Yin/Yang

So how does an entire month go by between blogs? In a blur, that's how. The puppies from the litters already posted in previous blogs are now eight and ten weeks old, romping and wrestling and making finger paintings on my kitchen tile. Since their arrival, Vixen presented her litter of five (Caesarian...I've run out of any expectation of a normal birth occurring ever again) who are now five weeks old, and Saga was relieved of her one big, gorgeous, dead male puppy (also via Caesarian...I am beyond being able to talk about it) and then had to be spayed on the table due to blood loss.

Anyone out there thinking of becoming a breeder? Please re-read the last four or five posts and think *hard* before going down this road.

After doing this for three decades it's impossible to count how many times I've heard some variation of the phrase "oh, I'd love to do what you do...I've dreamed of living in the country, surrounded by animals. You must love it!"

Well, yes. I love the dogs. I love the horses. I even love the chickens.

And --- no. Because so much of the "it" that I do is just plain drudgery. The sheer volume of feces I pick up, bag, and then haul to the road to be picked up by the garbage men (bless them) weekly is enough to dim the most devoted dog lover's enthusiasm. The hundreds of pounds of dog food I haul from car to kennel weekly (to account for all that feces) is back-breaking, although I keep reminding myself that it's my cheap gym substitute (bend, lift, twist, hoist, repeat twenty times). Just keeping up with the feeding, cleaning, grooming, bathing, socializing, exercising, client inquiries, paperwork, vaccinations, entry deadlines, pedigree research, tracking, training, conditioning, breeding, whelping, LAUNDRY, and the aforementioned schlepping is impossible. That's the bare minimum, before I've gone to my "real work." Heaven forbid the dogs get sick; not really sick like worried-over-them-at-the-vet's, just sick like couldn't-wait-for-me-to-get-home-to-let-them-out-of-the-crate sick. Days end when I can't keep my eyes open. They begin when the dogs say they begin. A day when I can stop to hug or hang out with one of them is a very good day indeed. Days when visitors are scheduled to come meet the dogs are days I can stop the clock and experience the joy of puppy breath and gnawed fingers, untied shoelaces and exuberant kisses.

So, yes, I love what I do. When I'm particularly centered, grounded, whatever you want to call it I can even say I love chipping poop from the packed-solid ice on a day when the north wind sucks all life from my fingers in the first moments of exposure. There's an art to it, a sort of Zen in just doing what needs to be done, even if I've done it ten bazillion times before and there is no end to the number of times I'll need to do it again. Because puppies, every single one, are worth it.