The story of a birth

Vulcain's not a pure-breed dog. In fact, he's very much what is usually called a mongrel. His father is (apprently) a Beauceron, and his mother a half-german Shepherd, half-something else. Vulcain however looks quite a lot like a beauceron too: black-and-tan hair and, most of all, like the instructor at the training classes told me: "he's got the and the balls of a beauceron!" This has stuck to him, I'm afraid.

The thing is, if i'm feeling so close to him, it's probably also because I saw him being born. We had offered a 3-days trip on a boat to my boyfriend's mother for her birthday, in 2004; on the day we were scheduled to depart, about one hour before jumping into the cars, Laika (the mother) "decided" to have her pups. Now, we're not a family to break into tears at such a sight, and Laika isn't a fragile little thing, on the contrary: she thus had to finish her job on the boat itself, which she did in a pretty calm manner. The first of the puppies was born around 3pm, the last one came around midnight, once we were finished playing cards at the boat's table.

This no doub creates bonds. We saw the little ones whine and moan at 1-day old, held us in the palms of our hands. In the following weeks, we saw them grow up, open their eyes for the first time, play, get potty-trained--all the shmuck. There were eight of them: a jolly colony of three males and five females.

Perhaps this is why Vulcain had so much ease adapting to our house--this, and being happy to get out of the shelter. There's much to tell about this, and we still storm about his formers owners, months after, but... this is coming soon in a blog entry near you!