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Well to say life has been a tad hectic is an understatement.
Barney & Misty
As you can see Barney and Misty have found their forever home with Colin,
Sarah and Cameron. The pictures normally tell a thousand stories but not all in
this case.
Lynda and I thank our lucky stars that Colin & Sarah are probably the most
patient and understanding owners we know.
Where to start? As I said, Barney and Misty went home together just over two
and half months ago, and settled in to home life as though it was second
nature to them.
Both are extremely chilled out - with Barney, who we had down as a bit of a geezer
in the kennels, turning into a real softy - and it was Misty who took a couple
of days to realise that counter surfing was not the order of the day and
that when Sarah said no, she meant no.
Sarah runs her own livery stables and the twosome go to work with her,
have no fear of the horses and are best mates with Ben the Bassett, who Barney
loves to play with.
We had Barney down as requiring a good deal of socialisation but both he and Misty
have quickly switched onto the fact that dogs come in all different sizes.
This can only be due to the hard work put in by Colin & Sarah in introducing
the twosome to other breeds.
As Sarah has a schooling hall both Barney and Misty also learnt perfect
recall in the first two weeks of being home.
James, by the way, reckons Barney has gone soft in the head which we tend to agree with.
Anyway, after a week or so of being home Colin and Sarah phoned to ask if we
could arrange to have Barney & Misty neutered. No problem says we and
arrange a vet run for the following Saturday.
Off we all trog to Swindon where Sean is ready and waiting, so in goes Barney
and 20 minutes later all is done and dusted. Misty's turn next and Sean
frowns and looks a bit worried. "Is she off her food?" and "No, on the
contrary, she is a bloomin gannet eating anything and everything" says
Sarah.
For those who have not met Sean, he is blessed with the driest sense of
humour we know. It is not uncommon for him to ask "Is that dog still
breathing?" as he is operating.
Anyway Misty is anesthetised and we are all wondering whether poor girl is
suffering from pyrometra (an infected uterus) or what is going on. To cut a long story short, Sean informs us that he is immediately going to
have to sew Misty up again, "Why, we all ask?" because says he "I have just
had my fingers kicked by a couple of little feet".
Knowing his sense of humour our response was to tell him to stop mucking
about, although in slightly blunter language. He then informs us that Misty
has probably six puppies, although there could be more, and that she has
probably got another three weeks before the puppies are due.
As you can imagine this throws a great big spanner in the works as no one
knows who the dad is but at least we did know it wasn't Barney.
James was in a flap as he had no idea Misty had been in season as nothing
showed. He could only surmise that it was one of two dogs who did the
deed.
Poor Sarah & Colin were floored but their first thought was to want to
do the best for their Misty but knew that it was impossible for her to
have the puppies at home.
Luckily, after a quick phone call to Dave (who is another trainer who has a
specialist set up for whelping greyhounds) Lynda managed to sweet talk him
into helping out. It was Dave who whelped Cindy when she gave birth to
Misty, Mutley, Muppey, Louis and our Doris.
Misty, Sarah and Colin went to meet Dave and arrangements were made for
Misty to go back into kennels in a fortnight so she would be settled before
the birth.
Sarah in the meantime arranged to see her vet a week or so before she was to
go into kennels and after a check up the vet thought that she had at least
another two weeks to go.
This was on the Wednesday. On the Saturday Misty started going off her food. Only under great duress did she go to the toilet - instead she only wanted to
lay on the settee.
Knowing this was not normal for Misty Sarah immediately phoned Dave who said
to get her over to the kennels fairly rapidly.
Sarah, Colin and Misty arrived at 5.00pm and settled Misty into her new
surroundings. At 9.30pm Dave did his last rounds of the kennels on checking
Misty she was very listless and would not let him go so he let her out into
the paddock for a last wee where she promptly produced the first puppy.
Dave didn't even get time to get his comfy chair and paper as Misty steadily
produced one pup after another until at 2.30am she had given birth to 10
puppies. Unfortunately two of the little boys didn't make it but the other
8 are doing really well as Misty is an absolutely fantastic mum. Both Misty
and Cindy were two of the best nursing mums that Dave has ever known.
With the pups growing up really fast, now seven weeks, Misty has finally
been able to leave them to fend for themselves and go home to enjoy a well
deserved rest.
Misty, from latest reports, has settled straight back into quiet home life
with Barney away from the demands of some very active puppies.
Through this whole episode Colin and Sarah have been real troopers and I am not sure that many other owners would have been as understanding and supportive as they have. |
