The sun is setting as I stand in one of the exam rooms at Piedmont Pets Veterinary Care, a gasping, thirteen-day-old puppy cradled in my arms. It's only mid-September, but my body is shaking like I've stepped out into a blizzard and forgotten my coat. Something is terribly wrong with this canine infant, this little being that I helped bring into the world. Because no one I have loved or been close with has ever been gravely ill, because I have never experienced a deep loss, and because I have watched too many happy-ending Disney movies, my naïveté gives me hope. It also slaps me across the face, because there is the immutable fact: I am not prepared for this.
I waited twenty years for a puppy. My mom did not believe in pets, especially dogs, having been traumatized by a neighbor's Great Dane in her youth. The only exposure I had to cats and dogs was when I visited my paternal grandparents at their tree-ensconced home in Ohl, Pennsylvania, during most summer and winter breaks. I watched how Maggie and Brandy, both collie mixes, would follow Mama from room to room, or wait patiently at her feet as she loaded the dishwasher, their eyes locked on her every move. I wanted someone to hug and cuddle; I wanted to be someone's favorite, the center of someone's world. With three younger half-siblings to share the spotlight, an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with my stepfather, and an affectionately fickle mother, I craved the unconditional love of a pet.
Weeks after returning from a challenging fall semester spent in Milan, Italy, I grew aimless and depressed, spending entire days curled up in bed, eating junk food, and watching TV. Life in a foreign country had not met my Sabrina-esque expectations—I had not returned urban and sophisticated like Audrey Hepburn—and I hadn't counted on having a hard time readjusting to my native soil. On a whim, I decided to buy a seven-week-old, long-haired Chihuahua from a breeder—I figured I'd waited long enough—and named him Moxy Pooh. A mischievous ball of white and faun fluff, he became a steady ray of sunshine in my life and elicited maternal responses that I hadn't known I possessed. I quit my part-time job, telling friends and family it was so I could focus on my last semester of college, but the real reason was to spend more time with Moxy.
I hand-fed him while he got used to his bowl, used my hairdryer on his damp fur after bathing him in the sink, and flew with him to see my family in Utah. He was an instant hit with everyone he met, but I was the one he followed around, slept beside at night, and whined for when leaving the house. More than once, I quipped that Moxy may as well have come out of my womb, because for all intents and purposes, he had become my child.
From the start, Moxy was a quirky fellow. He was afraid of heights and had to be baited with bacon strips to learn how to climb up and down the stairs. He loved randomly jumping up on someone's lap and nibbling their nose. He rode in the car with me, curling into a "Moxy ball" in my lap as I drove, and would sit nonchalantly in the pocket of my hoodie while I browsed the new release section at Blockbuster. At night, when he wasn't burrowing deep underneath the king-sized comforter, he was sleeping on top of my head, resting against my pillow.
At his six-month birthday, the vets at Piedmont Pets&massh;the clinic down the street from the house I shared with a man named Eric—started to suggest scheduling his neutering appointment. I was leery of the surgery and so I consulted Eric, who had been thinking of getting his own dog, and we agreed that Moxy was too special to not try to breed. He brought me so much happiness; perhaps, through his progeny, other people would benefit, too.
I can hear Dr. Oleck, one of Piedmont's newer vets, helping another person in the next office. Anger starts to expand in my chest like a balloon, the pressure tight and threatening to pop. Doesn't she know this is an emergency? I contemplate bursting in the adjoining room and demanding that she immediately examine my puppy, Number Three, whose pink, toothless mouth opens and closes every few seconds as he fights for air. This is Moxy's son. This could be another Moxy.
Minutes creep by. Long shadows fall through the window as I pace back and forth across the harshly bright, antiseptic room. I keep looking at my phone to check the time, just to have something to do. At last, Dr. Oleck, with her apologetic smile and mane of curly blonde hair, appears in the doorway. I hurriedly explain the situation as she examines Three, that I had come home from work to find Three making weird gurgling noises. "I'm so sorry to have to do this, baby," she says to him, as she sticks a thermometer up his behind. "I know it's cold."
"His temperature is very low, much lower than it should be," she says, after looking at the reading. Dr. Oleck exchanges glances with her assistant, who nods, and the wild-haired vet turns to face me, her blue eyes full of sympathy. When she speaks, it sounds like she is far away even though she is two feet in front of me.
"We can't say for absolute certain, but we think your puppy has aspiration pneumonia. There are a few possible causes, but basically what's happened is his lungs, which are very little, are filling up with liquid, and he's having to fight for every breath." She pauses when she sees that tears are beginning to flow down my cheeks. "I'm so sorry to tell you this. I'm normally a very optimistic person, but because he's so young and it's happened so rapidly, I just don't think he's going to make it."
I look down at Three who is still wheezing in my hands. You were just born. You opened your eyes for the first time just this morning. You remind me the most of Moxy. When I look back up at Dr. Oleck, my vision is blurred.
"Isn't there anything that can be done?" I am hardly able to choke out the words. "Please."
Owning pets comes with a steep learning curve. You learn quickly to keep favorite shoes out of reach, to not buy toy animals filled with white stuffing, to clean up accidents with lightning-fast reflexes while they're potty training. But owning a dog that's pregnant? The curve then shakes its head, waves goodbye, and says, "You're on your own, kid." Eric had kept his word and bought Mandy, another long-hair Chihuahua with the same white and faun markings as Moxy, from a breeder in New York. By the time she and Moxy consummated their union, I was no longer living with Eric, having found a new apartment on the other side of town with a roommate, Charlie, whom I met when starting a new job. Because Eric had begun frequently traveling overseas for work, he felt that Mandy would be happier staying with me permanently. Weeks passed, and I watched as Mandy's slender five-pound frame swelled to eight, nine, ten pounds, her backside waddling from side to side as she approached her now-doubly filled food bowl.
Fear clutched my heart in an icy grip. I had no idea what I was doing.
In an effort to hold on to some semblance of control, I spent many hours poring over Internet websites dedicated to educating the public on breeding dogs. I watched small dogs giving birth on YouTube. I learned that Chihuahuas have notoriously hard pregnancies because they are the smallest breed of dog and have dome-shaped heads that get easily stuck in the mother's birthing canal. Why, oh why, hadn't I researched breeding before Eric and I decided to forego neutering? I felt trapped, but no amount of hindsight was going to undo Mandy's pregnancy, a perilous time that would last about 60 days. At her 45-day mark, I took her to the vet for an x-ray that would show how many puppies were inside her womb.
Three tiny skeletons glowed against the dark backdrop.
Dr. Oleck tells me that they can take an x-ray of Three to determine how much fluid is in his lungs, but that aggressive antibiotics needed to treat pneumonia can be just as dangerous to a young puppy as the illness itself. "Every minute that passes means more liquid filling up his lungs," she concludes. I tell her to take the x-ray. I look again at my phone and decide to call Eric, who should be on his way home from work by now. We haven't spoken much recently and when we have, it has been hard to maintain civility. Even so, I don't want to deal with this by myself. The possibility of walking out of this office with a dead puppy is starting to seep in, the way my tears have moistened the collar of my jacket. When he hears my voice, he knows something's wrong and agrees to come.
Three's x-ray is discouraging. His baby lungs are almost completely full of liquid, and it was most likely caused by swallowing a little bit of milk down the wrong tube. Dr. Oleck says, "The temperature he was at when you brought him in leads me to believe that he was already trying to die," but the sound is muffled. I feel like I'm watching myself in a movie, removed from the reality of what is happening. A voice within me replies, "I can't just sit here and watch him gasp for air. He's trying to live. Is there anything else you can do?"
Dr. Oleck's blue eyes meet my brown ones, and though I can't be sure, I think she understands that I'm not leaving.
She leads me to an oxygen machine in the back room and helps position Three so that his mouth is covered by the oxygen mask, a tricky task because the mask—set for adult dogs—eclipses his nickel-sized mouth. Piedmont Pets is past closing time, most of its staff have left, and—Dr. Oleck informs me—it does not have the necessary equipment to help Three, so we will need to drive to an emergency clinic in Manassas that's about thirty minutes away. I am left alone with him while Dr. Oleck and her assistant leave to make the necessary arrangements.
I stare at Three breathing the artificial air in and out, his body resting in the palm of my hand. He has stopped making the weird gurgles and his heartbeat pulses against my thumb at a steady pace. I stroke his downy white fur. I play with a little pink paw.
I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. I don't normally pray. Yet I find myself now praying to a higher power. And I'm not just praying. I'm bargaining. Please don't take him. I'll keep working at this job. I'll stop complaining about my manager. I'll stop biting my nails. I'll even go to church. Please don't take him.
Eric's dog Mandy kept me awake most of the night before her delivery. Frantically digging at the blankets in her bed, she would race to and fro across my bedroom and then suddenly lie down sideways on the hardwood floor, panting. To keep her calm, I laid down beside her and rubbed her pink, blue-veined belly. Sometime around 10:00 a.m., with the sun's bright welcoming rays flickering on the floor boards, a dark bubble appeared in Mandy's nether region. I moved the laboring mother to her bed, her "nest," and for the next thirty minutes, the amniotic sac grew bigger and bigger, like someone blowing grape-flavored bubble gum. Suddenly, Mandy started making a sound I had never heard before—a cross between a high-pitched yelp and a bark—and in the next miraculous instant, the first puppy was out, head first. A girl.
After a puppy is born, the saran-wrap-like membrane encasing its body needs to be peeled off so it can start breathing. The mother then licks its face to help clear the air pathways. I was amazed that Mandy—owing to her natural maternal instincts—knew exactly what to do without ever having done it before, and her puppy—owing to its primitive reflexes—automatically began suckling on its mother.
I noticed that the second amniotic sac had been the same size for awhile, much longer than the first. When I timidly prodded the bruise-colored bubble, I saw a tiny paw sticking out from behind it. The puppy was coming out feet first—a "breach"—the most likely to need surgical assistance. Recalling the vet's instructions for a case such as this, I watched as my hand took hold of the little feet and began firmly pulling in a backward "C" motion. For two minutes that felt like two hours, I kept pulling the little body, until one loud yelp from Mandy signaled the puppy's head clearing the canal, a boy. Soon after, I witnessed the third and final amniotic sac appear, followed closely by another male puppy. The puppies were named, for simplicity's sake, by the order in which they were born: Number One, Number Two, and Number Three. I figured there would be time enough later for originality.
My shoulders sagged with intense relief. After a grueling four hours, it was over. I felt like I had just given birth myself, so great was my worry and so all-encompassing was the pride and affection I had as I hovered over my newly extended family. Mandy and her puppies were safe, and though there had been plenty of warnings and cautionary tales, nothing had gone wrong. I knew, though, that all four of the dogs would require diligent care for the next several weeks, as Mandy began her healing process and the puppies—blind, deaf, and immobile—acclimated to the outside world. Charlie and I moved the kennel to the foot of my bed, lined it with an electric blanket for extra warmth, and then stood back, bewildered, as thirteen days sped by, filled with multiple daily and nightly puppy check-ins. They were getting stronger, testing out their miniature limbs, and I eagerly waited for them to open their eyes so they could meet me officially. I believed the worst was over.
Eric is with Dr. Oleck when she strides back into the room. A wave of emotional exhaust rushes through me and I would hug him if I wasn't holding Three. Dr. Oleck hands the directions to the Manassas clinic to Eric, looks at me, and with tears in her eyes, she says softly, "I really hope you make it." Then, in a firmer voice, "On the count of three, I'm going to turn off the oxygen machine, and then you both need to move as fast as you can."
Everything seems to blend together after this moment, a kaleidoscope of images and sounds. Dr. Oleck and her two assistants escort us swiftly out the door and into Eric's VW Jetta, calling "Good luck!" after our screeching wheels. Eric drives manically, weaving in and out of traffic with such speed that I half-wonder if any of us will make it to Manassas alive. I rhythmically rub Three through the warm towels Dr. Oleck gave us to keep his body temperature up. We are still about fifteen minutes away from Manassas, and he has started making the gasping noises again; as the minutes limp along, the shallow breaths begin to slow. Eric shoots a glance at Three. "You're going to have to do mouth-to-mouth. Your job is to keep him breathing."
"But I don't know how to do CPR!"
"Well, you're gonna learn now. Just use your breath to keep air in his lungs. Do it now!"
I hold Three up to my face and cover his baby mouth with mine. To me, he has the same milky newborn smell that human infants have. I blow air into his mouth, once every five seconds, his little paws pressed against my chin. It seems like it's working until blood burbles up from his throat as we're on the exit ramp. "Eric, he's bleeding! He's bleeding from his mouth!" I am terrified. This little life is inside my hands and no matter what I do, I can't seem to keep it from leaking out. My stomach is twisted and my mind, screaming, but an innate focus takes charge of my body as my hands wipe Three's mouth and I continue blowing my breath into him. I can taste his blood on my lips but I don't stop. "We're almost there, we're almost there!" I chant, clinging tightly to the last bit of hope I have for keeping Three alive.
I woke up that sunny Thursday morning in September with the same thought I'd had for the past several days: Will the puppies open their eyes today? I walked to the front of the kennel and picked up the puppy that was sleeping closest to the edge, Number Three. I had witnessed seedlings of Moxy's same quirky behavior in this younger, smaller male—the runt of the litter, just like Mox. Before the puppies had been born, I had toyed with the possibility of selling them, remembering my original desire to share my blissful dog-owning experience with other people. Three shifted in my cupped hands, yawned, and then slowly opened his eyes, his little brown eyes. At this moment, I knew—with the sharp stab of a deep attachment—that I would sacrifice whatever was needed (my time, my entry-level salary) in order to keep my family together.
At last, Eric turns in to the parking lot of the emergency clinic in Manassas, taking Three from my arms and darting out of the car as I struggle with my seatbelt. The windows of the clinic are all dark, and no one answers the door. We race around the building, pounding on every door and window. Nothing. I move to grab my cell phone from the car to call Dr. Oleck, but Eric stops me. "Kecianne," he says, and looks down at the bundle of towels. "He's gone."
I take the bundle from Eric and peer inside the folds. The gasps have stopped. There is no movement. There is no little heart beat. And his beautiful, dark eyes—eyes that had opened just that morning before I left for work—were now closed. My Three was gone.
I fall to the grass and rock Three from side to side. I am sobbing, for the life force I have let escape. I feel intensely responsible for Three's death—I am the one who helped bring him into the world. I look up at the inky-black sky, at the moon that bears the same harsh glow of the exam room, and I wonder, What is the point? What is the point of going through the trouble, the mess, the unbelievable pain of being born, only to have life cut short at its infancy? I don't understand. It doesn't make any sense, and worse, it seems cruelly unfair.
Most of all, I am crying for myself. This morning, I was the guardian, the matriarchal protector of five healthy dogs, and now there is one less. One less bowl to fill, one less leash to buy, one less roly-poly pup to cuddle against my body at night. My heart had expanded with the addition of three new presences in my life, and I know that moving forward, it will always be aware of this absence, of the four furry imps circling my feet where there should be five.
When Eric and I arrive at my apartment in Warrenton, Charlie comes out to meet us but stops a few feet away from me, seeing the bundle I hold in my arms and knowing what it means. He and Eric dig a hole by the giant tree in the backyard while I wrap Three in my favorite cream-colored hair kerchief, the one I'd been wearing the day he was born. His little body has grown cold and rigid, his tiny limbs tucked against his body, and his head tilted downward as if in prayer. I kiss him on his forehead and release him to Eric, then turn my back as he's lowered into the ground because I can't bear to watch.
In the weeks ahead, I will lose my appetite and lose sleep over nightmarish images of worms boring through Three's body. I will ask myself, in those early days and in many that follow, if I would have acted differently had I known how things would end. I will obsess over the fact that I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared for the births, for the death, or for the disarming tender moments in between. But I will discover an inescapable truth that exists in the permeable layer below my consciousness—that nothing can prepare us for the moments in life that bring us to our knees. And so I temper this knowledge by pressing on, and I am awoken each morning by four dogs eagerly licking my hands, forehead, and nose, just as I had always imagined.