Lived experiences

Paqui Medina and Carlos Moreno

 Hello, friends mastineros/as.

 We have decided to be our experience about the upbringing of mastiffs so that you see that for very black that is presented it is not necessary to throw the towel.

Everything began one day that our look crossed with a beautiful copy of Mastiff of the Pyrenees in the Fair of Girona. In that moment my husband decided that one of those serious beautiful copies the following one in our lives.

A year we were in search of that exemplary -DINO - and of that breeder -LOLA HERVAS -, (thank you there where you are to give us to know this world) that provided us a sweet and hairy cachorrita as a peluche to which call ADA, and that it turned out to be the enemy number 1 and the beginning motor in this pleasant ambient mastinero.

 To both and a half years, we decide to look for him a boyfriend to see if we were able to eradicate a problem of womb infection that crawled for one year once and for all. The veterinarian told us that with treatment and a childbirth would disappear and if we would not have to operate her and to empty it. Our first adventure began this way as beginners that we are: to choose a male for ADA. This I don't like it, the color is ugly, but the very beautiful head, that it is smaller but the hair is beautiful. At the end as we didn't decide we request advice to Manel Almodóvar that put us in contact with Horten and Juanma, owners of NARD DE L'ESTANY that at last would be the father. After making 300 Km every day during three days to carry out the it mounts, did the longest month of wait that I could imagine, arrive it will be pregnant?, won't he be?, will How many be?, will some male Leave?, will all females Be?.

 After one month and one week, the veterinarian with an ecografía took us out of doubts. ' Be pregnant of four puppies", eureka! We think us, it is already cured, and it was really when the calvary began.

 We begin to gather data about the canine upbringing, (books, magazines, articles), as well as emergency material (scissors, gauzes, towels, thermometer etc.) and of course to prepare the place that we believed serious the best, this way when coming closer the day we were already soaked of the whole theory and nervous, (it is the second time that I experienced that sensation, the first one it was when he/she had to examine me of the identification card of driving).

 The last three days we go them by shifts with her in their room", when seeing that the days passed and she even attempted but it didn't end up expelling them, we decide to go to the veterinarian so that it took out them to him, but he told us that we waited another day (I suppose that it was not prepared for a big dog and he/she preferred to wait to see if he/she had " luck " and he/she had to play it). The following day ADA was with a high fever and one of you suckle them he/she had been inflamed as an apple and it had left him in her a dark lived stain. We take it to the clinical one and there us dió the news without more: this dog has a gangrenous mastitis and she has a high fever, I don't believe that she survives, neither her neither the puppies. If in that moment they cut us a hand we had not noticed it, almost we collapse, but we said: open it it saves to the mother and face what you can for the puppies. The veterinarian put him an injection so that it lowered the fever, it was five in the afternoon and we had to wait up to nine in the night that another veterinarian arrived (after having closed his consultation in the town of to the side) to help him. They told us that leave to give a turn but we decide to stay in the wait room, (less bad). To the ten minutes we hear that they called each other, run, venid, the puppies are alive we jump of the seats and we enter in the quirófano, the view was Dantesque, in the floor there were a puddle of blood and a placenta, a puppy it was in the sink and the veterinarian already had another in the hands. That blow becomes some improvised clinic assistants, we caught the puppies and we shook them to take out him the liquid of the lungs, later we dried them and we rubbed them so that they entered in heat, When the veterinarian had taken out the four he already exclaimed: ' it is still other and later other, in total they were five females and a male, six reasons to fight for them. They sewed the mother and we take it to the recovery room so that he/she woke up of the anesthesia and of the sedative ones the following day.  

 After leaving the veterinarian without milk and without baby bottles and of heating the towels in the drying one, we prepare the box that we had taken, we put to the six mastincillos in her, (with the security on the part of the veterinarian that the following day would not be alive) and we go to house, to 15 Km of the clinic to begin the third part of our history.

 When arriving home we had organize again, the whole theory had left to the fret, it only was not necessary to watch over the squashing and to leave to the nature and the maternal instinct, but rather I had to become nature and the most difficult thing, to convert my husband's maternal instinct.

 He/she was necessary to give them the baby bottle, to stimulate them so that they made their necessities and to provide them their absent mother's heat, and that every three hours, to those that it has not experienced it I can tell him that they miss hours day, when you leave the last glutton, the first one is already requesting more manduca, and it is because they only eat, they evacuate, they sleep and they eat again and this way during three weeks, in which the salesperson of milk for puppies was rubbed the hands every time that he saw me enter.  

 In a lapsus the following day we left to look for ADA, when we arrive at the clinic they were jumped the tears, there in the glass door, of I tweeted waiting we was her, as saying, !eh, is already well, vámonos to house, no!. The veterinarian, us dió a treatment for the gangrene of he/she suckles her and he/she told us that it would surely lose it everything, but that he/she was necessary to see how it evolved and if we were able to stop the gangrene.

 We returned home and we had to outline the new schedule, it was necessary to continue the day by day. The shifts were exhausting, baby bottles, work, house tasks, to cure the mother, we hardly had left loose hours go to sleep, I believe that in that month they went up the actions of the coffee due to the strong increment of the consumption that registered in our house.  

This way one month later we meet with the six strong and healthy puppies, the mother not only with the detained gangrene, but rather the empty meat of he/she suckles her with the help of cures he/she was reconstructed and although he/she suckles her it is useless in their operation, he/she is not noticed the calvary that happened.

 After this month of storm it seemed that the calm will arrive, but with a hard question:

What do we make with the puppies?.

 We wanted a male and a female, thing that was not us difficult to choose, but the rest, what to make.

 We put several announcements in specialized magazines and enough people called, but we had become very demanding in the selection, since the puppies had become part of us. A person only convinced me with her forms so that I/you/he/she gave him a WHITE called cachorrita of this singular litter and an Asturian that came personally by plane with his wife to be taken it to a rinconcito of that beautiful earth was. After many negatives we decide to leave to two cachorritas; he/she BLEATS and BEAUTIFUL with our respective progenitores,(después, that if of a terrible work of persuasion), but this way located estában and the one that was -BOOT - ' it was won with their sympathy a place at home, with their siblings BUGS and BUNNY.  

Five months have passed from the childbirth and our biggest recompense was to see the picture of the podium of the class very female puppies in I SAW it TROBADA OF MASTIFF OF THE PIRINEU DE CATALUNYA", where one can see:

Very Female Puppies:                          Very Male Puppies

1ª bunny 2ª beautiful 3ª bullet 2º bugs

  Those trophies have been the best compensation to those endless and exhausting days for those that we happen.

 We have wanted to write this history to tell you that while there is a small light of hope it is necessary to fight for her, since the later satisfaction is infinitely superior to all that given by this race so grateful.

 Good, it is already well of giving you the stick, thank you to arrive until here, (that means that you have read yourselves everything) and we do each other somewhere around with our mastiffs.  

 A greeting:

 Paquí Medina and Carlos Moreno