sometimes I wonder...

if many people really understand what it means to raise a litter of puppies. The bitch (as in female canine) takes care of everything for the first three weeks. She nurses them and they only begin eating solid food at 21 days. Then the horror begins. Currently there are the remains of two litters here. There is joy and love and wonder and fascination of course...in watching them develop as individuals...and watching the interplay between the puppies, the puppies and their dams and other individuals of the pack (particularly Tintzirit their surrogate dam), but there is also irritation and fatique and horror and cleaning up after them and wanting to do something evil to them when they learn they can CLIMB OUT OF THEIR PEN. As I write they are running around inside the casita (luckily it has a hard mud floor, easy to clean) because I have to go fort-knox their pen so that I can put them back in it! Meanwhile they are eating chairs, chewing the mud walls, peeing, the other, chewing up a new toy (a milk carton), knocking over the fan (the only thing besides daily drinking that keeps a human alive in this environment...), chewing up the broom, trying to climb up to steal the DVD's (to eat of course), jumping on me, etc., etc., etc. Let's just say its a LOVE/SOMETHING LESS THAN LOVE relationship. But in any case I still say al hamdullilah (thanks to God) they are here at all. Al hamdullilah. (pictured to the left/above is how I like to see them.....ASLEEP!) Al hamdullilah.