What I've Learnt About Myself (and Life) by Raising Seven Puppies

And some of the cliches that turn out to be true

Back in July I decided to breed from my Fox Red Labrador, Tilki. Well, I say back in July but actually this was a plan two and a half years in the making as I had chosen a bitch specifically because I wanted the opportunity to do this. Why? For the life experience, yet as the time came closer, I became more unsure. There are risks involved of course, what if something happened to this dog that I had come to love so dearly? There are costs too, more of that further down, but in brief anyone who thinks you go into dog breeding to make a quick buck couldn’t be more wrong. And there are other costs, physically, emotionally, mentally, especially when you are doing it all alone.

But, I enjoy a challenge, I will rest when I’m dead, and all those other clichés, and as Tilki loved her boyfriend of two years, Charlie, I decided to leave it to nature and well, as you know that tends to take its own course.

On one long sleepless night that spanned across the sixth and seventh of September, seven tiny puppies were delivered mostly on the stairs of my home, aided by my wonderful neighbour who had come round when I’d told her Tilki was in labour. I really don’t know how I would have managed it alone.

At the end of next week, five out of seven of those puppies will leave me and I go between devastation, relief and tears because I will miss them so dearly. They have been my night and day for these last two months, I have poured so much love into them, but I am also exhausted, broke and broken and looking forward to reacquainting myself with my 12-year-old daughter who has felt completely abandoned in the meantime (and she has told me so).

After the responsibility of making sure Tilki was ok, my next priority was to find them loving homes and I’ve done that for five of them, the other two will just have to stay with me until their forever families make themselves known, so it is not over yet, but on the home stretch, I thought I would share with you what raising seven puppies has taught me about myself — and life.

I have an incredible tolerance for cleaning up other people’s shit

Ok, let’s just get this one out of the way early because it’s gross and there is a lot of poo involved in puppy rearing. I never imagined that I would be so comfortable with bodily fluids; the blood, the afterbirth, the amniotic fluid, the general goo that doesn’t have a name, and for the last couple of months the vomit, the wee, the poo, the poo, the poo, the poo, the p… (repeat to fade).

Like when I found myself alone with a newborn baby, I focused on sleep – if I didn’t sleep, I wouldn’t be able to look after her – I have taken the same approach with the puppies. This experience has reminded me very much of being a single lone-carer parent to a brand new baby, except multiply that by seven who, unlike babies, never stay in the same place as you put them down. They will run around in their shit, they will try to eat it, Tilki will come in and be overwhelmed by them swarming over her like locusts and she will puke up and they will then eat that as I race to scoop it up with my bare hands. It is horrific, no other word for it, and all of this usually happens while I’m still in my pyjamas and before I’ve even had a coffee. Plus it happens every morning. Getting the puppies to go through the night has meant that I wake up to more shit than I have ever seen in my entire life, which I then need to clean up, bleaching everything, before putting them back in the pen after they’ve spent an hour burning off all that energy they’ve accumulated over night.

It reminds me of those early months of child-rearing alone, clearing the shit that another person was also responsible for and never had to do. At least this is my decision to go it alone, I have reminded myself over and over. But yes, the person who said she’d never get a dog because she couldn’t bear to pick up the poo is well accustomed to it now.

Challenging life experiences breed resilience, but some people just want an easy life

There were times in the early days when Tilki would stare at me from the whelping pen as seven tiny puppies sucked at her teats and her eyes would bore into me saying: “So, Anna, how’s your ‘life experience’ working out for you?”

I felt so guilty, though that guilt has subsided somewhat as I’ve seen how much she enjoys playing with the puppies and teaching them. If I meet people in the park and they admire Tilki I tell them she’s taking a break from the seven babies she has at home and oftentimes people will say, ‘oh I could never do that,’ or ‘you’re brave.’ Or my favourite, ‘I did it once and my husband said he’d leave me if I did it again.’ To which I replied: ‘This is why I don’t have a husband.’

I remember when I bought my house five years ago which was a complete wreck and had been inhabited by the same person for sixty years, it needed completely gutting and for months I would pick my daughter up from primary school in my ‘workman clothes’ ripped and covered in paint and plaster, brick and sawdust. I remember one set of parents telling me that they’d looked at the same house but decided it was too much work for them… for them. Two people. I was a single person doing it, just like I am now, but then I am attracted to things that challenge me, the tougher the challenge the more attractive it looks to me. It’s not that I deliberately want to make my life harder, I just want to live and experience and often that involves taking on risk rather than keeping things safe. I feel this makes me more resilient when the metaphorical shit hits the fan (though if I had a fan somewhere in my living room you could guarantee the shit of those puppies would have somehow hit it).

Seven puppies? Pah! That’s nothing when you’ve raised a newborn alone! But some people don’t want challenges, some people don’t want to be more resilient, some people just want an easy life and that’s ok, it’s just not for me.

But that said…

It is perhaps better to go through life with two pairs of hands

Yes, ok, I can see this is true. When the puppies are tearing around the living room like seven Tasmanian devils and I’m trying to make a dash for the door to ready their dinner, or get a bucket of bleach, or more paper towels to wipe up their poo (yes, sorry, more poo), or get my daughter her breakfast, and they all dash out after me, I could do with another pair of hands to get them back in again, but I don’t have them. Instead I grab as many as I can, attempting to herd them (impossible) back into the room while they cut loose racing round the rest of the house. Raising seven puppies, having a brand new baby, looks extremely easy to me if you have four hands not two at times like this, or when you’re exhausted, or to take turns sleeping on the sofa, or one of you to make dinner for your child while the other deals with the animals. I’ll admit it, you people who are in pairs have the advantage over me….

But…

You take more risks as a single person

I think this is true. How many times have people said to me in the last few weeks ‘I’d love a dog but my hubby says no…’? It reminds me of when I was painting my house all sorts of colours and my neighbour said: ‘I’d love to do that but my husband would never agree.’ Are husbands really such killjoys? Mind you, I have had husbands say the same about their wives. But I like being single for the fact that I don’t have to ask permission from someone else to do something that perhaps seems wholly mad to others. I can wake up on a Monday and decide to colour drench my dining room in Farrow and Ball’s Bay Area Blue, I don’t need to consult with someone where I take a holiday, and if I want to breed puppies I just crack on with it. What you miss out on in terms of emotional and physical support and company on the sofa, you make up with by forcing yourself to be less cautious about the world, or falling on your arse, maybe there is less jeopardy if one person fails not two. Or maybe that’s just me.

When you’re going through hell (again) keep going

There have been many times in my life when I have gone looking for these ‘challenges’ or ‘life experiences’ and I have thought ‘ok, now is the time when I have finally bitten off more than I can chew.’ I brace myself for it every single time but it hasn’t come yet. The fact is, I have a tremendous capacity for just rolling up my sleeves and getting on with the task in hand, however hard it is (see the first point again). But then I think we all do because often there is simply no choice but to do this. I remember when I was eight months pregnant, standing in front of my baby’s father, my huge bump between us and him saying ‘you did this to yourself, Anna.’ I know, ridiculous in that scenario, but most of the time I do remind myself of this in the things I choose to do, even when my friends very generously listen to me moaning (I’m sure they’re thinking the same). These challenges of mine I have brought on myself, and I find them scary and exhilarating in equal measure, so I have to take responsibility when it all goes wrong. The other week all the puppies got sick, from both ends, I will spare you the details, but the vets did not spare me the £400 bill, yet I had put myself into this situation, these were the risks, I had to take the hit, which leads me to…

Do things in life for love not money

Never ever go into dog breeding thinking it will make you money. I would say that I have spent about £3,000 in vets’ bills, supplies (the £90-a-bag food the vet recommended), even the Kennel Club fleeced me for £175 last night just for registering them. The bills keep on coming, and so people might look at my pictures and videos on Instagram and do a little sum in their head about how much I’m quids in, but I’m not, not really. It’s an utter gamble, if one of those puppies breaks its leg next week, that’s it, all money gone. Plus I’ve got to pay tax on the lot and remember this has been a 24/7 job for the last two months. It is the hardest I’ve ever had to work for perhaps a couple of grand. But, I remind myself when the vets’ bills leave me weeping (I did actually cry at the vets one day), I’ve not done this for the money, I’ve done it for the love and what I discovered was…

Our capacity for love is infinite

It is impossible to deliver seven little helpless creatures into this world and not fall in love with each one. I love my animals, all of them, my two cats give me so much pleasure every single day, Tilki’s arrival in my life changed it completely for the better, how could I possibly conjure up more love to go around? But somehow you do. I guess this is a tiny example of how people feel when they have a second child: How could I possibly love my new baby as much as I love my first? Will I be taking away some of the love from my first baby to give to my second? No, the thing about love is that it comes with an unlimited supply as does my next discovery…

Sharing joy creates more of it

I’m a solitary writer hermit. I have told you this many times. I don’t have people over, I keep myself to myself, I rarely even go out. I’m just happy pottering around my house, doing my own thing, petting my animals, reading my books, writing to you lot of Substack, and yet I have had people in and out of my house for the last two months and I have (mostly) loved it. Who doesn’t want to come and play with seven puppies? Until Tilki had her pups I’d never seen a litter of puppies before, actually perhaps once when I was a little girl, and of course when I went to choose Tilki, and lots of my visitors have said the same, but it has been wonderful to share the joy that these puppies have brought with other people and to see them enjoying them too. We are so often forced by media to share bad news with one another, but how often do we get to share good news, and when we do the joy just multiplies. So yes, sharing joy just makes more of it. It is half term next week and I’ve lost count of the number of children I have invited over to see the pups before they go.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss

Ok, I’m specifically talking here about what the puppies get up to when my back is turned. If I have to leave the room while they are tearing around it to go get more supplies of all I’ve listed above, what I don’t know doesn’t hurt me, how they tumble each other and crash into the radiator, how they bear their teeth or pull each other along by the tail. It might hurt them and often I’ll go running back when I hear a yelp because puppy teeth are sharp and little furry ears are delicate. But mostly in life, sometimes it’s helpful to turn a blind eye, or to live in blissful ignorance. Perhaps in this rolling news frenzy, or in this digital age we feel we need to know everything. We don’t. Know what you need to know to go about your own life in relative peace and with as little stress as possible. As a cheating ex-boyfriend once said to me in my twenties: ‘You don’t need to know everything.’ (ahem).

Trust your intuition always

Tilki has taught me a lot about this and if you have ever watched an animal give birth you will know it too. We living creatures have this incredible, magical ability and it’s called intuition and too often in life we are drowning it out with artificial things that don’t matter and won’t save our lives like our own instincts will. I had read books and pages and pages of websites in preparation for Tilki’s whelping, I had scared myself silly late at night with all the things that might go wrong, but when push came to shove (quite literally) Tilki’s instinct took over. The first pup she whelped she did alone, I left her for ten minutes on the stairs and when I checked again and moved her leg, out crawled a brand new puppy, all licked clean of its sack, its amniotic fluid, its airways were clear and its umbilical cord was severed. Tilki had done all that on her own. Yes, me and my neighbour were there for the next six arrivals, but she knew what to do and if you tune into your intuition, that internal voice, so do you. I’ve let Tilki guide me through most of the last two months, leading the decision-making when it came to when she wanted to stop feeding and when I needed to take over with kibble. All of this is naturally inbuilt within us, don’t let this digital world and AI rob us of the uniqueness of our humanity.

Apply your own oxygen mask before helping others

Ok, as I sit here now writing this to you, my roots are in dire need of some colour, my hair is grown out, full of split ends and totally unruly, I wake up in pain all night with my joints because I’ve not been able to go to pilates for months, and it was only last week that I was able to sit down for a meal with my child for the first time in weeks because I’ve just grabbed an apple for my tea most nights and whacked something in the microwave for her. Plus I’ve eaten so many chocolate biscuits to get through this that I hardly fit in my jeans, so I’ve not really taken my own advice here, but you are no use to those who depend on you if you don’t first take care of yourself. Yes, ok, the puppies might not care about my roots, but I do, it’s part of what makes me feel nice when I go out in the world. Tonight, I am going to London to hear my favourite author speak. It has been a real task to organise (my daughter is going to a friend’s house, my neighbour is coming in to do the first shift with the puppies, and my dogwalker is arriving for the second shift), but it’s important that I get time to do something for me too. I remember when my daughter was born, how every hour in the 24 hour clock was dedicated to her and even just my stepmum walking her round the London streets where I lived so I could ring a friend, or wash my hair was some way of being in touch with the outside world. These touchstones are more important than you realise. It’s a cliche because it’s true. And finally, one last cliche…

It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

I can bring myself to tears with the thought of these little angel pups leaving me next week, but would I have swapped this experience? Not for the world. Soon I will come down in the morning, not to a shit-filled pen and seven furry faces, but to a silent and still living room and just the memory of those little pups who used to greet me then tear around ripping everything up. I’m lucky that they are going to many people that I know so I will see them grow up even if that’s just in photographs, but I will never forget this time, this crazy, exhausting, shit-filled time. I must have planted a million kisses on their silky ears in the last few weeks, with eight days to go, I might just have chance to plant a million more.

Do things that scare you. I promise you won’t regret it.