The Novices Guide to the Breed Part 4 (I think)
A few years ago I wrote a number of funny articles on things I had seen and heard over the years. I tried to write them with my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek. Sadly when I wrote the last one about mating your female, one or two sensitive souls got a little upset. A letter or two appeared in the National magazine and one very prominent person actually came up to me and said I was talking about him. I suppose if the cap fits and all that!!!
Anyhow I have decided to do a few more as I am in the mood again. If the panel see fit to publish my offerings, then great you will be reading this. If not you wont. If that makes any sense?
PLEASE, PLEASE don't take offence. Most of the characters are based on people within the breed, but they are not actually one person more a composite. So fasten your seatbelts, buckle up your sandals and sit down with a large gin!!
PART 4 --- Birth.
The last time I wrote one of these articles Dr Willis was not a KC member, Sean Kinsella had hair and no kids, Malcolm Griffiths was top dog and Noah thought it might be a bit wet!
The last article finished with you mating your 2.5-year-old bitch to the last superstar. You have no idea if she is pregnant, but the following course of action may help. When you get back after the mating immediately alter her feed, give her 4 times the amount she was being fed, introduce the latest most expensive food money can buy and give every known supplement known to man. After a week of this diet you will notice the amount of pooh will gradually increase and it will smell big time, this is perfectly normal and a sure sign that she is in whelp. She must not have any exercise during the first 7 days. She will laze around all day on the best chair and nothing should be too much trouble for your lovely little moneymaker. You will notice that she is gradually getting bigger.
Another sure fire way of ensuring she is in whelp is to feel her flanks and nipples every few hours. This will make sure she is pregnant. I also find that 7 or 8 phone calls from the stud dog owner every day enquiring after her condition will help as well. In fact I think you should prepare a contract with the stud dog owner insisting on this very course of action.
By day 10 of the pregnancy the stud dog owner will start talking about a scan. Makes sense after all its ages since the mating. So ring your local hospital and enquire through the Hospital Trust Outsourcing Sub Management Deputy Telephone Answering Service. (or Operator) about using the scanner. This should not be too much trouble as Gordon Brown has increased our National Insurance contributions to improve the Health Service and some of the money will have been used to buy a scanner for every one.
You are allowed to use the scanner for anything no matter how trivial it may seem to the Hospital Trust. This is of the highest importance and nothing stands in the way of the GSD in the UK.
You will turn up on the day at the hospital trust, which is a building similar to a hospital, but they differ because they have new signs in different coloured paint. I suggest that you actually use the A&E for speed, don't bother joining a waiting list, cut to the quick and go to A&E.
In the A&E explain your position, your bitch is 10 days in whelp, the stud dog owner wants a scan and as the Health Service has all this new money you want to use your scanner. They won't mind. The child with his head in the saucepan, the welder with arc eye, the butcher with 3 fingers and the old lady in her dressing gown will not mind either. Get that moneymaker in the scanning room.
The scan will confirm that she is pregnant; there are 5 bitches and 4 males. 2 are longcoats, one of the females is a champion and one of the males will become the top producer. I tell you these scans are marvellous they can tell you anything you want to know! Ring the stud dog owner with the news and only about 7 and a half weeks to wait.
During the remainder of the pregnancy you can busy yourself brewing up, watching the moneymaker, ringing other people with updates on the situation and I nearly forgot.building the whelping box. You will receive hourly deliveries of newspaper from all your neighbours at the same time.!
The whelping box is something to waste loads of time on, believe me? Firstly go to Q&B, buy every item in the tools department that is on sale. Long thin things, sharp things, big things for hitting things and something electrical that makes a lot of noise. You will need to measure the gap in the preferred whelping area. Go to the shop and buy the teak and mahogany that you will need to build said box. You will need little radiators, a pump and special shiny material that conducts heat. Rather like the things marathon runners are wrapped in after running 26 miles. They are usually quite cold after a run!
Now you will need to swear a lot, make lots of noise with the electrical thing and use the big thing for hitting things a lot. It will take about 7 weeks, a fifth of the forest area of Brazil in wood and 8 and quarter attempts to make the box fit. I usually recommend that you alter the size and shape of the preferred whelping area, perhaps if you submit plans soon enough you can build a new extension to your house, on the side to make the whelping box fit!
At this point you must introduce little miss moneymaker to the preferred whelping area, this will make sure she gets comfortable and she will love it in your somewhat odd shaped box. The shiny material will sound a little unusual as it crunches and every time she gets in the box she will stab herself on one of the many nails, tacks and sharp things you have used but forgot to bend over. At this point it is wise to get her out again and actually bash all the points over to stop her looking like a colander.
You will need to be prepared as she could drop at any time now. More phone calls from all and sundry, you will have the entire porch, and a third of your front room piled high with newspaper from your thoughtful neighbours. She will now resemble a small Shetland pony; her legs will look like she has a bad dose of rickets in fact if you have seen the movie Ghost, think of Whoopie Goldberg as the medium. Remember THOSE legs? This is what moneymaker will look like from behind. She will have great trouble squeezing down the 8 meals a day you are trying to feed her.
I would suggest you prepare yourself for birth. You will need a torch, the portable TV, CCTV, thermometer, boiling water, towels, a good book, first aid kit, all the local fast food delivery numbers, Vagigel, forceps, mobile phone, KC registration forms and the UK Club handbook for a good laugh.
She will start digging, go off her food and her temperature will drop on day 63. But she will give contrary indications when you put her back in the whelping box, she will stop digging and after a while the temperature will rise again? Strange stuff that shiny material you have used in the box and of course the radiators DO knock out some heat. Out she gets more digging and down goes that temperature again? At this moment the house phone rings it's the stud dog owner. He is very keen and you settle into a 48-minute phone call. She will totally ignore your creation and takes herself off upstairs.
You finish your phone call and make a cup of tea, find the latest paper and settle down to read your paper. Funny noise that, sure it came from upstairs, you go out to the "Box", no moneymaker and one empty "box". Damm where is she? Of course she has opted to have her pups where she wants them. The double bed with the latest Laura Ashley bedding is a total write off, moneymaker is nursing 4 lovely little pups. There is blood, water and one regurgitated afterbirth on your side of bed and it has seeped through to the mattress. Lovely stuff.
So you now make a complete balloon of yourself by trying to rescue the situation. Get her off the bed, it will clean up and take her to the "box". So you call her, she always follows?? Nope, my she is being naughty! Perhaps food? She must be hungry, she has been on 8 meals a day and she hasn't eaten for hours! Hang on what the hell is she doing, no time to clean your bum, get off the bed hell whats all that water? She looks like she is gonna pooh! Not there outside by now you are frantic she can't go to the toilet there, shine a bloody light she is having another one!!
You dive into action no time for the torch, boiling water, first aid kit etc. You adopt a kind of crouching pose to get a good look like a cross between a scrum half and a quarterback. Then there it is, oh my god its like jelly. How the bloody hell did she eat a plastic bag and manage to wrap it around the pup, it will suffocate in plastic surely?
Aaaargh, she's eating it, I think I am gonna throw up. Just at that moment your other half arrives home. Thank the lord.
In a matter of moments she has moneymaker in the "box", 5 pups all suckling, the bed stripped and everything is normal.
Moneymaker settles down with her new family of 5 male shepherds, 2 with wavy coats but they soon blend in with the others.
So there you have it, I wonder who we should mate her to next time?
Steve Foran Mirrwood German Shepherds.
