Jim reassured me she didn't have fins, and then proceeded to say "I didn't expect them this early, I swear she looked fine when I went to bed, I don't know how this happened so quick . . ." I told him to shut up and listen. "You need to get the little box from the garage, then find the heating pad in the bedroom. The towels are downstairs, so is the ric-rac for collars. The notebook for writing down weights is in the office, the scale is in the utility room . . ." Poor guy, I had him trotting all over the house at O-dark thirty in his robe, holding the cell phone in one hand and various whelping things in the other. In taking the first load into the whelping room, he finds Brooks and the puppy on the futon. He takes the puppy and puts her back in the box, only to find them both back on the futon with the next load of stuff. Brooks is not having any part of the flat hard newspaper!

All the while I am panicking myself - what if she has trouble? What if a puppy gets stuck? He's by himself, it's Sunday morning on a holiday weekend, oh my god what am I gonna dooooo.......... I seriously considered taking my courses to the clubhouse and leaving a note - "sorry guys, gotta go home and catch puppies" - but didn't think that was fair (though I think they would have understood). I just fretted, stared, and nearly fell over during my first briefing from hypoglycemia - somehow those wonderful agility folks (especially Terv vets Becky Barr and Jacqui Fredricks) helped me through the whole thing. They took turns answering the cell phone when Jim called to update me as each puppy was born. They'd gesture to me while I was out judging, to tell me what number pup it was and whether it was a boy or girl.

Heart Page	Brooks was bred via artificial semination, as Beep died suddenly about two weeks before she went into season. The vet told me that bitches bred this way often had their puppies early, but I didn't know just how early that would be! We had Brooks xrayed on Friday May 28 and saw 8 puppies. The vet said that based on the bones he could see ossified on the xray, he thought she'd be delivering in 5 days. Given that it was exactly 8 weeks since the breeding, that sounded right. Those 8 were pretty jammed in there!
	I left later that night for a 2-hour drive to judge agility. I had Jim start taking her temperature Saturday morning, and of course it was normal. I had planned on getting the whelping room ready on Monday and start working on the website that night. Things went fine at the trial and I went to sleep Saturday night - then I got a call at 0430 Sunday morning from Jim. I answered the phone in the hotel and heard a funny sqeaking sound in the background as he said, "We have a baby!" My first thought was, he's drunk and playing a trick on me. But no, he was quite sober, and quite terrified. Brooks had woken him up a few minutes earlier, and he thought it was because she had to go outside. He got up and started heading toward the door, but she headed down the hall toward the other bedrooms. Jim heard a squeaking noise and thought, "How did a baby rabbit get into the house?" He followed her down the hall and there he saw her nose something in the corner. Brooks was delivering her litter, and I was hours away and had to judge that morning! And all I had done so far was get the kiddie pool set up in the whelping room. Nothing else was there. Turns out she had the first pup, a girl, the same way she herself was born nearly 5 years ago - behind the papasan chair, just where her mama had hidden when I fell asleep for a few minutes after being up all night with her. I didn't know I had a salmon, going back to the spawning grounds.
	Jim reassured me she didn't have fins, and then proceeded to say "I didn't expect them this early, I swear she looked fine when I went to bed, I don't know how this happened so quick . . ." I told him to shut up and listen. "You need to get the little box from the garage, then find the heating pad in the bedroom. The towels are downstairs, so is the ric-rac for collars. The notebook for writing down weights is in the office, the scale is in the utility room . . ." Poor guy, I had him trotting all over the house at O-dark thirty in his robe, holding the cell phone in one hand and various whelping things in the other. In taking the first load into the whelping room, he finds Brooks and the puppy on the futon. He takes the puppy and puts her back in the box, only to find them both back on the futon with the next load of stuff. Brooks is not having any part of the flat hard newspaper! All the while I am panicking myself - what if she has trouble? What if a puppy gets stuck? He's by himself, it's Sunday morning on a holiday weekend, oh my god what am I gonna dooooo.......... I seriously considered taking my courses to the clubhouse and leaving a note - "sorry guys, gotta go home and catch puppies" - but didn't think that was fair (though I think they would have understood). I just fretted, stared, and nearly fell over during my first briefing from hypoglycemia - somehow those wonderful agility folks (especially Terv vets Becky Barr and Jacqui Fredricks) helped me through the whole thing. They took turns answering the cell phone when Jim called to update me as each puppy was born. They'd gesture to me while I was out judging, to tell me what number pup it was and whether it was a boy or girl.
	And of course Brooks was the only calm one in the bunch. She just laid there in between puppies, acting happy, and had absolutely no problem whatsoever, delivering them at a relatively leisurely pace over about 4 1/2 hours' time. There were two that came 4 minutes apart but the rest were nearly 40-55 minutes apart. She didn't need any help at all, and once the 8th one was delivered at 9am, she stopped panting and rested her head on her paws, looked at Jim and sighed. "Chill out Dad, I'm all done, you can stop shaking now, it's moving the whole pool!" We both were so relieved that she had everything under control, and after judging I drove home at warp speeds to see my girl and her babies, whom she was so very proud to show off to me. Brooks has to do everything fast, including pregnancy. Her first litter and I missed it. You can be sure I'm not going to be going out of town on her again!

	The Heartlet Birth Story
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