Julia's story continued...

"Hi Nettie –

I’ve been reading further back in the Blog and, oh my goodness, those dogs were running you ragged. How much longer could you have kept that up? I really don’t think you could have tried any harder to keep them. GSPs are so rewarding but they are high maintenance, that’s for sure. You have brought back a lot of memories of our three, and not all good ones! I smiled at ‘Mr. Wiggles’. Our Freya would do that – it started somewhere in the middle and radiated to both ends and she would peel back her lips and grin at you – what a greeting! She was such a character and a beautiful looking dog, mostly liver with white patches. The other two were solid liver. I wish I could show you photos. Are Skooter and Moped typical US GSPs? Their colouring is different to ours in the UK.

We decided to let Freya have a litter mainly as we were advised that it would ‘calm her down’ – needless to say, it didn’t! Do GSPs ever calm down? Our aim was to breed truly ‘dual purpose’ pups that could work and/or be shown and, having selected our stud dog, a Champion whose owners were well known in the show world, took her many miles to have her mated. What a shock it was to find that the ‘Stud’ consisted of the back room of a tiny two-up-two-down terraced house with the smallest back yard. The yard was covered with sheds, all full of GSPs. They must have had 15 or more dogs crammed in like battery hens. Yet these people were well respected in the GSP world. If only everyone had half the consideration for their dogs as you. Anyway, the deed was done and we went home to await the big event.

Unfortunately, when the day came, Freya was unable to give birth naturally and had to be rushed to the vets for an emergency caesarian. Suddenly there we were with an exhausted dog, a nice big vet’s bill and a box of eleven hungry, squirming pups. So began the job of bottle feeding every two hours around the clock – by the time we got to the last pup it was time to start again and we quickly had to organize a rota of friends and family. Sadly, the weakest of the litter died after a couple of days. We hoped this routine would only be until Freya got her strength back but she took one look at those demanding babies and decided she didn’t want to know. Not a maternal bone in her body! For the next seven weeks, she barely tolerated them. Anyway, somehow we got through those early weeks and soon we had ten adorable little bundles of mischief running riot.

I will save the tale of how we found homes for them all for another time, although do say if I am upsetting you. I would hate to prolong your agony if you are trying to distance yourself a little. It’s so painful reading your daily ups and downs.

Julia "