Chapter 14 - Highs and Lows

Life goes on.

Whistle made a return trip to Cooper in Austria, this time with success, and had her puppies at the end of May, a couple of weeks after Midnight the Irish Wolfhound had finally managed to have her puppies ( a long story of hostile matings, illnesses and so on). Again, although this was in no way planned, this proved a great boon, because Whistle proved the exception to our usual good mothers by not having any real interest in her puppies.

Midnight, as had Taffeta before her, quite happily provided both the milk and delivery systems for both litters, frequently simultaneously. It is as well that the two breeds are so distinctive, even at a few days old. Whistle gave birth to 10 puppies, but they appeared to be in two separate sections, and four were rather small and not very active. We did manage to save two of them, but two didn’t make it past the first couple of days.

Whistle’s interest in them only extended as far as the extra food she expected, although to be fair to her, she did play with them a little when they reached five weeks or so.

Since Cooper came from Austria, this litter were named after classical music pieces, the country’s main claim to fame.