A Little Help From a Friend

I was going over my column from last week and I apparently missed a couple of points that should have been addressed.

The first thing you should do is get a good veterinarian and take their advice as opposed to a column in any newspaper. My column isn’t meant to guide you through the arduous task of becoming a breeder. That is a far more involved episode in your life, not to mention the lives of your dog and her puppies, and you should never take the task of breeding puppies lightly.

People who breed dogs with that attitude are the ones you read about who own puppy mills and wind up abandoning their pet shops and leave the animals to fend for themselves. Remember when the movie "101 Dalmatians" came out and suddenly the parks were inundated with cute little black and white dogs? Very soon after, there was a spike in the Dalmatian population in the animal shelters.

 Back in the '90s when I was breeding, you took care of the essentials first and then dealt with the breeding process. Pre-natal vitamins were a luxury on an experimental stage at the time and were deemed unnecessary by some, if a proper diet was maintained. There were many breeders, including myself, who felt that X-rays were detrimental to the unborn puppies' bone structure. I still believe that and would like to see evidence to the contrary, if it exists. There are schools of thought and studies that support both sides of those arguments so seek your vet’s advice in these issues or any other issue.

When I first wrote the article last week, I was simply giving advice to someone who had a couple of questions. The advice was to aid in the whelping process to the inexperienced who have no choice but to go through the ordeal. I also tried to inject some humor and technical terms to entice the reader into investigating the process further. I hope they both worked.

My experience comes from a lifetime of owning and loving my pets. When in my youth, I was a veterinary assistant for DVM Mark Graves out of Norwich, Conn.,  and studied animal husbandry as a pre-med requirement at Southwestern.

My family and I have been active with the Siberian Husky Rescue Foundation of Florida for many years now and the photos I am going to post are of a few of our fosters. We still see a few of our foster dogs at Husky Howls or the Siberian Husky Olympics or general gatherings among friends. We don’t foster any more due to a lack of home space at this time. You see, we have adopted three rescue dogs and can’t really foster right now at this point in our lives.

 We donate on a regular basis to the different charities that need help. Right now the Humane Society is literally being overrun by the recent influx of the “Tornado Puppies” who have found their way into Florida due to the serious overcrowding of the shelters in the Midwest.  See if you can help, please.

If you need to look up my credentials, try Roy and Helen Wilson back in the '90s with the AKC. My first bitch was named Bathsheba of Wolfstar (July 11, 1990) -- Sire Wolfman of Sundown and Dame Lamar's  Aleyska Star) and my first sire was Sinbad, The Bad, Wilson. My next breeder was Angel’s Joy of Shebad and you can follow the lineage from there. I am looking at the pedigrees going back to 1971. If you would like to see them, send me your e-mail address.

I don’t get my information about my dog’s breed and their “cute blue eyes” from Wiki-Pedia. The Siberian husky is one of the most complicated dogs in the world and I know my breed’s ambient temperature is 107 degrees because I have taken it when they were sick or pregnant. I know my breed has two layers of hair as opposed to fur because I’ve brushed out enough hair to fill a three-story house.  I know how to trim a dew claw and give shots and hold a dying friend while she pants her life away. This type of commitment comes from love and I truly love my four-legged furballs as they love me—without question.

I not only love mine, but I love yours, as well. I am the guy that walks into the puppy store and reports the dogs that are kept crammed into cages two sizes too small. I’m the guy who calls the ASPCA when I see an animal being mistreated.

I am neither flippant nor am I cavalier about the raising of puppies. It’s a job I took very seriously back then and I demanded the same degree of respect for my puppies as I had for them. I interviewed possible owners and have been known to turn away prospective buyers when I felt they weren’t a fit for a Siberian husky. Some people just aren't cut out for the task.