I don't sleep with dogs. I remember that there's a good reason for that, but after a certain amount of time that reason fades into the mist and I give it another go. Something important compels me to break the long standing rule -- like what happened when my co-owned pregnant bitch came to stay, for example.

Minstrel's Perfect Fifth (Cadence) is the fifth pup (could you have guessed?) out of our 1999 litter that included two champion boys, an almost-champion girl (one point to go!) and another pointed girl of whom I haven't kept close track who shows occasionally in the far-away land called the Midwest.

This one had no interest in the dog show scene. Thus, we left her pretty ears alone and assigned her a life in the lap of luxury with one of the white boys from my foundation bitch, Hedy's, first litter. Cadence, who lives near me here in northern Virginia, somehow got it in her head in October that she might like to go ahead and do the mother thing. Acceding to her wishes, I picked her up at her co-owner’s house and drove her to Pennsylvania for the arranged marriage. (We're rather traditional in my family...)

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that she conceived, and is carrying what looks to be something on the order of eight hundred and fifty pups inside her taut, shiny-coated, sausage-stuffed body. Since the days are nearly accomplished in which she should be delivered (Biblical reference in honor of Christmas Eve due date), I fetched her yesterday once again.

She’ll have the puppies here with me, because her family isn't really all that interested in the midwife deal (and, in fact, her human mother wouldn’t even come up with us for the breeding. Said she had no desire to watch her daughter have sex.)

So Cadence arrived and settled in. I figured that, given the fact that she’s away from her real home and in a family way, she might need a certain amount of emotional support. Thus, I packed her into my queen-sized bed last night, atop the down comforter encased in soft, fragrant flannel, and turned out the light to sleep. Well, I turned out the light anyway.

Normally a fiercely independent young lady, during the end stages of pregnancy Cadence has become a snuggler. Her initial gambit was to walk straight up to me in the dark, place both forepaws on my chest, lower HER chest onto mine, put her chin on my shoulder and her nose in my ear, and sigh. Deeply. As in "I am content." Well, that makes one of us.

Okay, I get it. Somebody needs comfort. Trouble is, so do I if I'm going to get a wink of sleep. So I lift her paws and head, and make a subtle but important adjustment: She is now lying by my side, head by my head, in a far more acceptable declination than before. But acceptable to whom?

This is when it starts. The sighing. The gurgling. The rolling over, the pushing, the nuzzling. The burping and sniffing and digging and... You get the picture. I determine that perhaps a gentle tummy rub will calm her, and she'll settle in for a long winter's nap. So I place my hand on her flank, and she stills instantly. It's then that I feel the tiny head or paw move smoothly under my palm. She feels it, too, and snaps her head up and backward to investigate. She's not used to the aliens inside quite yet, as they’ve probably only recently begun performing the internal circus act that is, for me, the greatest blessing of witnessing a pregnant bitch in action. In a few days, I'll be able to sit back and actually watch, instead of only feel, the show. I feel a sense of excitement that’s not helping me get forty winks.

Cadence responds to the rubbing by calling a halt to the kafuffle, leaning tighter against me than before, and I have hope. Sleep can be but a moment away. Not so. The sighing begins anew. With every stroke of her big belly, she forces air, in myriad resonant variations on the theme, through her nose in a deep, guttural torrent. I realize that I'm lost. It’s going to be a long night. And I remember the reason that had escaped me only hours before.

As I said, I don't sleep with dogs. (Except when I do. :-)

Katherine Nevius
Minstrel Boxers, Vienna, Virginia