Day 47 (Updated)

Mary-Ann Sontag July 21, 2025

As many know, the last time I had a litter was a bit of a puppy palooza (understatement alert). Claire had failed to get pregnant twice, and so I tried one last time. I was not at all hopeful and so I also bred Daisy. They each got pregnant — with ten puppies. The litters were a week apart.

I kid you not. There were 10 + 10 puppies.

By the end of puppy palooza, my resting pulse was up to 90 (from the normal 69 - 70) and I had lost 20 pounds.

Four puppies is easy. A walk in the park. The perfect antidote to my puppy palooza PTSD.

And yet my resting pulse is once again informing me that I am doing that duck thing 🦆

This is normal for where we are in the life of a litter but it is made worse by whatever is happening with Topaz.

I am his throughline. It is my job to marshal, sort, and access resources for his benefit. It is also my job to ensure we do not do too much and burden this young puppy with testing and interventions just because we can.

The just right amount of veterinary intervention is hard to know. Actually, it is impossible to know right now. That is what is so stressful.

When my entire reality blew up in the spectacular explosion of The Gaslighter, I learned something really helpful: Just do the next right thing. Sounds simple but it is really useful in all kinds of situations, big and small.

We get ourselves into a tangled, overwhelmed mess when we try to transport into future problems. The future is unavailable right now, and so how can we solve future problems when we are not exactly sure what they are? That doesn’t work.

Further, spending our internal resources — aka 100 Little Soldiers — to try and solve future problems that do not exist except in our imagination is a waste of present-day capacity. That doesn’t mean we ignore potential consequences for present-day actions, but we need to do it wisely and gently.

Anyway, all that is to say that I am focused on the next right thing for Topaz. What that looks like is delaying the follow-up veterinary appointment to later this week, and having a conversation with the local veterinarian, Dr. B. That has happened already.

Dr. B reached out to contacts over the weekend and so between us, we have more puzzle pieces but no clear picture. What we have is a plan.

Topaz will continue warm water therapy. Dr. B agrees that we should not give any pain medication unless he is in significant distress. We have an appointment with her on Thursday. I will bring a clean catch urine sample from Topaz and a littermate (for comparison). Bloodwork will be done. I will bring all the siblings to the appointment for the purpose of comparing apples to apples on physical exam, and one brave puppy will have blood drawn to send off Titer #1 to the CAVIDS lab.

If anything changes, I will do the next right thing.

Until then, the Gems and I will…

(Later)

Photos from the day 🩷💙💙💙

❤️

Day 46 (Updated)

Mary-Ann Sontag July 20, 2025

As I mentioned yesterday, WA Barb connected me with a lovely person named Cindy who does Hydrotherapy with dogs. Long story short — Kira’s family is getting their hot tub to 94 degrees so that Topaz can float (supported) in the warm water for 40 minutes today.

He was having a relatively good morning until one of his siblings stepped on his left front leg. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a big deal — it was a Big Deal 💔

After getting him calmed down, he spent the remainder of morning outside time not moving much and just playing with things I brought to him — and the towel. Puppies find the strangest things to be really cool.

I am hoping the warm water intervention will help Topaz.

Thank you to WA Barb for the connection to my new hydrotherapy friend, Cindy. Thank you to Cindy for reaching out and sharing her expertise. And so much gratitude to Kira and her family for all their help in making this happen 🙏❤️

I weighed puppies last night. Topaz has basically caught up — he was 8.3 pounds last night and Sapphire, pictured below, was 8.4 pounds.

Star Garnet was 9.2 pounds.

Jasper, shown here doing his bird dog thing after more geese flew over, was 9.6 pounds last night.

All four with their mom — look at all the floof!

The hydrotherapy session is going to involve all of us and so that means the Gems are having a field trip today. Photos later.

🩷💙💙💙

(Later)

The field trip was a big success. Topaz enjoyed his hydrotherapy.

Each of the Gems got an easy “Intro to Swimming” lesson. This is Jasper.

The puppies and kids enjoyed each other.

Berkeley and Capella got to swim — watch at the end for Atlas. Capella was SO happy to see her brother!

Thanks to Kira and her family for letting us invade 🙏

Topaz walked more this evening than he has in quite a few days.

Sapphire.

Star Garnet (with Sapphire).

Jasper.

Star Garnet and Sapphire.

❤️

Day 45: The Week in Which Topaz Caused Big Drama (Updated)

Mary-Ann Sontag July 19, 2025

Life with Puppies happens in the context of Life with Everything Else. At least, it does for me. The puppies are front and center, but I still need to fit Everything Else in around the edges.

Star Garnet and Jasper — aka Double Trouble

Like the university classes I teach, my team’s federal grant (thankfully still in place), the exercise that keeps me (mostly) sane, the relationships with family and friends that sustain and support me, the adult dogs, and the Big Deal Situation that some of you are aware of and might have imagined just went away — it has not.

In the past week, there has been a lot of stuff on various fronts.

And then Topaz broke.

Topaz this morning: “I am not broken, you dramatic human. I am sore and stiff.”

I hit the pause button on a lot of things yesterday. That is what you do when you are reasonably good at managing your 100 Little Soldiers (aka, capacity) — you know when to give them a break. [Disclaimer: I only learned how to do this by failing at it repeatedly. Some of us are slow learners].

Because one of my goals in spending time writing this blog is to educate — and I have not seen anything like this before — I want to share what happened with Topaz.

Although the smallest in the litter, Topaz has gained weight proportionally to his siblings and has been perfectly normal in every way. Then I began to notice things about a week ago. His front right paw started turning out. Uh Oh, I thought. But I was only thinking he might not be a show puppy — I did not imagine it was the start of more bad stuff.

Then I noticed that the other puppies were trotting, running, and scampering — but not Topaz. Hmmmm…. Maybe just a day or two behind.

I took him and a sibling on a little walk in my big yard earlier this week. The sibling ran and trotted but Topaz only walked. He walked normally but he just walked.

Then the other front paw started drifting out and suddenly he was cow hocked and by Wednesday I started to notice that he was walking strangely — like it hurt.

This is from this morning — you can see his rear end is still not quite right, although it is better than it was.

It was very obvious on Thursday — walking was hard. He would do it some but it was stilted and just hard.

By yesterday (Friday), any hope that he had been injured and was just sore was gone. Off to the vet.

Galen, Bethany (weak and newly grateful for life after a REALLY bad bout of bacterial pneumonia 🤒), and the kids came over to stay with the other puppies while I took Topaz and Capella to the vet.

Multiple vets weighed in. They quickly determined his bones and joints hurt. X-rays were unremarkable. No fever. Topaz was, as usual, engaged and normal except his painful bones and joints.

They prescribed an anti-inflammatory and the plan was to regroup on Monday with a sibling in tow to do some puppy-to-puppy comparisons. All of us were also to reach out to resources over the weekend to see if there are other ideas out there.

Stacy Slade, owner of the potential dads, is tapping her resources. She is SUCH a great stud dog owner.

I called my very best resource — my Montana vet. I love her. She is so smart and as a rural vet, she has seen a lot. Based on my conversation with her, I went from thinking Topaz was a Goner to believing that he will likely be okay. This morning’s activities made me believe it even more.

Growing puppies can apparently have growth that is uneven, and this can cause pain in bones and joints. It is typically self-limiting and can resolve without damage within a few weeks. Cause is not really known — it is not nutritional.

Key to a good recovery is to limit activities and maintain optimal nutrition while it sorts itself out. This is what I am hoping is the issue with Topaz. It makes sense given that he has no other symptoms.

I will not be giving Topaz the anti-inflammatory unless he gets REALLY bad for at least two reasons. First, he is six weeks old. Second, it is easier to limit his activities if it is his idea to limit activities; if he feels too good, he will overdo it.

There are FOUR puppies in that photo. See above regarding the previously unknown pleasures of a sherpa bag 😂

I am going to check in with the vets about an additional question I have — is it weight bearing activities we should limit? If so, it seems like swimming could be a good way to keep Topaz’s muscles strong and exercised. He clearly likes water and comes from a long line of swimming Berners — if he can safely exercise in water, we have resources. How cute would that be?!

As you can imagine, this has been a wildly stressful week — and remember that there are already humans attached to each puppy. Three excited and amazing homes. Amazing enough to be both supportive and willing to pause with me this weekend 🙏

Collective Deep Breath 🧘🏼‍♀️

There are good reasons to hope this is all going to be just fine but what a week 😬🤯

In more fun news, it doesn’t take much to make things novel. I flipped over this part of the crate and looked at what promptly happened.

I also added the tippy board to the top of the ramp, although they could choose to avoid by doing my makeshift soft steps. Jasper was the first one to do it — no problem.

Jasper (and the rest of us) send continuing get well wishes to our recovering friend ❤️

Have a terrific day!

🩷💙💙💙

P.S. If you have ideas, thoughts, and/or suggestions for the Topaz situation, please do weigh in — you can leave a comment or email me at sontag.ma@gmail.com ❤️

(Later)

Thanks to WA Barb for a great connection — Topaz’s team is growing. Just wait until you see what we will be doing tomorrow afternoon! 🙏

Today we added a pool to the puppy yard.