What's Past is Prologue (or How Maggie Saved Della's Puppies)

This is St. Maggie's Day and this is the story of Maggie and Della's pups. It's not an obvious connection perhaps, but Maggie was foremost in my mind all the way through the saga of Della and her dozen puppies. In fact, I put a picture of Maggie in the puppy room and she played a part in watching over them while they were there. Of course, if you knew Maggie you might wonder if she did much watching.

Nineteen years ago today we took in Maggie, our first ever foster dog. She was with Animal Connections, the group from which we had adopted Cabell just a couple months prior. After adopting Cabell and meeting Karin Straley with Animal Connections I had told her that we wanted to get involved with fostering. On March 17, 2001, Clay and his mother drove out to the Louisa county shelter (a stinky hell hole in those days) and picked up Maggie, a very smelly and very pregnant rottweiler mix. I was at home finishing assembly of our first backyard kennel, which was attached to our only backyard outbuilding at that time. Maggie delivered 10 puppies a week later.

Maggie was a wonderful dog, but a terrible mother. She didn't know what she was doing and neither did we. In spite of her indifference and our ignorance, six of the pups survived. I'm amazed now that we didn't lose more of them, but such is the tenacity of life. Having Maggie taught us many things about fostering, but mostly it taught us how we can take them in, care for them, love them, but still pass them on to an adopter. We kept one of Maggie's pups, Bremo, but found wonderful homes for the others. The hardest thing was giving up Maggie herself but our Gypsy insisted that she be the only female in our lives. We found Maggie a wonderful home with two young, active, outdoorsy people. They were perfect for her as she was for them.

We became dedicated dog fosters and have fostered hundreds of dogs in the years since Maggie. Then, in May, 2019, along came Della. She was another in a string of Great Dane fosters we've taken in from Green Dogs Unleashed. I drove over to Chesterfield to pick her up and learned that she might be pregnant. She certainly was pregnant and what immediately came to mind was Maggie. We didn't know any more about whelping puppies now than we did when we had Maggie. I seriously considered moving her to a more experienced foster home, but of course that didn't happen. Della had really settled in here; she seemed very happy and she really liked having Serena as a sister. Also, we had more time to prepare, we had people to consult and help, and we had the Maggie experience that taught us all the things we had done wrong.

I received this picture of Maggie from her adopters on top
of Azure Mountain, Adirondack Park, N.Y., in May, 2002.

We kept Della as a foster and helped her through the whelping process and puppy rearing as best we could. She had 12 pups and we were repeatedly warned that with a normal attrition rate from a litter that size we could expect to lose 20% of them. But, if nothing else, the Maggie experience had taught us the importance of vigilance. Fortunately, Della was a great mother and we did all we could to help. We weighed them twice daily for the first few weeks to make sure everyone was growing. After each weigh-in, we gave extra attention to the smallest three to make sure they were getting adequate nutrition. Also, one of us stayed with them around the clock, and always when Della was with them, to make sure no one got crushed or smothered as Della went about her business of caring for them. We did everything for them that we didn't know how to do when Maggie had her puppies and as a result of that, plus more than a little luck, Della successfully raised the full litter of 12 puppies who are all in happy homes today.

That's the story of St. Maggie's Day and her role in saving all the foster dogs that followed her, including Della and her puppies.