Today is the second anniversary of the end of one of the toughest weeks in my life. Two years ago this week our Samoyed bitch, Tally, had an emergency C-section (I was in the room for the whole procedure). There was a dead and decaying girl puppy and two live boys. One of the boys was puny and struggling, the other was strong. They were both beautiful.
We did everything we could to keep those boys alive. I went for a solid 72 hours without sleeping. First one, then another died in my arms. We never really knew why they died. Canine herpes is our best guess.
I think of those puppies often. They would have been magnificent dogs now. An act of my will caused them to come into being but I just didn’t have the power to keep them alive.
We have a very few precious pictures of them and a few feet of videotape. But I’m not ready to share those yet.
When I was very young – probably no older than 8 – we had a dog named Kuchan (I forget what it means, and that’s probably not the correct transliteration from Chinese anyway). She was a mutt, with short tan hair and a fantastic loving personality.
When she was just a little over a year old, she got pregnant. Kuchan had been removed from her mother too early, and had no concept of how to care for puppies. One by one, they died in our arms – 7 of them – as we tried feeding them with bottles and everything we could think of. The last one, a little black male, lasted for a week, fed from a dropper, before he, too, succumbed. Kuchan never took an interest in the puppies. It was crushing.
About a year later though, she got pregnant again, and this time her maternal instincts came out, and she cared for the puppies.
Although inexperienced Tally was a fantastic mother. And, of course, we also have Tally’s mother who’s an experienced brood bitch and knew exactly what to do. After the puppies Tally has changed. She’s somehow become more nurturing. Even more caring.
After the puppies died both Tally and Jenny searched for them for quite a while.