German Shepherd daddy saves one of his newborn pups.

by Barry Smith
(Attapulgus, Georgia)

My female was expecting but we thought that it was a couple of days away and to our surprise when my girl friend and I came home my female, Prissy, was in the place that I had built in the corner of my carport and screen porch and had already given birth to two pups. I looked in and talked to her some and picked up one of the pups and looked it over and then left Prissy alone and she was having another pup.

The father, Rudy, came around the house a few minutes later as we were waiting to see how the birthing was progressing and he became very agitated and kept trying to get my attention, coming over to me and then going over to one corner of the hutch where Prissy was having the pups.

He was persistent and became more agitated so I went over and looked to see if there was anything wrong with Prissy and found one of the pups that was only about one hour old had crawled and become trapped in a small opening about 1 1/2" wide. I had not noticed that it was even there.

I was able to remove the pup which was very tightly wedged in the opening, had Rudy not alerted us to the plight of the pup it would surely have died there. When I got the pup out I showed it to Rudy and he immediately calmed down and wanted to play ball.