Ginger's Puppies

When Ginger first arrived here with distended teats, we assumed that she had been nursing puppies. Mr. P. took her to the local animal hospital for a check-up and shots, and scheduled her to be spayed 2 weeks later.

Yesterday she was spayed. When the procedure was done, someone at the hospital called to let us know she was OK, and to tell us that Ginger had been pregnant still and that her puppies were aborted.

I can't imagine how Dr. D. failed to notice her pregnancy during her first exam. Her teats were still distended. When Patch was pregnant enough for her teats to distend, the vet was able to palpate her puppies. So I have to ask if Dr. D. didn't bother doing that because he was lazy or uninterested or what on earth. I don't like him anyway so it's hard for me to be objective about this.

A different vet (Dr. M.) did the surgery yesterday, and I can't really blame him for the abortion. Dr. D. would've put nothing about a pregnancy he didn't notice in Ginger's file, so I suppose when Dr. M. opened her up and saw the puppies, he assumed we had decided to abort them rather than calling us to ask what we wanted to do.

We certainly don't need another litter of puppies to care for and adopt out, but if we had known that Ginger was still pregnant, we wouldn't have decided to terminate the pregnancy.

We've hired an intern

We've hired an intern here at 9 Dogs Howling. Her name is Sadie and she is possibly the smallest, youngest canine applicant we've ever hired. If you hear about a murder in west TN, it's probably because Mr. P. caught the creep who dropped her off out here. She's covered with ticks and fleas and represents another big financial investment, but she's eager to learn and we expect great things of her.

Who's the cutest puppy?

Babe says: VOTE FOR ME, BABE! I'm the cutest puppy in the world, and you know it!

Babe's Application

New arrivals at 9 Dogs Howling are required to submit an application, a $5000 security deposit, and an essay (maximum 500 words) about why they should live here. Here's the discussion Babe and I had about his essay:

Babe: I should live at 9 Dogs Howling because I'm the cutest puppy there ever was.

Jean: Yeah, they all say that.

Babe: No, it's true. I'm the cutest ever.

Jean: First Georgie said that, then Polly, then Patch, and after that, it was downhill all the way.

Babe: I'll be good, I promise.

Jean: Oh? What about the lamp cord over there?

Babe: I'm a puppy! How was I supposed to know I'm not supposed to chew electrical cords?

Jean: And what about the corner of the hassock?

Babe: But Teddy and Jinx had already chewed on it when I got there. I was just evening it up, you know?

Jean: Yeah, I've heard that one before, too.

A Well Puppy Doctor Visit

Parents of infants talk about taking their child to the doctor for a "well baby" visit, or checkup.

Goofy (whose name seems to have become Goober) had his first well puppy visit yesterday morning. He's 5 months old, 27 lbs, a pit-bull/Heinz 57 mix, and destined to grow to about 50 lbs. When he came home from the vet, he spent the rest of the day getting to know the rest of the brood while romping around in the house and fenced-in yard. The intro went even better than we had hoped. Jinx spent some time emphasizing that he is Alpha Dog while Goober said, "OK, fine by me" and went on trying to hump him. Even Georgie (the resident crochety old man) tolerated the newcomer. Meg was so energized that she actually jumped a few times. All the dogs played with Goober, but Teddy seems to be his special friend, possibly because he actually enjoys being humped.

3 Little Puppies Left

Last weekend we gave away most of Blackie's puppies in the Wal-Mart parking lot, until a Wal-Mart employee hiked out to tell Mr. P. that selling/giving away anything in their parking lot is not allowed (not that day, anyway - it seems to go on every other day).

It was torture to watch those little guys go. Except for the wonderful couple who came to our house and chose one of the black/brown boys (as they drove away, the puppy was snuggled up against his new mom's ample bosom, with his head tucked under her chin), I couldn't begin to guess whether the people taking the pups would be good parents. But eventually you tell yourself not to agonize over it. Maybe the pups won't get star treatment in their new home, maybe they'll get put to work as a hunting dog, but probably it will be better than living in a cold, wet ditch.

Now that we have only 3 Little Puppies, it's much easier to give them individual attention, and they appreciate the lack of competition for loving and food. This weekend Mr. P. will try to give them away in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in a nearby town. If that doesn't work, he says we'll have a couple extra "outdoor dogs". If these last 3 puppies go to new homes, we think the one who'll miss them the most is Miss Kitty.

We got rid of it

After advertising in the local paper and putting signs on our cars and at the end of our driveway, we got rid of a puppy today.

That sounds so awful to me. Maybe because of hushed conversations I overheard in the girls' bathroom in high school, that went like this:

"I heard Janice got pregnant."

"But I heard she got rid of it."

This was long before abortion was legal, so getting rid of a baby then was even more of an ordeal than it is now.

So, we got rid of a puppy today, but we think he went to a good home - a dog lover who already has a golden retriever but wanted another dog for her kids. She chose the biggest black male puppy (unnamed by us).

So that leaves 10 puppies. One less mouth to feed. One less tail to wag when I come home.

Yummy Worm Medicine

Here I am with the recent arrival, called Butterball by me and Tugboat by Mr. P. He has decided to stick around despite the rigorous diet, exercise, and medication program at the 9 Dogs Howling Resort.

We wormed 10 of the 11 puppies today (1 of them was MIA, but showed up later for supper), with an audience of Blackie, Goldie, Smoky and Miss Kitty. Thankfully, none of the Little Puppies screamed when the medicine dropper went in their mouth, the way the Big Puppies did when they were teeny (the Big Puppies made such a fuss about the worm medicine that ever since then, when they eat or chew on something they're not supposed to, I tell them, "No, no! Ick! Tastes just like worm medicine!"). But it was a chore nonetheless. Here is the procedure:



1. Collect worm medicine and a bathroom scale.


2. Enter garage and shake the puppies out of the crate by tipping it on end.


3. Grab a puppy before it gets away.


4. Remember that you need to weigh yourself without the puppy. Hand the puppy to your partner, who says, "Are we ready yet?"


5. Weigh yourself and, while groaning about the weight, search for a pencil and paper (should have thought of that before).


6. Grab the puppy and weigh again. Calculate the difference between your joint weight and your single weight. "Um, 1XX.6 minus 1XX.8 is, dang, why didn't I bring a calculator out here? Well, about 6 pounds."


7. Stick your finger in the side of the puppy's mouth to pop open its jaw and clamp its mouth shut again after the medicine goes in. While waiting for the puppy to swallow (it's amazing how long they can go without swallowing), tell it how smart and adorable it is.


8. Put the puppy in the empty crate and shut the door.


9. Grab another puppy and repeat steps 6-8. Grabbing the next puppy gets tougher and tougher as the little devils retreat under the tractor, behind the rakes, and out into the asparagus patch.


10. Tell the imprisoned puppies, who are howling, to get over it.


11. Scratch your head. Was that 11 puppies we just dosed, or only 10? "I think the girl is missing."


12. Fruitlessly search the asparagus patch, under the shed, by the cow fence, down the driveway.


13. Take the (howling) puppies out of the crate one by one, checking their sex, while your partner counts.


14. Ten puppies, including the girl, got dosed. All we know about number 11 is that he's black. The black puppies look pretty much the same, so who knows if the missing one will ever get dosed? Better luck next time!


15. Take the scale back inside and disinfect it while your unlucky partner wipes worm medicine off his shirt.

Jean & V. Plus 21

Who needs reality TV (I've never watched it anyway)? Jon & Kate Plus Eight? Octo-Mom? They got nothin' on us. We are Jean & V. Plus 21 now.

When I went to work at 8:30 this morning, we had the 4 adult dogs, 1 adult cat, 1 kitten, 4 big puppies, and 10 little puppies (although some of them were MIA - out exploring in our neighbor's pasture). When I came home at 5:30 p.m., V. (Mr. P.) announced that another puppy arrived this afternoon. He heard someone crying out by the vegetable garden, went to investigate, and thought it was our Little Brown Puppy (as opposed to our Big Brown Puppies, Meg and Teddy). He called out to it, and as the puppy ran towards him, Mr. P. realized that it was too big and fluffy to be our L.B.P. This little guy is maybe a week older than our Little Puppies, and bears a strong resemblance to (yet another) neighborhood stray, a golden retriever we call Goldie (hey, when you have this many animals, naming them ain't easy) whose prominent teats suggest that she's nursing a litter of her own somewhere.

So I had to go out the garage and investigate. Sure enough, an extra puppy, who I instantly named Butterball for reasons that should be evident in this photo. Butterball was skittish at first, but he helped himself to puppy kibble and water and is now settled in with the L.B.P.'s and the cats after a milk nightcap courtesy of Blackie. The L.B.P.'s have to chase Blackie quite aggressively to get her to nurse now. She probably saw Butterball, shrugged, and said, "Oh, hell, let's get it over with."

Hi, Honey, I'm Home!

After hiding under the front porch for several days, Miss Kitty has lived in a cosy little blanket-lined-and-draped box on the porch for 2 weeks, with her own water bowl nearby, and meals served to her in a hamster feeding dish. She would venture about 3' from the porch into the yard, then go racing back to her familiar little world. But while comfortable there, she has been very lonely. She attracted Jinx's undying devotion (and the other dogs' undying appetite) by frequently hopping up on a table and putting her tiny paws on the living room window. She clearly wanted to come inside, but Mr. P. will not tolerate indoor cats (dirty paws on the kitchen counter), and I could not tolerate the thought of even one (never mind 7) dog chasing a cat indoors. It's crazy enough in here as it is just with the dogs chasing each other. What to do, what to do?

Well, today Miss Kitty found her own answer to that question. When Mr. P. was fiddling around in the garage, she got brave enough to tiptoe through the asparagus patch, across the driveway (which is mined with puppy poops), and into Puppy Playland. Was she afraid? Not a bit. She was absolutely delighted to discover 10 new playmates, and moved right in with them.

Blackie was a bit disconcerted at first, but Miss Kitty exerted her considerable charm and prevailed. So after a few hours of watching her play and nap with the puppies and Blackie, Mr. P. moved her sleeping box into the garage, where he set it on top of Smoky's crate. I'm not so sure Smoky approves of that arrangement, but I think he'll get over it. I mean, who could resist cuddling with this little girl?

Box-Hab for Dogs

Meg at the marvelous cuteoverload.com often posts photos of kitties who need rehab for their box addiction, but it's not just cats who need box-hab. Blackie needs it too, really bad. We tried giving her a bigger box to sleep in, but she prefers this one, possibly because she stole it from Smoky.

To the left of Blackie's box, you can see a slightly-chewed dog crate (which occasionally houses Blackie's puppies), and to the rear, you can see the truly awesome chaos of Mr. P.'s garage, which is so full of stuff that he might need one day that we cannot fit even a Mini Cooper in there. But the garage is not my territory. If I gave him my opinion about it, I would have to contribute to its upkeep, and that would involve cleaning up more puppy poop than I can handle right now.

Puppies, puppies, everywhere

This photo shows some of Blackie's puppies, just waking up from a nap. It's virtually impossible to photograph them when they're awake. Walking into the garage is like walking into a roiling sea of puppies. It's cute but dangerous, because there are puppy poops everywhere (and picking them up is not my job). They are very, very busy: exploring the garage, driveway, and the garden area next to the driveway; wrestling and growling; wagging their little tails; howling pitiful little puppy howls when they're hungry; pooping; piddling.

Our project for this weekend is to give them their first (overdue) dose of worm medicine. That promises to be a challenge and a half. It's hard enough giving the other dogs their monthly heart worm and flea medication doses (we do it in this order: black dogs, brown dogs, blonde dogs). I don't know how we're going to manage the new puppies. There are 6 black ones, 2 black & brown ones, one brown one. Let me see, did this black puppy get his dose already? Or was it that black one?

It's official

It's official: Miss Kitty is indeed a girl, about 6-7 weeks old, which means she was only 4-5 weeks old when she was abandoned out here, and she weighs 1.2 pounds.

Mr. P. took her to the vet yesterday. Unless you insist on seeing a particular vet at this place, it's luck of the draw. We like some of the vets more than others (Dr. Betsy is our favorite), but they're all good. Mr. P. and Miss Kitty got to see Dr. Buckles, the vet who started this animal hospital (who we thought had retired). He is the quintessential kindly country animal doc. Dr. Buckles was astonished that Miss Kitty had survived at all because she probably wasn't even weaned when she was abandoned (I hope there is a place in hell where animal abandoners starve to death for all eternity). She is too young to be medicated for her fleas, so she'll just have to scratch for now.

Mr. P. mentioned the 10 new puppies, and Dr. Buckles said that it will be OK to give them away at 6 weeks old because mothers usually wean big litters early (Blackie is certainly doing her best to wean them already). But Mr. P. thinks 6 weeks is too young and wants to keep them until they're 8 weeks old. We'll see how he feels about that after another week or so of cleaning up ever-increasing piles of puppy poop.

A lick and a promise

My mom has always hated housework. She belonged to the "lick and a promise" school of housekeeping. If the entire house was coated with a 1"thick layer of dust, she would give it a lick (a few swipes with a Kleenex) and a promise ("I'll do a better job later").

Blackie seems to be taking the same approach with her latest litter of puppies. She nurses them and she protects them if you get close to them, but basically she's doing the bare minimum to get by. It's hard not to compare her mothering skills to Patch's, but Patch only had 4 babies to nurture and keep clean, while Blackie has 11. So Blackie's pups tend to be wet with urine and sticky with poop, and abandoned for hours while Blackie roams the neighborhood (she gets into terrible mischief when we try to confine her). We change their bedding once a day and towel off the pups as best we can, and keep Blackie supplied with food and water. It may not be as great a start in life as Patch's pups got, but it's still a heck of a lot better than living in a ditch.

Most of the pups' eyes are open now, though I don't think their vision is very clear yet.

19 Dogs Howling?

Lisa pointed out that with the arrival of the new dogs, 9 Dogs Howling may need a new name. With 19 dogs on the premises, plus our West Coast correspondents, we are a much bigger pack now. Fortunately, the new arrivals aren't howling yet. Blackie is extremely polite (as long as you're nice to her babies) and the little ones are either sleeping or squeaking.

Cheaper by the Dozen?

Eleven puppies (9 boys, 2 girls) and their mom = a dozen new dogs.

Cheaper by the Dozen is a book (made into a movie in 1950 - NOT to be confused with the 2003 version) about husband & wife time and motion experts who had 12 children and imposed their ideas about efficiency and thrift on their brood.

But as adorable as our new dozen dogs are, I'm not convinced that dogs are cheaper by the dozen.

How Many Puppies?

When I went out to check on Blackie and her puppies this morning, she was nowhere in sight and a few of those tiny puppies had wriggled their way out from under the shed and were crying pitifully. I did a quick body count (12!) and ran inside and quickly assembled a bed for them using the base of a shallow plastic storage bin and some towels. While I was transferring the puppies into the bed, Blackie reappeared. I thought she might be unhappy that I was handling her pups, but she just seemed to want reassurance and petting herself. I brought the puppy bed into the shelter of the garage (it's raining today) and spread out an old quilt for Blackie beside it. When I tried to re-count the puppies and check their sex, Blackie began to act anxious - nosing my hand away from the babies and whining - so I left them alone after taking a photo. I can only find 10 puppies in that photo, but there could be 2 more underneath that pile. One puppy is brown (like our Teddy and Meg) and at least two have Rottweiler coloring (like Jinx and Berry); the rest are black (like Blackie).

These photos are of the pile-o-pups in their bed, and Blackie and a few of the pups before I got them all out from under the shed.

So, so cute...but my cute-puppy-sensor is on overload right now!

MORE puppies!

When Patch was a single girl, one of her best pals was a big black mutt (who we creatively call Black Dog or Blackie). They ran around the neighborhood together and got pregnant at around the same time. Patch had her puppies here (the rest is history) while Blackie had her puppies at a neighbor's house. Patch and Blackie each went to visit each other's puppies, but since Patch is in our yard all the time while Blackie still roams free, they're not as close as they used to be. Blackie comes to visit us at least once a day to get some loving and a dog biscuit, but we haven't been feeding her or looking after her (since we already have our hands full in the dog department).

We had Patch spayed as soon as our pups were weaned, but no one did Blackie the same favor, and last week Mr. P. remarked that Blackie is pregnant again. About five minutes ago, he called me out to our storage shed, handed me a flashlight, and told me to look and listen. Blackie was under the shed with at least one crying puppy. How on earth such a big dog got under there is a mystery to me. When I spoke to her, she wagged her tail, and when we put food and water out for her, she crawled out, ate and drank voraciously, and returned to her litter.

As Mr. P. said, "What the **** do we do now?"

My, how you've grown!

Puppies Now & Then

When I was growing up, every time I saw my maternal grandmother (at least once a week, because we took her to church on Sunday), she would look at me and my brother and exclaim, "My, how you've grown!" as if she hadn't seen us in 7 years.

That's how I feel when I look at our puppies.

A Grow Day

Earlier today, Meg seemed kind of droopy (maybe the floppy ears contribute to that). Even when I cuddled and kissed her, she just lay there (no tail wagging, no smiling, no giggling). At first I thought, "Jeez, being spayed really has made her into a fat, lazy dog>'

I suppose she could have been worried about something, like not having a date for Friday night.

Then I thought, "Maybe she's having a grow day."

I hadn't heard of grow days until I married Mr. P. and we adopted a puppy who would run around at 400 mph for what seemed like 23 hours straight, then suddenly crash and sleep for another 23 hours. While the puppy slept, I would say, "Do you think Buster is sick?" and Mr. P. would say, "No, he's just having a grow day."

"A grow day?"

"He just needs to rest while his body is growing. He'll be OK. You'll see."

And sure enough, Buster would soon be up, seemingly 50% bigger than before, and trashing and bashing everything in sight.

I think that's what was going on with Meg today, even though she and her brothers are a "mature" 7 months old. She and the rest of the gang (including Patch) have not stopped moving once in the past 2 hours. So I'm happy. But I'm scared, because I'm not sure I can handle these guys if they get any bigger than they are now!