[The first reluctant cuddle with her pups. Roxy keeps a quiet, anxious eye on both me and her little ones as she tries to figure out unexpected motherhood.]
On Thursday I was asked to step up and foster a young dog who had just had a Cesarean, lost several of the pups, and was struggling to adjust. My foster work for the BCSPCA has always been a huge part of my life and I agreed without a second thought. Probably I should have thought about it — Roxy’s anxiety turned out to be a little more than I bargained for! Her improvement since then has been tremendous and I feel so lucky to care for her and her two remaining ups, Esther and Cyrus, but there’s no denying that our first night together was…well, rough!
I meet her for the first time over the phone. I’m in Canadian Tire taking advantage of their post-Christmas sales to pick up a cheap dog bed, mentally running through what I need in my head (dog bowls, puppy pads, extra sheets, toys? Treats? I can’t remember what I have at home, it’s been a while–) when my phone rings and I pick up to find my contact at the SPCA on the other end. I can barely hear her over the sound of a dog in the background shrieking, a painful sort of howling whine that never quite ends. When I ask how my dog is doing (and listen to me, my dog, my foster I’ve never even seen who I didn’t know existed until a half hour ago–) the woman on the other end of the line gives a wry laugh. “Well, you can hear how she is.”
Oh, dear.
Thirty minutes before all of this I get a call at work from the SPCA. They need an emergency foster. A young dog, only eight months but taken to C-section this morning. Two pups left of the original six. A sweet dog, a good dog, but she’s having a rough go and can I take her even just for a little bit? Just to keep an eye on things? There’s no answer in my mouth that isn’t yes and that doesn’t change even when I finally get to the shelter and hear her mournful cries in person. She’s still disoriented from the surgery that was hours ago, frantic and confused. Her pups are in a separate kennel, wrapped in blankets and settled on warm oat bags. “I wouldn’t trust her alone with them,” my contact says, grimacing. “This might be a little more work than we originally thought.”
She’s not wrong. I get home and do my best to settle the dog — Roxy — but she paces incessantly, howling and crying. She doesn’t want food or water. She wants to be held but it doesn’t do much more than quiet her voice for a few moments. When I offer her the puppies for the first time, her anxious whine gets even louder and she shoves them roughly away from herself. The little gray pup wiggles closer. Roxy whips around and snaps at her; I scoop the puppy up in sudden panic. It shrieks lustily which immediately sets off its smaller sibling and together their screaming cries join their mother’s chorus.
I do finally manage to get her at least somewhat calmer with her head in my lap, letting out long sighs and groans which are better at least than the previous operatics. When she finally closes her eyes to doze I manage to sneak the puppies onto her teats and whether it’s resignation or exhaustion, her only protest is a slightly louder whine. They feed until they drop off the nipple and into sleep, bellies round and chins damp. I gather them back into their kennel. When the black-and-white male passes Roxy’s eyeline, she buries her head in my arms and refuses to look. When I try to get up, she sprawls herself across me. Outside of her sight the puppies snuffle and twitch with dreams and digestion, and I know I have only so long before they’ll need to feed again. It’s going to be a long night.
In the end, I settle myself on her bed so that I’m on one side and she’s behind me, pressed up to my back with her head on my side with her pups are nestled into my stomach. A human wall. I keep one hand under the pups and the other at the ready to grab her if she decides to cross the border unexpectedly. Even when I finally relax enough to close my eyes it’s not for more than a few minutes of broken sleep before the pups are twitching and squeaking and I need to roll over and hold her so they can nurse. After a few rounds of this, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, Roxy stops waking up to their cries and I can delicately sneak the pups onto her nipples, warding them away from her face with gentle hands and trying to coax milk into their mouths so they’ll stop looking for their mother’s attention and just latch. When their bellies are full a warm wet washcloth becomes their mother’s tongue as I stimulate them to urinate, and scrub milk moustaches off tiny whiskers. My world becomes a blur of sleep-wake-nurse, strange dreams and sudden starts at the slightest of noises.
It’s winter and the sun is shy but it’s been up for at least an hour when I finally give up and shower, get changed. The pups squeak in their basket. Roxy’s quieter and calmer than she was but she still presses herself tight to my legs and howls when I leave. Sitting against the wall and stimulating the little gray pup with a washcloth, I close my eyes for a moment and lean my head back. The sunlight is filtering through the window and even though it can’t be warm on my skin I pretend it is, basking like a cat. The pup squirms in my hands. When I first feel the moist warmth of a lapping tongue my eyes slam open and my heart goes from zero to sixty; I yank my hands up expecting to see a half-eaten puppy and a frantic Roxy — but there’s neither. Instead, the pup squalls and Roxy shoves her way a little further up into my chest to lap busily at its stomach. When it flips over, she continues the bath on the other side.
It doesn’t last long. When the pup cries out loud and shrill for something neither of us know, she shoots backwards and returns to her spot curled up tightly against my side, hiding her face under my legs. But it’s more than she ever did last night. And an hour from now, when she lays down and the pups squirm forwards against her sore belly, she’ll lay quietly and let them nurse as I stroke her face and tell her what a brave beautiful girl she is.
There’s a long road ahead of us, I know. But it’s a new day, and we’ve got time to figure it out together.
You can support Roxy, Cyrus, and Esther by donating to the BCSPCA or consider becoming a foster family for your local animal rescue — it’s hard work, but some of the most rewarding I’ve ever done.
