As I hit the 'Save' button on last night's entry, I noticed the date.

2 March.

And realized we screwed up. Only an hour left to the sisters' birthday, and they hadn't gotten any treats at all. So I promptly went up and raided a package of ham slices from the fridge, and three rawhide chews from the package in the hallway, and headed to the bedroom, where they were loafing with the wife.

The ham was moldy. Damn! (Not that they would have cared.)

Back to the kitchen for another package of pig meat, plus cubed ham for salads, and a cheese stick. By now the wife has figured out what's what, and is helping me scrounge heeler presents.

Come back into the bedroom, and here's the masked heeler looking extremely sheepish, with one of the three rawhide chews that she stole from the top of the laundry pile. Took a while to convince her it was okay, that she was going to get it anyway.

Of course, the heeler Mom got her share, although she was visibly put out when she did not get first and last piece from the wife.

Five years ago at this time of night we were still at the vet's. Had an emergency c-section around nine-thirty on a Sunday night. Heeler Mom strapped down by all fours on the operating "table" (which resembles nothing else so much as the angled benches the butchers use with deer and antelope carcasses at the meat processors') with the wife by her head, stroking and consoling her. She got just a spinal, awake for the whole procedure, and the incision up the belly went about a centimeter beyond the field of the drugs.

I, of course, had seen the insides of lots of pregnant critters before, but it was still incredible to see the mass of puppies and chorion bodies ballooning and wiggling out of our heeler's belly. The vet's wife and I stood on opposite sides of the table, taking puppies from him in turn, drying and warming them and then placing them in the towel-lined bucket.

Ten puppies total. Six males, four females. All white, but most with spots and splotches of brown.

It was a quick and slick operation, but long on the mom. Vet got quite concerned when he turned to see her tongue had turned gray, and pumped up her IV. Have since learned from my training in tranquilizing animals that we almost lost her there.

When the last puppy was out, he turns to us. "Do I put all this back in there?" More than half the contents of her belly cavity were spread out on the table.

I turn to look at the wife, and she glares at me like I'm an idiot. "There's no way we're putting her through this again." A couple snips in the right places, and it is all gone. Fastest weight loss program I've ever seen. His wife and I go check on puppies while he and my wife put the new mother back together again.

And then this was the night our new vet learned we were a little different than most of his clients.

We put the mom in one of the smaller kennels at about shoulder height, and then sidled all the puppies in with her to get warm.

He suggested we leave them alone for an hour or so to get acquainted. You could see the fear in the heeler Mom's face (I'll have to explain heeler expression points some time), having been cut open and then about to be abandoned in the Vet's torture chamber.

The wife's response? "No. I'll stay."

It was not a point of discussion, and wisely he held his tongue as three of us went off to clean the operating room.

My wife spent the next half hour to an hour with her head stuck in that kennel, petting and talking to our packmate and introducing her to her puppies. And then we finally brought them all home. Where they claimed the living room for several weeks.

I drew the short straw, and slept in the sleeping bag besides the heelers that night. And the next.