Unconditional Love Alice Ayres

Cammie and the three puppies

Photo courtesy of Alice Ayres

Unconditional Love

Alice Ayres - Rutland, VT

Afew months ago I got a call from a friend who breeds dogs.

“Do you have a litter of puppies?”

My cautious reply was “Yes, but just two puppies,” which made her even more excited.

“This could work!” she exclaimed.

It turns out she was helping a Bernese Mountain dog breeder find a foster mom for her singleton puppy. The puppy was the only one in the litter and her mother did not have milk to nurse her. As it turned out, the mother of my litter,

Cammie, having only two puppies, had an abundance of milk. In fact, she was producing so much milk that her two puppies were growing more quickly than average litters do.

It was a perfect situation and solution! We decided to put the six-day old Bernese Mountain dog in with the two ten-day old Golden retriever puppies and let them grow up together. This would not only provide milk for the lit4 4 Legs & a Tail tle Berner puppy, but also siblings to grow and learn with.

I had never taken on the responsibility of raising someone else’s puppy before, especially this young, but I knew we had to try. Though my answer was “yes,” I knew the final decision was up to my six-year-old Golden. I had to find out if Cammie would accept a puppy that wasn’t hers, if she would care for it, clean it, feed it, and teach it.

Within a few hours Dorie the small Berner puppy arrived. Dorie was tiny for her age and younger than Cammie’s own puppies and we held our breath as we introduced Dorie to Cammie and her pups.

It couldn’t have gone any better than it did! Cammie met the puppy, sniffed her all over and immediately started cleaning her. We hoped that Dorie would be strong enough to nurse and that Cammie would allow it. We need not have worried. Cammie and her two pups made plenty of room for Dorie to nurse and she began to thrive almost immediateWinter 2023