Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair With Thirty-Eight Dalmatians

by Linda Gray Sexton

  •••

  It was time for my pups to meet the outside world. They were current on their shots and had been wormed twice by then, so it was relatively safe to expose them to others and others to them. They still couldn’t travel anywhere and be set down, as there were too many viruses waiting to be picked up from people’s or other dogs’ feet, but it was safe to have outside visitors in our home with certain precautions taken.

  I called Myrna again, even though I knew there was little chance of her coming. We both knew, and didn’t say, that this was probably the last opportunity she would have to visit them. The pups had taken over my life for the last five weeks, and we had been relegated to phone call visits because I couldn’t really get away for long periods of time to drive her to chemo sessions or PET scans, which sometimes could last six hours or more. Her voice was growing progressively weaker, and often I had to strain to hear her. I gave up on the idea that she would ever see the puppies before they went to their new homes. Her condition had gone so rapidly downhill that I couldn’t keep up with it. She was still driving, but I wondered for how much longer she would be able to do that.

  Without being told, she knew how much I wanted her to meet them. And so one afternoon she did manage to come up, insisting on bringing herself rather than allowing me to come down and collect her and then take her home again. She said she was feeling stronger. We hadn’t seen each other since Breeze’s premature labor had begun. She was too sick to even think about having lunch and really didn’t want to eat anyway. She had lost a great deal of weight.

  Now that the puppies were older, I had vowed to start driving to her medical appointments again, and shortly after our visit with the pups, I did. But when I saw her that day I was even more worried: how drawn and frail she looked. It moved me that she wanted to share something so important to me, despite her illness. She had never gotten to know Breeze the way she had Gully, and so she felt at a greater remove than she would have had these been Gully’s pups. Nevertheless, when she held them in her arms, they brought life into her lap. Without really realizing it, I unconsciously accepted that she would probably never make this trip again.

  •••

  Dawn and I began to set up appointment times with prospective buyers. They were eager to come and see the puppies, but I felt as ferocious as a mama bear when they arrived on my doorstep. Once in the door, visitors had to remove their shoes and wash their hands against possible infection. Lest I seem too paranoid, I told them many breeders make you step in solutions doctored with chlorine bleach to guard against parvovirus. Maybe I seemed weird, but frankly, I didn’t care. It was all part of my job.

  I handed the puppies over one by one, showing the children in the families how to hold them safely. I hovered, counseling everyone to sit so that they couldn’t be dropped from a standing height. The pups squirmed to be set down and then romped around the pen, showing off. But slowly, one by one, they came and climbed up on the strangers’ laps, curious, ready now to welcome these new people and lick their faces. They were cute, cute, cute, and everyone wanted to take more than one home with them. But I wouldn’t sell two to anyone, believing that if a buyer took home more than one, brother and sister would bond with each other, rather than with the family.

  Everyone wanted to pick out his or her own puppy, but Dawn and I began steering certain people in particular directions, according to our experience. It seemed wiser to put a female into a home where there was a male, and vice versa, in order to avoid future dominance issues among same-sex dogs. In houses with small children, we preferred to place the most self-assured, secure dogs and not one who appeared, even at this point, shy or standoffish. A big barreling dog like Yellow wouldn’t work well in a home with an elderly couple; he needed a place where he would get a lot of exercise, maybe with teenagers. And so we counseled prospective families: “Don’t get your heart set on a certain pup. Remember that we’ve got to see how the temperaments develop.” The temperament testing wouldn’t be done until the seventh week, and then we would learn more about who should go where. But it was hard to hold these eager people off.

  At six weeks, some of the people were just coming back for a second look. “Which one, which one?” they clamored.

  “We like red!”

  “We want yellow.”

  I didn’t say a word. I didn’t say that I already had made my mind up that Red, my young explorer, was going to live with a couple up in Oregon who were looking for a pup who would make a good search-and-rescue dog. They had trained many SAR dogs before and had told me the traits they were looking for in a pup. I was excited at the prospect of having a puppy who was going to be working in this field, and I was sure I had the right one for them: Red was the one who got his nose right to the ground the first time out of the whelping pen on the rug in the guest room. I was already certain that he was going to make a fine working dog.

  When Barb and Kurt made the long trip down in their truck to meet the pups, and I opened the door into the garage, Red ran from the puppy pile where he had been napping, straight to the wall of the pen to investigate the newcomers. As Kurt bent over to say hello, Red jumped up in his face and began to lick him as vigorously as only a puppy can. This extroverted friendliness was sheer Red—curious, investigative—but Barb and Kurt didn’t know that. To them it looked like a sign from above. And maybe it was. But in any case, I knew I had made my match.

  •••

  In the seventh week we faced the Volhard temperament test, which would give us the final word on who would go where, although I had already pretty much made up my mind about this, all the while counting the wishes of the prospective owners into the equation as well. The results would help predict the temperament of each pup as he grew older and the kind of dog he would grow up to be—but it would probably not give me any information I didn’t already have. I knew them as I knew my own children. Nevertheless, the test was a good secondary measure, and just about all Dalmatian breeders did it on their litters. It was common in other breeds as well.

  One at a time, each puppy was put into a tall, sheet-clad pen—in our bedroom—so that he couldn’t look out, and where he had never been before so that it couldn’t smell familiar. Then he had to face a total stranger, in this case, Marty Stanford, the breeder from my young beginnings in Dals and with whom I had remained casual friends throughout the years. She would put them through a series of exercises.

  First off, the pup was set on the ground and called by the tester. If he did not come readily, it was interpreted as a sign of shyness. The others were similar, simple actions that measured the pup’s response. The series of ten included a retrieve with a paper ball, a startle reflex test with an umbrella that opened suddenly in their faces, a “follow” to see how sociable they were, a toe pinch to determine how much physical correction they would need during training, a cuddle following that pinch to see how forgiving they were.

  By the time we were done, I was not surprised with a single result. Purple was independent, Yellow was still bossy, Blue was confident, Pink was active, Red explored confidently, and Green was as shy as ever. They were all mine, and I knew them in ways no one else did, not Brad, not Dawn.

  Two weeks before, we had at last named them: it was famous people this time, despite various votes for baseball players or notable sports figures (Nathaniel’s and Brad’s suggestions). But I did something different instead. Pink was sassy, so I named her Marilyn (Monroe) but Brad called her Pinkerbelle. That sassy attitude would carry her far. When she went to live with Dawn, as first female pick of the litter, she was renamed Adele, after the singer, and went on to become a renowned Grand Champion, surpassing even her mother’s record and winning the prestigious class of Futurity, as well as Sweepstakes and Reserve Winner’s Bitch at her first National. The following year she went Best of Opposite Sex to the number one Dal in the country. Adele would develop as my first truly major homebred dog, as Dawn took her well up in the standings of the Top Twenty Dalmatians in
the country.

  Yellow got to be J.W., after John Wayne, because he was the macho boss of the puppy box. Purple was Audrey (Hepburn) because of her classy attitude. Blue had two extraordinary deep blue eyes, so she was Elizabeth Taylor, or Lizzie. And Red, my adventurer since day one, who believed that nothing could stop him, was named by Brad: Lewis, after Meriwether Lewis from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Green got Green Bean—an oddball name, created by me just because it rhymed, the kind of nonsensical nickname I’d given the dogs in the past. Almost none of the names stuck—only Green Bean whose owners kept it. Go figure.

  They were pretty big now, weighing in at about ten pounds. Their play had grown aggressive, as they discovered how hard they could bite without causing, or receiving, pain. They were acquiring all the skills they would need when they left me. It was only two weeks away, and my life still revolved around them. I was doing no work. I was seeing few friends. I had allowed them to take over my life.

  Myrna’s condition was rapidly worsening. Perhaps I hid my face behind those of my puppies. I didn’t want to lose any of them.

  •••

  It was so very close to the time when they would go, and I already knew that I would hold on to them as tightly as if they were my own children before I put them into their new mothers’ and fathers’ arms; I knew I would cry myself dry-eyed once I had shut the kitchen door and had some privacy. Public tears would be more than embarrassing because a breeder was supposed to be immune to the vibrancy of such emotions, more used to such comings and goings, but I knew that the puppies’ departures would stay with me for quite a while.

  Because Breeze had weaned the pups at four weeks, she was no longer invested in them. She spent most of her time in the house with us and ran in to check on them only occasionally. When they left, she would not exhibit any signs of loss or depression.

  However, it was different for me. The transition of these bumptious pups out of my life would bring the specter of loss back in, a reversal of the way their birth had brought joy to my life seven weeks before. I would have to relinquish those whom I had loved so intensely, and would continue to love, no matter where they lived, just as I had relinquished into memory the lives of family and friends who were now gone. All these young ones cuddled and kissed my face, in their own way. All played rough-and-tumble and cried when hurt, or at being left alone, or waiting to be fed, in a manner particular to them. They were most certainly blessed with their own characters, and I mourned them that way, each unto his own. They would never be far from my mind once they were gone. And I would keep tabs on them by following up with their new owners.

  But gone they would be, and how I would hate that. I had experienced so many other losses of love: my father’s sister Joan, to whom I was so close, in a drunk-driving accident, when I was sixteen; my mother to suicide, when I was twenty-one; my Nana to stroke, when I was thirty-four; Melanie, the first of my own peer group, to breast cancer, when I was forty-six; Rose to lung cancer, when I was forty-seven; Pat to colon cancer, when I was fifty-four; Diane to a rare brain cancer, when I was fifty-five; and last but hardly least, my adored Gulliver, when I was fifty-seven, two years back—the death I still mourned the most.

  It reminded me of a symphony, with its echoing themes, and it accumulated power as it accelerated toward whatever the next moment would bring. I now accepted that Myrna was on the crest of the wave that was carrying her, inexorably, to the end. Suffering terrible and prolonged pain, she would at last be swept under by a tide beyond anyone’s control.

  PART X

  going home

  {IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE}

  Purple, a.k.a. Darcy

  Red, a. k. a. Riley

  Blue, a. k. a. Izzy

  Pink, a. k. a. Adele

  Green, a.k.a. Green Bean

  Yellow, a.k.a. Cody

  twenty-two

  AND THEN, AS SUDDENLY as the old month blew out, the new month blew in. September had arrived. The puppies were jumping and climbing all over me as I sat in the dog run trying to write on one long, hot afternoon just before they went to their new homes. They were now eight weeks old. Red attacked my feet; Yellow raced around and jumped on everyone until they rolled onto their backs in submission. Then he got distracted and came over to paw at my lined pad of paper and tried to make off with the pen. Once again, I was trying my hand at a book—this book, begun that day in the puppy pen.

  Green Bean pulled on the drawstrings of my capri pants until they unlaced, and then he climbed into my lap to try to get into his favorite position of curling around my neck like a cat, before I pushed him off. Purple bumped against my butt where it pressed against the bottom of the camp chair. Blue scratched her back and then bounced across my sneaker. Only Pink had peacefully subsided into the other chair, and I remembered how, last week, when I came into the garage one morning with the breakfast pan, she was sitting up pretty on the floor, having managed to scale even the highest wall of the puppy pen. It was so tall now that I had to climb on a ladder to get in to clean the pen and change the pad.

  I gave up on writing, put my face up into the sun, and thought about the bond I had had with Breeze, searching every day for the babies’ heartbeat and monitoring her contractions, hoping I would be a mother, or grandmother, once again. I had gone to bed with her for her premature labor in much the same way I had gone to bed myself while pregnant with Nathaniel, in a successful attempt to keep him safe inside until the proper time.

  That kind of bond was strong enough to keep me from deserting my post, to make certain that I did a good job no matter how inconvenient, even if it was four in the morning. Strong enough for me to consider the puppies part of my own family once they slid out so helpless, blind, and able to do only one thing—suckle, just like a human baby. The only difference with puppies was that as a breeder, you were supposed to toughen your heart from day one, to remind yourself that you were going to be placing them; that expectation was supposed to be a buffer for the inevitable separation right from the beginning. Perhaps for some people it was easier to accept this.

  Now, one more time, I looked over my file folder of puppy questionnaires from possible homes and leafed through the pile of those I had discarded. I had rooted out those who knew nothing about Dalmatians. I had crossed off the list a man who had three other dogs and whose first love was his bird sanctuary—nothing wrong with feathers, but my puppy was not going to come second to a bunch of birds. And then there was the woman who wanted to buy Green Bean for her husband’s fortieth birthday, to ease his midlife crisis—I’d told her to bleach her hair and buy him a Porsche.

  I thought over the homes for which they were about to leave, and I knew I had chosen well. But still, none of those places was here, in my capable and loving arms. I believe this is the regret, however fleeting for some, that every affectionate breeder feels as his or her puppies begin to make their way out into life.

  All of them must leave me behind, and I would be hungry for that straight line of little faces peeking up over the walls of the puppy box in the morning, eyes bright and wide with the expectation of their food pan. I knew they were all going, each and every one, to people who were good and kind, to special places with special people to care for them. Or at least, I hoped, for you could never be certain, and sometimes a dog bounced back, sometimes a dog wound up in rescue, or worse, a kill shelter. Yes, despite my rationalizations, I would be bereft. For a while. And then I would heal. And then I knew I would do it all over again.

  twenty-three

  ONE BY ONE, THEY went. It was the right time, just before the first fear period set in, and thus the perfect opportunity for them to begin bonding with protective new owners, who would gradually replace their brothers and sisters and mother for emotional backup when a broom fell to the floor with a bang or a stranger approached.

  When Purple left, the first break, we waved good-bye as Darcy, complete with her new name, and Christine drove off. Brad put his arms around me and gave me a hug.<
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  Red was next, and as I put him into his mother’s arms, I once again tried not to get emotional. He had been one of my special boys, the curious and confident one, the one that I probably would have kept if not for his patch. Barb and I had talked many times about this day, and she’d promised to take pictures right away and over the ensuing months so that I could watch him grow. She and her husband tucked “Riley” into their truck, and my arms felt emptier than ever.

  I didn’t understand why it was so hard to have this particular litter leave. Perhaps part of it was the impending loss of Myrna. I still visited her, spent afternoons with her in the hospital when she was admitted for a variety of increasing difficulties, began to drive her once again to doctor’s appointments—but it was obvious to me and most of our mutual friends that there was less and less time left to her. Sometime that month she took to bed after a surgery, and she never really regained her feet. I began to mourn.

  •••

  I distracted myself with the departure of the puppies, just as I had tried to distract Myrna with their advent. After each one left, Brad kept a countdown, saying, “and then there were five,” “and then there were four,” “and then there were three,” “and then there were two.” Every time he did it, I gave him a dirty look.

  Blue was next, and this time I succeeded in restraining myself, maybe because I was more prepared and less attached, or maybe because the double-blue-eyed “Izzy” (a close name to the one she had originally had in the puppy pen) was just not one of the pups I’d grown really close to. Dawn waited a few days before prying Pink out of my arms, but I knew that I would see Adele many times, which I did, as she went on to sweep up into the high rankings of the Dal statistics. Letting them go didn’t seem so hard anymore, and I grew a little more confident that I was over the pain of this separation I had so dreaded.