Puppies

Jackson and I had just come back from washing dishes. As we entered the house, we heard a very strange sound. It sounded like someone or something was in dire distress. Having ascertained which direction the sound came from, we parted ways: I to take a look from the window on the side of the house, and Jackson to walk around the perimeter. I looked out the window and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Suddenly, Jackson called out. "John, come here, I think Chevy just had a puppy!" (A quick word of explanation, Cheva, a purebred rotweiler we are keeping at our house until the doctor comes out to the land, was pregnant, and we were expecting puppies around that time.) As I ran around the corner of our house, I encountered Cheva head-on. It occurred to me that if Cheva had just had puppies, she certainly wasn't being a very good mother. I came up to where Jackson was and beheld on the ground a mess of amniotic fluid, in the middle of which was a puppy, still encased in its placental sack. Cheva apparently had forgotten her duty of licking the sack off, and Jackson and I were left to do the job ourselves. Jackson ran to find scissors, while I broke the sack and lifted the newborn puppy away from the nasty mess. Jackson arrived with the scissors, and we cut the umbilical cord. We toweled the puppy off, and then attempted to instill some mothering instincts into cheva. Half lifting and dragging Cheva, we managed to get her to where the puppy was, and made her lie down. Cheva, however, seemed to be in denial of the fact that she was nursing a newborn puppy. Jackson decided to look around and make sure cheva had not deposited puppies in another place. After a minutes search, he found another puppy, also entombed in it's placental sack. Unfortunately, we had not been able to get to this one fast enough, and it had died in the sack in which it had been conceived and matured for so long. Jackson broke the sack and attempted CPR, but it was to no avail. The puppy was dead before we got there. At half hour intervals, Jackson and I delivered two more puppies, after which Cheva finally took over, and delivered the last two puppies on her own steam. 6 puppies, one dead, five alive. I buried the dead puppy, pondering the incongruency of the occasion, wherein a miracle of life had died before it was given a chance. Nevertheless, we have 5 happy and healthy puppies to bring up. They are lots of fun.

Alex spending some family time.

*Yawn*