After returning from a recent trip out of town, we discovered that our dog Tipper was “in season.” We have always planned to breed her but could never match her “season” with our schedule. Raising puppies is an almost all consuming activity for many weeks if you attend closely to all of the details.

We have been nostalgic about the last batch of puppies we raised. Nostalgia is remembering the pleasure and forgetting the pain, I have been told. I do remember saying back then, in the midst of the noise and mess created by those little creatures, and my own sleep deprivation that, “Puppies are lucky they are cute.”

This is not the most ideal time for her to be ready to breed, given our current commitments. But it was a bite the bullet time, either do it, or give it up and make her a pet.

It seemed like just one more thing rather than the joyous moment we had been waiting for. We quickly did the math on the calendar and saw that we had a small window of time to take this on.

We rushed her off to the vet to see if the time was right. We were told that “today is the day.” I had not planned for this to be a rush job and found myself arranging a “quickie” on the cell phone with the owner of the stud male. There would be no time for any kind of courtship.

Our previous experience with breeding a dog involved having her whisked away when the time was right to home of the stud male. There were several opportunities for them to be together without all of the “time is of the essence” urgency.

Urgent is how I would describe the attitude of the stud male. He was very experienced and came through the front door with his owner already straining against his lease. “He is a slam, bam, thank you m’am kind of guy,” she said calmly.

Our naïve little maiden, on the other hand, did not seem to have a clue about what was to happen. She adopted her usual “Let’s play” attitude. The two of them scrambled around the living room in a tangle of leases, the stud with one thing on his mind and Tipper continually slipping away from him, thinking this was all an exciting game.

After running themselves nearly to exhaustion, they did finally “tie” the knot. The owner of the stud male quickly advised me to hang on to Tipper’s beard in order to “keep her from ripping his face off.” I realized who was really in control of this encounter despite the triumphant thinking that might be going on in the stud male’s mind.

Now 35 days later an ultrasound has confirmed the presence of puppies. We did not actually think she was pregnant and if she was, it would probably be a small litter. We were stunned as the vet casually counted out seven puppies on the screen. We are quickly adjusting and getting ourselves ready for the next step in this adventure.