[feminvstr]

I was shocked when two decades ago, my dear friend Meg Purnell-Carpenter, over for a visit from the U.K. chastised me for changing the soiled papers in the flexible plastic (child’s wading) whelping pool. Since then, I use newspaper under rubber gridmats, placing a thick wad of paper towels directly under the vulva of our Akita bitches. The absorbent pad soaks up the voluminous birth fluids and can be discreetly changed after each delivery. Excess fluids drain down through the rubber mat so that mom is kept clean, quiet, and undisturbed. She can lick and clean with no risk of ingesting ink dyes nor will the wet whelps absorb newsprint chemicals.
So it was that while reporting a free whelping on our co-owned Chihuahua, I began to yawn as Dan cautioned that the nest should not be changed during the first week. She had delivered three pups in her foam cuddle bed after having disdainfully removed the plain white cotton blankee and no, I hadn’t changed a thing. We were soon laughing about people who are horrified by visions of germs destroying their precious puppies. Were it a risk, that Rhodes Scholar of all carnivora, Mrs. Wily Coyote, would have long ago learned to use disinfectant.

We agreed that knowledge which older dog people, farmers, and ranchers grew up with is all too often obscured by today’s technical teachings and practices. Without human interference, the farm dog has her pups under the porch, in the barn, wherever she chooses - and she chooses well. After all, her ancestors still find the right place at the right time. You will select the place but your bitch must be allowed at least two weeks to make her nest her own. Please don’t plop her down in a fancy whelping bed which you keep sterilizing. She won’t be relaxed and accepting of it any more than you would be comfortable delivering your first born in the Group ring at Westminster. Just as she arranges the bedding, imparting it with her scent, and hangs her curtains so to speak, you come along and take away all her familiar things and tell her to deliver her babies in the confines of a hostile, chemically treated, artificial square box. Please!

Back to the Cuddle Curl. Dan went on to explain how a good mother will instinctively wrap around her whelps. We laughed as I described how our Mini-Bulls, unable to bend their muscular little bodies, tuck the pups under their chest and then fold down on top of them with mom’s head upside down under the sternum. The classic bullie-snooze position enables her breath to warm the incubator she built with her not-so-pliant Bullie-body.

So depending on the breed, the Cuddle Curl has some variations but accomplishes the same remarkable objective. The snugness of the curl regulates temperature as effectively as does a mother hen’s fluffing of feathers over her eggs. The bitch’s body holds the moist heat resulting from her post whelp drainage. It traps and magnifies the hormone-laden scents which evoke all sorts of poorly understood mechanisms designed to comfort the whelps, promote healing, and slow down her metabolism so that she will in fact “lay int” for the minimum 72 hours.

Left to her own devices, she would survive the first few days on the consumed afterbirth. Please allow her to have the bloody mess. It may be repulsive to you but healthy placenta and birth fluids are laden with as yet unidentified enzymes and hormones as well as vital nourishment designed to see her through “confinement.” We interfere in ways offensive to her and to nature. We deprive her of placenta and then solicitously offer the wrong food that speeds up her metabolism at a time when she should just sleep quietly for a few days. When she then becomes agitated, we give her drugs or herbs to relax her. Then instead of leaving her alone, we force her into activity, making her leave the nest to empty a bladder that is possibly performing some miraculous recycling job which converts waste fluid into milk! Who knows? We simply should not intrude on the dam’s way of cleaning her nest and pups, regulating their temperatures, and her natural instinct to “lay in” with her litter! Be solicitous, let her go out when she expresses that need, but otherwise, let her do what she knows is best for herself and her whelps.

Scientists have spent enough to buy a Pedigree Award in trying to unravel the miracle of momma-bear who gives birth and nurtures young while in a somnambulistic state. It is said that unraveling her medical secretes will benefit society. Perhaps. Or perhaps science should not violate mother nature’s mysteries.

Some things are not mysterious. They are simple common sense. For instance, you are about to learn why bitches reject or kill their puppies and more importantly, you will know how to prevent such behavior. In the meantime, just tell your pregnant friend that you are trying to understand her just half as well as she understands you.

Barring medical complications, minimal human interference is the best thing you can do for the dam and litter. Today’s fanciers are conditioned to believe that the species would become extinct were it not for our helping hands. Actually, the domestic canine is in some danger but it is due to genetic manipulation and distortions of instincts that have preserved the dog for thousands of years. The first instinct is self-preservation and humans have been known to controvert behavior patterns designed to guarantee survival of the individual and the species. We seem even more compelled to interfere with the second most powerful mammalian instinct, the desire to reproduce. We prevent days of courtship and for obvious reasons, natural selection. We then go so far as to artificially impregnate the female.

The reproductive drive should be strong and efficient. Left to their own devices, mammals are pretty good at producing and nurturing. We do recognize that the world is a rather hostile place what with so much concrete, carpet, and cars but there must be balance between assistance and interference.

None of us would consciously stress the brood matron any more than we would knowingly cause harm to the litter. And yet we do. We blunder right into the middle of the reproductive process and then wonder why purebreds have so many problems whereas mutts and farms dogs still seem able to conceive, whelp, and rear their young quite handily!

There is a sensible compromise between puppy mill management (basically a disregard for the safety, comfort, and well-being of the dogs) as compared to the over-protectiveness of the dedicated Breeder. Neither allows the dam to control her whelping environment although the commercial producer is more likely to leave the bitch alone during the critical “laying in” period which among other things, completes the bonding process. Newborns are exposed to bright light, over or under feeding, and unnatural stimulation. The whelp’s first learning opportunities are unwittingly compromised by Breeders and ignored by puppy producers.