Monday, December 29, 2014

Resolutions

Winter is not my favorite season.  There are a lot of reasons:

  1. It is cold!  Of course, here in Israel we really shouldn’t complain about the cold, very clear to me when I see the photos of friends all over the world sinking into two meters of snow.  But it doesn’t change the fact that I do not like the cold (yes, I know, in the heat of summer I often wish for winter to come….rationality doesn’t always come into play…), and because all forms of heating are very expensive here in Israel, I try to use as little as possible. So I use a lot of sweaters and blankets.  I have just tried using special heating socks – you put them in the micro to warm them and then they are supposed to keep your feet warm.  Well, don’t waste your money – they work for a few minutes only.  Double socks and furry house shoes are the way to go…
  2. It is dark!  I am a morning person, whose morning most of the year starts at about 5 in the morning.  But when I wake up and it is pitch black outside, there is certainly no reason to get up.  The dogs still think 5 is a normal hour and start their morning running and barking, but I just can’t make myself get up to face the cold before there is at least a glimmer of dawn.  And then at 5 in the afternoon, it is already dark again!  Where has the day gone????  I really don’t know how people in the far north survive the winter with months of no daylight at all…
  3. I have a birthday in the middle of the winter.  Not only am I depressed about winter itself, but added to it all, I am officially another year older!  I don’t want to think of myself as older, I would like to freeze time – but I guess I missed out on that, because I would have done it about 25 years ago…I try to ignore my birthday, but in these days of Facebook, it is impossible – there are always thousands of greetings to remind me that I am getting old, including those from people who I have never met and really don’t know who they are…
  4. There is a New Year!  I have never been one to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  In Israel, it is really not an important holiday, celebrated more by the rich and famous who have the time and money for things like that, or by the very young, who are ready to celebrate anything.  Once, many, many years ago, I was in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.  It was an experience, and I have never had the slightest urge to repeat it or anything like it.  January 1 is a work day, like every other day of the year, the dogs couldn’t care less….

However, all of these depressing facts of winter do make me think.  There are so many crossroads through all these years where I could have chosen to go another way, and that would have changed my life completely.  Who knows where it would have led, what I would be doing now, with whom and where and why….

My life has never been easy, and certainly is not now.  But it has never been boring, and certainly is not now!  I have never had regrets about the road I have chosen, even though another road may have brought me an entirely different life.  There is no going back, and there is never any reason to regret things that can’t be changed.  The only way to go is forward – there are still many choices to make, each one leading in another direction…

But in the spirit of the new year, I decided to make a few resolutions:

  1. Don’t expect people to be smart; appreciate the ones that are.

  1. Learn to remember people’s names, not just the names of their dogs.

  1. Try not to log on to FB more than five times a day.

  1. Continue to believe what I see in my mind and not what I see in the mirror.

  1. Take as much care about what I am eating as I do with what I feed my dogs.

  1. Let my mind continue to run free and keep my mouth shut.

  1. Try and stay smarter than my smart phone, and keep it functioning as a telephone, not as the manager of my life.

  1. Appreciate how good my life really is.

  1. Be grateful for friends, real ones, and also virtual ones, who sometimes are the best.

  1.  Always be surrounded by dogs!


Happy New Year!



Saturday, December 20, 2014

The Next Chapter in the Saga of the Pregnant Podengos

One thing I have discovered – these podengos are very determined little dogs, and one of the things they are determined about is to get to the very end of their pregnancy.  No having puppies a few days before the due date for them!  With their bellies dragging on the ground, and bodies as wide as they are long, Emma and Caldas happily continue with normal life, as the first due date approaches and passes, and then the next…No stress for them, just for me!  I cleared my calendar for two weeks so that I could be at home with them, and it seemed to me that they were just waiting for me not to be there, so they could get on with things on their own.

Caldas was the first to finally decide that the time had come.  She was getting frustrated by one thing – an Olympic level jumper who was always on top of everything in a flash, she was now annoyed by the fact that she couldn’t jump on top of the crate or the kitchen table any more.  She would stand there looking up, muscles tensed, thinking about how easy it should be, and then with a sigh of resignation, gave in to the size of her belly which did not allow this any more.  So perhaps it was finally time to get rid of this obstacle…

It was now a day or so past her due date.  She started to show signs of restlessness, and her propeller of a tail was much more active than usual, so she was confined in her whelping pen, next to me in the salon.  This was not to her liking.  Her plans were to whelp in my bed, or if that did not work, then at least on the sofa…No way, I told her. 

Now began the act of the poor, pitiful, suffering little podengo.  Podengos have some very interesting vocalizations which are hard to describe, such as the little purr of contentment when you pick them up, the little yips when they want something…In this case, the act included trembling, yipping, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball at the gate of the whelping pen, belly and all, all the time watching to see what my reactions were.  I was determined, this time she would not whelp in my bed.  This conflict of interests went on for some time, but finally, Caldas decided that I was serious, and she got down to the business of having her puppies.

I have seen many puppies born in my years with dogs, and many bitches giving birth, but this is the first time I have ever seen a bitch give birth with a constantly wagging tail.  The only time the extremely vigorous tail wags stopped was at the moments of strong contractions and at the actual delivery of the puppies.  The rest of the time, non stop wagging – no one could ever think that she was not happy about having puppies!

The puppies were born quite quickly – three big strong pups, two females and one male, each one weighing close to 300 grams (quite enormous for a bitch who weighs maybe 4 kilo in total herself), and born ready for the milk bar.  Everything was kept spotlessly clean.  Caldas was in podengo heaven – she loves puppies! 

She has very particular ideas of how she wants to care for her pups.  Her whelping bed has a pile of blankets and newspapers underneath. She very systematically tears up the newspapers, arranges them in a very specific pile, arranges the blankets very carefully, and then picks up each puppy (not easy for this little bitch to pick up these enormous, squirming puppies)  and puts it exactly where she wants it.  If a puppy crawls off, it is picked up and put back in its proper place.  The final touch is her curled up around them all.

Now that the pups have passed two weeks of age, they are much too big for her to pick up.  But she still manages to keep them arranged the way she wants.  But the coming weeks may not be so easy for her….

Emma was due a few days after Caldas.  Her belly was really almost dragging on the ground, and she wanted to spend all of her time cuddling.  Not having puppies, just cuddling. She was very interested in Caldas’ puppies, and was ready to steal them, but this didn’t seem to convince her to produce her own. The due date came and went, and there were no signs of imminent delivery.  Finally, after the second due date had come with no signs of any progress, I decided to take her to my vet, just to check her out.

Dreaming of puppies...


Everything was fine, no drop in temperature, good appetite…Nothing to do but wait.  No reason to be stressed.  But during the conversation, my vet mentioned the possibility of a caesarian if there should be any problems.

Emma is very good at listening to everything that is being said around her.  She heard this conversation and decided that maybe waiting indefinitely was not a good idea.  While I was still at the vet, she started to poke around the room looking for a comfortable corner.  Caesarian…no, no, no, that was not something she was interested in hearing about.

Once we were home, she continued to behave normally – cuddling and cuddling and cuddling.  She did start digging around a bit in the bed and on the sofa.  But there was no way she was going to agree to go into a whelping pen.  So that night she was allowed in bed with me as usual, and I put the whelping pen next to the bed.  So when she started having contractions next to me under the blankets, I was able to put her in her proper place.  Got you!!! By now, she was occupied with delivering the puppies, so she accepted it.

Emma also had three puppies, also enormous, all females.  She is also an extremely devoted mother that keeps everything absolutely spotless.  However, she does not carry her puppies around, she manages to keep them properly organized without this.

So for now, things are calm and happy around the house, each girl busy with her own little ones.  The next chapter, with six little podengo puppies running around under my feet, may be less calm….

Emma's pups

Caldas' pups