Litter Nine, Second Pup

Bella-7C went into labour late in the evening in the second whelping room of the main kennel block at the Tasmania Police K9 Breeding Centre outside New Norfolk. The litter was the ninth bred under the programme, sired by Rex-4A. Kenneth Rawlings, the centre's senior breeder, had moved a camp chair and a heater into the room two nights earlier and had been sleeping beside the whelping box since.

The first pup, a female, arrived shortly after midnight. Bella rested for longer than Rawlings liked before the second. He was born at 3:47 am, a male, heavier than his sister, and he cried loudly as soon as Rawlings cleared the membrane from his face. Rawlings weighed him, logged the time, and entered him on the litter sheet as 9B: ninth litter, second pup. He was given no name.

The labour slowed after that. The third pup came within the hour, and then nothing did. By five o'clock Bella had been straining without progress for some time, and Rawlings rang Dr Sarah Blackwood, the centre's veterinarian. She drove out from New Norfolk in the dark, examined Bella, judged the birth canal clear, and gave an injection to strengthen the contractions. The fourth, fifth and sixth pups followed over the next two hours.

The seventh, a male, was born limp and not breathing. Blackwood cleared his airway, swung him gently to drain the fluid, and rubbed him hard with a towel on the floor of the whelping room for several minutes before he drew breath. He weighed little more than two-thirds of 9B. She kept him on a heat pad until he could hold his own temperature and then put him to Bella herself. He latched at the third attempt. Blackwood ordered checks on him every two hours and supplementary feeding if his weight fell.

Between deliveries she examined the rest of the litter. In her notes on 9B she recorded that he lifted his head and turned it towards voices in the room more readily than his siblings, and that he fed strongly. She considered it worth writing down, though not yet worth acting on.

Thomas Mitchell, the kennel supervisor, arrived for the morning shift at seven to find seven pups in the box, Bella exhausted, and Blackwood still kneeling beside the runt. He took over the handling records and began the first daily weigh-in. Rawlings entered the litter in the stud book and flagged it as a priority for temperament assessment on the strength of both parents' service records.

Dr Margaret Calder, the centre's director, read the litter sheet in her office before eight and signed it. Rawlings went home to sleep.