88) Muffin

About that time while visiting Cecilia and Derrick we met a young couple that they were friendly with. They owned a Doberman bitch that they said they wanted to breed from. They came and saw Rocky and wanted him to be the father of their litter. Their bitch was quite good although she was a bit on the small side and was blind in one eye. Rocky was a little large so we thought it might be a good combination and her eye was damaged in an accident so would not effect the puppies in any way. We agreed to the mating and accepted one of the puppies as payment.

The first time we had tried to mate the dogs the bitch did not get pregnant and the young couple were very disappointed. We tried the mating again the next time the bitch was in season and this time the vet announced that she was in whelp and her owners, who were childless, were very excited about the coming litter, almost as if they were going to have a new baby themselves. They would ring us often to give progress reports on the pregnancy. When the labour started they rang and told us and when the first pup was born we got another call. They telephoned once again at the birth of the second and the third pup but they didn’t carry on after that. Thank goodness, as there were eleven pups in all. It was a good litter almost half bitches and half dogs and all the pups were of a similar size. We were asked to come and chose ours early because we had the pick of the litter.

Eleven Pups

Jonny and I were planning to go away on holiday for a couple of weeks at the time that the puppy was due to leave its mother. As both Jonathan and Dominic would be out at work all day we decided to ask the couple who had bred the litter if they would be prepared to keep our puppy for an extra two weeks while we were away. We went around to see them, to ask them this and we saw the poor woman trying to give the eleven puppies a supplementary feed. The mother was not coping with all the puppies and they were not getting enough to eat. The poor owner was trying her best but it was a battle. Instead of putting all the pups into a box or something and then take them out one at the time feed them some porridge and let them go she was trying to remember which one she had fed and they were all over the place. There was no way that she knew which one had eaten and which one hadn’t. She was trying very hard but we thought that the puppies were not gaining weight the way they should have been so instead of asking her to keep the puppy for an extra two weeks we ended up offering to take our puppy there and then. We were not sure how we would manage while we were away but we thought we would find some way when the time came.

Rocky and Muffin

When we took our new puppy home and introduced her to Rocky it was as if he knew that she was his daughter. He just loved her and she could do anything she liked with him. She literally walked all over him. If he was lying on the floor and she wanted to get to the other side of him she would not think of walking round him, she would just walk right over the top. Sometimes she would get half way over and decide that she was tired so would lie down and have a little nap. Rocky was not allowed to move then, if he stirred she would give him a little growl and he would keep quite still for her. She was so very tiny when we got her home that it did not seem possible that she and Rocky were the same species. She was smaller than his head and very cute. Then came the problem of what we were going to call her. She was so small and cute I nickname her Muffin. The men all thought it was a terrible name but I could not think of anything that suited her better and it stuck. Jonny and the boys wanted to think of something else but I said I thought that the one who was going to feed her and clean up after her for the rest of her life should be the one who named her, so they all withdrew their objections and she became Muffin. They say “give a dog a bad name” and maybe it is the same if you give a dog a silly name. She grew up to be a real clown of a dog and gave us a lot of pleasure and lots and lots of laughs.
By the time we were ready to leave on holiday we had arranged that a Hettie would help out with our problem. Hettie was the teenage daughter of a couple who lived a few doors away. We arranged that Jonathan and Dominic would feed the puppy in the morning and in the evening and that she would be closed up in the kitchen with lots of newspaper on the floor. Hettie agreed to come and give the puppy her mid day feed when she came home from school. We told her not to worry about cleaning up any of the puppy’s mess, that would be up to Jonathan and Dominic, we just wanted to make sure that she had food and water. So having made arrangements for everyone we went off on our holiday.