It may be a little bit too trivial
a crime to need Roger and Suzanne’s talents to solve, but we had an episode of
littering on Monday night a few weeks ago.
Schöne was due to have her puppies Thursday, but she likes to do things precociously. At 2 A.M. she trotted over to our bed to
wake us up and deliver her first puppy to Elaine—no muss, no fuss, just a brand
new male puppy, gently carried in her soft bird dog mouth, cleaned up and ready
to nurse. Between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M. she
seemingly effortlessly popped out puppies at about half-hour interval until we
had six newborns, three of each gender.
She seemed to be done (and the radiologist had told us to expect a total
of five puppies based on an X-ray the previous week), so I went back to bed,
while Elaine hung around, just in case Schöne needed any help. She didn’t need any help, but she had two
more puppies to still deliver into this litter, which ended up at eight, four
boys and four girls. All are healthy and
growing quickly with the help of Supermom, Schöne.
Mom just had an episode of
mastitis---one of the faucets is inflamed and painful for nursing. That earned me a trip to the local Safeway
store at 11:30 last night to buy a few heads of cabbage to experiment with a non-pharmacological
remedy suggested from a breeder website for treating the inflammation.
We have a stream of visitors, adult
and child, coming through to play with the puppies and socialize them to
humans. A CD plays in the background,
with every conceivable noise from shotgun discharge to railroad locomotive to
thunder to airplane hold at a loud enough volume to get the pups accustomed to
some of the louder and scarier sounds they’ll hear as they grow up. The new owners-to-be come through to see the
puppies and get a feel for which one will pick them as his or her new family.
Sleep is elusive as puppies clamor
for food and Schöne gets to sleep with us as a reward for excellence in
motherhood. The pups should move from
the whelping box, the puppy’s first home, to the penthouse suite (two exercise
pens for walls and a kitty litter box for potty training) in the great
room----an 8-12 expanse of newspaper-covered vinyl with toys and fun things to
explore. They’ll remain there until they
go to their new homes at 8 weeks, with frequent trips to the back yard (weather
permitting) to experience other surfaces and new environments.
The pups get names today---the
theme will be “Pretty in Pink Floyd”, marrying the movie and the band. Name #1 is Molly---got it, trivia buffs? Does anyone else have a suggestion? Feel free to add a comment if you do.
I just published an anthology of
short stories with a novella and a novelette included, entitled “Five Quickies
For Roger And Suzanne”, on Amazon KDP.
To thank my readers (and to hopefully get some reviews) I had a couple
of free KDP days yesterday and today to get the book out there. Several hundred copies are now on Kindle
readers or Kindle apps, ideally being read.
There’s a copy of the cover on the right of this post that will let you
click through to Amazon if you want to download a free (or paid, $2.99) copy of
this collection of stories. The stories include one in which Roger meets
Suzanne, and another that describes, in his own words, Roger’s first case as a
P.I. We also visit Fortaleza, Brazil, to
solve a mysterious killing in an allegedly haunted gymnasium.
