central location fairly close to the barn, but the complete absence of tree-shade above the boards offers the brand-new pups ample opportunity to cook before noon.

Although Heidi has been quite affectionate towards me this week, allowing herself to be petted and rubbed at length on numerous occasions each day, with her fiercely-protective attitude, I was not eager to try moving her pups right away. But I was already dripping with sweat, having been outdoors nearly five minutes, and did not see how the pups could stay cool enough to live through the day let alone longer, so I found the next-best solution. Beside the storage trailer was a pile of Styrofoam insulation leftover from the shop-in-progress’s slab; I piled sheets of Styrofoam atop Heidi’s cave until I thought she had at least a chance of being shielded from the heat. All the while I talked to Heidi, explaining to her what caused the noises beside and behind her, and overhead. She let me work with only the occasional warning bark to keep my distance. We topped the stacked Styrofoam sheets with a large tarpaulin (we seem to have a few around here), weighted that down with wood, and left Heidi to finish whelping in peace.

Later I returned to find two puppies tumbling down the dirt embankment at the front of their new home. Straw backed by a log work to temporarily hem them in. Heidi also allowed me to refresh her water and place kibble inside her area. I saw four pups, and later a fifth. Hopefully she and her new pups will do fine in her chosen location.

A dozen puppies. As my mother used to exclaim, “Heavens to Betsy!”