Day 3 - The Deed Is Done

This morning I woke up and checked on Fury and she was shivering. That wasn't exciting. I gave her some goat milk after reading that it could be caused by calcium definciency and then put a blanket on her. The house isn't warm but it's warm enough - 70 or so? She's fine now, panting even.

So, I decided to go through with it. Got all my supplies, sterilized my tools by kahering them (I found this kind of funny, and if you don

't know what that is, don't worry about it - I boiled them). I didn't really want to use chemicals like bleach and I didn't want to fire-sterilize. I'd never used the emasculator so it probably didn't need it, but you know what, whatever. I want my puppies happy. I set all the tools out on a tray and printed out directions.

Just before I started, I called to make sure I wasn't going to use hemostats. Every other method I know with cutting involves them. "Why would you do that? The docker does that for you." Oh, okay. Conversation kind of repeated some online ones we'd been saying and I remarked that I was really glad that I'd waited so long to breed, that I totally got the dog I ordered from her seven years ago, and I was glad I was doing this myself.

So far so good. Kathy Warren told me she didn't do front dewclaws as she's seen her dogs use them. Fury and every other dog I've had them done. I was happy to have an excuse not to cut them - and as it turns out only one puppy had a rear dewclaw (Reid), and just one of those vestigal ones - so no guilt there.

My gal roommate and her father came home right when we were going to do it. What a way to meet her dad. He was looking over our shoulder periodically and at the pile of puppy tails on the coffee table and going, "Rabbit's feet!" I like a man who can handle stuff like this.

Also, I would just like to say that once again, Animal Science degree (or almost, I changed to an English degree three courses shy of finishing it) came in handy. I have totally used emasculators to dock sheep and neuter them, so I knew how it would go and even how it would feel thanks to the labs we had. I thought it was pointless at the time, but glad I did it now, eh? Also, glad that my first job involved me having to kill rodents periodically (I worked for a pet store breeding them) so I can deal with all this. And grateful for Cathy Davis, my first Aussie mentor, for always involving me in this process.

You see, it's not the puppy pain that kills me. They really, really don't seem to mind it. In fact, my puppies were madder and madder when I was done docking their tails and flipped them over into a supine position to cut their little nails so Fury wouldn't get scratched while they nursed. They just didn't like being upside down. Having their tail hacked off was nothing.

It's just that these were perfectly wonderful little puppies. In Dusty's litter (my middle dog), the puppies had wonky tails and I had no remorse for taking them off. I told Yishai this in hopes that it would be the same, but the dogs they come from . . . solid, happy tails (and well-set, too).

So, around noon, Yishai shows up for the pre-arrangement, which is that he - who is strongly opposed to my docking - will walk the Fury for me while I dock. Fury's reaction yesterday to crating showed me that no way could I rationally do this with her anywhere around to hear their distress. She was, however, quite happy to get out of dodge for a bit. She's been a lot more mobile this morning. Before he leaves, he says, "Wait, I have to say goodbye to their tails!" And he goes through each puppy, caressing it and saying goodbye. See, this stuff kills me. Yishai is largely a moral ballast for me. If he has a problem with something, I really have to check myself about whether I have acted or are about to act in the best way possible. Fundamentally, I understand his opposition, but again, this is the breed. Today is my job to enforce the standard - I picked two dogs that I think will create dogs that will best exemplify the dog described in ASCA's breed standard, but there are two things that people have to interfere on that are in its wording: "An identifying characteristic is his natural or docked bobtail" and "Rear dewclaws are removed." And you know, given that I spent something like seven years close-reading the breed standard on the Breed Standard Review Committee for ASCA, I know why it says that.

So I did. Yishai leashed Fury up, and I looked at my stellar roommate, Casper (that's a nickname, his real name is Paul) and said, "Let's do this." Casper said yesterday, "Damn, stop whining about docking, they're stockdogs!" Right, I said, so will you help me? Yup, he would. So first I put them all in a pile on the heating pad that sits in the middle of the whelping box and let them get comfortable.

We both got down on the floor and I grabbed Moto, because he is the largest and most vigorous of the bunch so I figured if I really messed up, I'd have a lot more time to deal with him than anyone else. Casper and I figured out how to hold him for best access, I awkwardly put the emasculator over the tail, checked the position and said . . . "Here goes."

Crunch. And I went to twist the tail off as per Terry's instruction, but it was a clean cut - didn't hold the wound together, so holding it for a minute, also not an option. A bead of blood formed, and I wondered about hemostating him, but wondered what exactly I would hemostat together, so just added a bunch of QuickStop (blood coagulant) and we flipped him over.

It was THEN that he started screaming. I trimmed all the little hooks off his nails and checked for dewclaws, put him back, and he was happily asleep with his siblings.

I won't lie that I wasn't shaking a little, but doing okay. I may have cut their tails a little long for most people's taste but (a) I have had Aussies with SHORT tails and prefer them longer and (b) DUDE! It's scary cutting tails off! I didn't want to do spinal damage.

Anyway, we basically repeated this process over and over as quick as possible. Reid and Fie were insatiable when you flipped them over, would NOT settle down. I'm going to have to work harder on them to get them to submit to supine, but I like that they're feisty. :)

As soon as I was done, they were happily asleep on their sleeping pad - no worse for wear. It might hurt like the dickens, but, if so, three-day-old puppies are stoic.

When we were done, I called Yishai and told him he could come back. As soon as he did, Fury ran in, counted her puppies and settled into wash them, but not so vigorously that the coagulated tails opened up. She continues to impress me with her mothering. Yishai, however, was sad. "I deceived her. She hates me. I took her out so we could hurt her puppies," sometimes, he is so sweet and yet so pathetic . . . Fury was fine with him. And she seems to be fine so long as her puppies are there, missing parts or no.

I always joked about keeping the tails and making earrings out of them. Uhhh, yeah. That's pretty morbid in hindsight. Off to the garbage with them.

And that concludes (hopefully) the worst part of breeding Aussies.