I have another entry planned for today, one about this morning that talks about grouse numbers, predated grouse and the lovely smell of grouse guts, washed out roads and dead deer, but that will have to wait.

The second son just got home from school, and as he greeted the heelers gathered in the room, I was struck how they were all three in their usual positions.

The mother is a little overweight, has a good coat and is getting some stiff joints. That's why she spent so much of the New Mexico trip on my soft lap, rather than a seat or the suitcases. So, as usual, today she was stretched out on the soft couch.

The small maskless heeler, the runt of the litter, is usually never far from her mother and loves, no needs to be in a nest. Some place where she can press her back and butt against something soft and warm. Her coat is thinner and being smaller, she naturally has the higher metabolism. She sleeps between the wife's legs every night. (Except when I'm gone. Then she takes my pillow.) During the day she naps in a soft recliner or on the end of the couch, depending on where her mother is. Right now, she's on the end of the couch. Curled tight into a nest.

The masked heeler is the opposite. Her coat is thicker, so she is more inclined to stretch out. She loves, no needs to sleep on lumps. Lumps of clothes, pillows, jackets, sleeping bags, anything soft, rounded and pillowy. Right now she's on a pile of quilts on the floor. When there is a pile of unfolded laundry on the stuffed chair next to the bed, which is nearly always, she will take to rearranging the clothes into the proper assortment of lumps for sleeping. Using teeth and paws to get everything just right. And when she gets into her lumpy bed, we are not supposed to be able to see her. Her Den.

I wonder where this sleeping behavior came from. When they were pups, the nine of them would snuggle together for warmth and security. Whenever someone got too cold they would plow into the middle of the pile to get warm. I'll have to check the pictures, but I seem to remember the masked heeler spending most of her time on top of the pile.

She was also the wife's favorite from the very beginning. Lots of snuggling after bottle feedings.

We had to supplement with bottle feedings. Nine puppies (originally ten: my Brown Eyes died on night three) out of a c-section Mom with only 7 taps means somebody gets deprived unless you step in with supplements. Everyone got bottle fed, but the masked heeler had sessions that lasted longer. Hours of sleeping on the Alpha's lap or, more often, the Alpha's chest with the face snuggled in the Alpha's neck. Sleeping on those two warm lumps.

She still needs her lumps.