Nightwind Moon Away
- a breeders shattered dream

by Sonja Wakefield (Perklén)

To be a breeder is not just to feel happiness over new lives. It is also hard work and many emotional collapses. A lot may happen. Just like humans animals get ill and someone has said "If you live long enough - you'll get to experience it all". I do not think any breeder has just the "good" experiences. We all have to live through the sad parts as well. I feel I have been through it all, in my ten years as a breeder, despite the fact that I have not had many litters. There have been caesareans, broken legs, stillborn puppies, eclampsy, intestine problems, cleft palate - I will not mention it all. The list can be made long. Few breeders talk about their problems, their misfortune. Fear for being stamped is probably a reason. A warm thank you to the breeders who listened when I told the sad story of Pontus, and who comforted me through telling about their own, hard, experiences. I no longer feel so lonely!

It all started as a dream of mine. A wish to get something back from my very firstborn Sheltie Ch. Nightwind Milky Way, whome I had sold to Germany six years earlier. First I tried to have the breeder in Germany sell me puppy, by him, back. But the outlook of having to keep the puppy for eight months before selling her, which would have been necessary due to the rabies regulations, made her not want to do so. She couldn't consider parting with the bitch if first having had her for that long. When this could not be done, I decided to get my own tricolour bitch and if she made the necessary tests, I would take her to Germany and have her mated. Sure, this was a bit of a risk. The bitch puppy I bought might not become good enough for breeding, she might not pass the tests, the mating might not succeed, but I wanted to give it a try. If we made it to Germany, I would at least get to see Bobby once more, which would be well worth all the efforts made.

I bought Mambo. A little lady that grew up to a beautiful Sheltie and who also passed the rabies test to my joy. The time had come to ask if we could come, and we were welcome. All we had to do was wait for Mambo to come into season.

I will need to add that the paperwork behind this trip was enourmous, but everything worked out fine. One snag however appeared the same day as Mambo came into season. I learnt from the German embassy that the rabies shot couldn't be older than 3 months. Mambo had her shot older. The vetenary I went to, to let her have a new one, reassured me it would not harm her in any way to have her vaccinated when in season and before to be mated, which solved it.

Things moved on just as smoothly. Mambos season came right in time for a long holiday, which saved me a few days of holiday from work. I booked our Jackpot-tickets and a place for Mambo to fly in the cabin and off we went. Mambo in a lent cat-cage of accepted dimension.

It was great to see Bobby again. Not that he recognized me when visiting with such a sweet smelling bitch, but once he had run after her for a while, he came up to me and barked his recognizion.

The mating went well and Mambo was mated 3 days in a row before we left for the border vetenary to get her "returnpapers" in order.

Mambo wasn't very thick, but she was expecting. My guess was one puppy and sure enough. On the 18th of July he was born - Pontus - in colour a prettier copy of his sire. He wasn't born when I had expected. He came 3 days early. I was in Helsinki, but my mum confirmed over the phone that everything was fine and he nursed well. I didn't feel good about it. Something told me everything wasn't ok, but what could I do in Helsinki else than tell her to weigh him and wait for the ferry to leave in the evening. His weight was 143g.

Next morning I was back home and could take a look at the little one. Mambo was all nerves. Perhaps she had been too young for the duty of being a mother. I kept the temperature constant in the bathroom, where they were, and tried to keep the other dogs as calm as possible so that Mambo would find peace with her puppy.

On the third day Pontus had still not put on any weight, but hadn't lost any either. My intuition told me something was wrong. The same evening, before I was going to bed around midnight, I was sitting watching him for a long, long time wondering what was bothering him. He had started to whine in the evening and he found no comfort with Mambo. He no longer nursed. Suddenly it dawned upon me: he had the fading puppy syndrome! I had read about it - but where? I searched deperately in my mind on my way to the bookshelf to look in my dog literature.

Literature did not give much hope for a fading puppy! Normally they die within a few days. What could be done was to separate the puppy from its litter mates (oh well, there weren't any) and hand-rear it with lukewarm yogurt mixed with grape-sugar. I was willing to fight for my dream, however hard it would be. I took the car down to the nightopen petrol station and hoped they would have some yogurt, a Sunday night. I got the last liter with me back home...

I tube-fed Pontus every other hour with yogurt through the night. When the shops opened in the morning I switched to dofilus, which is considered much better, and continued to feed him with the same intervals. In the afternoon he was no better - he was worse. He screamed and circled round and Mambo wanted out of the bathroom, away from the puppy. I forced her to stay with him. He needed her warmth.

When one doesn't get to sleep properly, but constantly gets woken up by the alarm-clock to go up and feed, day after day, it is easy to loose faith and belief. I was ready to give up many times. He was dying in front of my eyes and I had never had that happen before. It felt awful. I gave up many times but then somehow kicked myself to continue, until there was no life left in this puppy. When he was laying in my hand like a lump of gelly on the sixth day, calm and motionless, only evidence of him still being alive being his heart beating, I cried and decided it was time to let go. He would most probably not make the night. I left him with Mambo and went to watch TV, angry and sad not to be able to save my dream. When I was about to go to bed around eleven, I had another look at him. I ended up sitting there watching him. He was in fact - only that teeny weeny, little bit better! And that little made hope sparkle inside me again. I fed him once more before I went to sleep for six hours without a break, for the first time in so many nights. I did not really believe he would make the night.

When I looked in at him early in the morning he was still alive and just a little bit better still. I was stunned. Would something that lifeless actually pull through and recover?

Life is a miracle. I kept tube feeding him and he very slowly recovered. He was now given a mixture of dofilus and supplement food for puppies.

I realized he was strong enough by eleven days to start nursing again. He showed evident sign on this. Looked for Mambos nipples and pulled. But - Mambo had run out of milk! There wasn't a drop left. I had not calculated on the fact that I would have needed to keep her going during the days I had been tube feeding Pontus. Once again I felt devastated. How would I be able to keep tube feeding Pontus with the correct intervals when I had to go back to work?

The idea was born when I talked to a friend over the phone. She was telling me about a friend of hers who had got a baby. The baby was often with his grandmum but was screaming a lot. The grandmother then tried to give the baby her own breast for him to nurse and perhaps to calm him down a bit. To the grandmothers surprice she had milk for the baby after a couple of days.

It was worth an experiment. I placed the tense Mambo, who didn't want to be with the puppy anyway, in the run, and took in my sable bitch Rosie. Rosie has had several litters and is a very relaxed and wonderful mum who has had lots of milk for her puppies which she has cared for in the best of ways. We went into the bathroom and I showed her Pontus and told her he needed her help, and if she would only be willing to give him some warmth and love, I would be ever so happy. She smelled at him carefully.Looked and looked again. I talked to her and praised her. After twenty minutes she went to lay down with the puppy. Pontus crawled up immediately to her and found a nipple. He pulled and pulled. Rosie watched him amazed and soon started to clean him. I sat with her for two hours and praised her for her good deeds. When I finally stood up to leave the bathroom, she refused to leave her puppy. Joy knew no limits. Even though she had no milk for Pontus, he would get the warmth and love from Rosie which he needed. I felt a great relief.

When Rosie produced milk after twentyfour hours I was stunned. When she, after a few more days, had enough milk for him, so that I no longer needed to feed him the supplement, I was, as the reader may well imagine, ever so happy. Pontus would make it and he would receive the best of love and care from Rosie, even though her colour told she wasn't his true mum.

I had promised Mambo to a friend. We did not get along all that well. Having asked the Swedish Kennel Club and a veternary they recommended, I was informed that there was nothing stopping me from placing Mambo earlier, that is, before the puppy finished nursing. He had a foster mum and Mambo had no milk. Under these circumstances it was concidered better to place the bitch not to upset her if she saw the puppy. So Mambo got a new home. I had gotten what I wanted - Pontus - a puppy by Bobby, so why not place her with someone that liked her for the dog she is?

Pontus developed well. He put on weight and soon looked like any puppy his age. Everything was finally fine. At eight weeks of age I took him for his eye-check. A routine check-up. His pedigree consists of all CEA clear dogs and a few genetically clear ones, so I had decided to keep him even would he be slightly affected.

A few seconds and my entire dream was shattered into pieces. Pontus was diagnosed with severe CEA and was doomed to blindness on one eye and was going blind on the other. I was devastated! What was it the vet was actually telling me? I was deeply chocked. I remember saying something to her about no need for letting him have any injections, picking him up and going home. I cried. I hadn't noticed a thing and then suddenly this stab in the back after all I'd done to make him stay alive. Despair knew no limits and I called my friend and Holy Birman cat breeder, Gisela, who had helped me with the tube feeding one weekend when I had to go away. She came to comfort me.

Was it the rabies injection Mambo had? Was it because of the fading puppy syndrome? Was it the combination Mambo and Bobby that wasn't good or was it just pure chance that happened to strike down on Pontus? I will never know the answer to this question, no matter how much the question keeps swirling around inside my head.

In the end you recover. Realize the facts and that you have to move on, despite adversity. My neighbours children, who like to visit me and the dogs, are also sad. They wanted to start collecting money for me, enabling me to go to the US and a vet there who could make Pontus see. In the USA everything is achieved, they said! I had to cry again and hug the children for their concerns and their love for this little puppy, and explain that no vetenarian in the whole wide world would be able to save his vision. I could have made things easy for myself and let him cross the rainbow bridge straight away, before the chock turned into desparation. In that way I would only have needed to cry once. I have, however, decided to stick to Pontus as long as things work well with him. After all, he can still see with the one eye and at three months of age he moves around like any puppy would, in and out of the house, up the stairs, in the woods over rocks and logs and only occassionally does he collide with something in his way. He is a happy puppy, loves to skip and jump and barks at me when I get back home from work.

Pontus got his registered name before I knew - but it happened to suit him well - Moon Away. As long as he doesn't hurt himself, I will cling to my "shattered dream".

P.S. Pontus is today 3 1/2 years old. He can still see well enough to get around.
A happier and sweeter Sheltie is hard to find!

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© Sonja Wakefield

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