The Whelping Box
Flash nonfiction about the cycle of life as told through cedar
I’m kneeling with sharp knees pressed heavily onto the hardwood floor as my mom’s latexed blue hand passes me a soggy creature. Our family dog became unexpectedly expectant and our jokes about her being pregnant became less and less funny as her belly started to grow. Before we could truly reckon with what was to come, it was clear that Pocky was going to be a mom.
We estimated that we still had two weeks before the litter would be here, so my dad got to work right away clearing space and crafting a whelping box. The cedar he used for the babies’ new home was the same cedar that he had built an extension of our tiny house with. Our home, a converted garage on my grandparents’ land, went from being a shoebox to a livable space with this cedar that my dad and grandfather had secured for $600 instead of the estimated $3000 it could have been if the man selling it hadn’t kept profusely down-selling his own product. The discounted wood needed to be mindfully planed, and my father did so with purpose when he was constructing the home for both the puppies and ourselves.
The morning of Thanksgiving it was clear that cooking would have to wait. Our dog was going into labor. My mom and I cradled ourselves around the whelping box, keeping Pocky hydrated and helping deliver pup after pup. We wrung out warm washcloths and carefully patted out the drying blood as it soaked her white fur. The first two puppies came to breathe in life’s opportunities with no obstacles. They wriggled and squeaked, looking more mouse than dog. Blind, deaf, but impossibly squirmy. My primary job was to trim the multi-colored thin velcro collars and secure them around their measly necks.
If the purpose of Thanksgiving is togetherness, this was the most successful holiday yet. My sister, the primary owner of the mama dog, was sitting beside us as the third pup started to deliver. Immediately, the joyful air around us sunk as a blue body emerged. It was somehow smaller than the already-miniscule puppies writhing below in attempts to latch. We took turns trying to squeegee mucus out of the little face of the new pup, but with every suck a panic started to grow. This puppy was not breathing.
My sister started doing chest compressions on the newborn. We held the baby in a microfiber towel near the space heater in attempts to keep it warm as she tried to restart the heart. My father came into the room and breathed air into the tiny dog’s mouth and soon we heard the similar squeaking that had come from the first two puppies.
Relief should’ve been felt. There was a heartbeat and clear breathing, but even upon celebration I could feel my eyes sting. My mom took the revived puppy into her hands and rolled him onto his stomach only to reveal that this puppy’s spine had never fully developed. There was a break in the body where skin never connected. Worst of all, blood was pouring out of where the spine ceased to exist. This dog had been born dead, and we unknowingly revived it only to suffer.
My father, sister, and me, all in painful tears, took the baby out to the front yard so he could feel sunshine on his belly. He didn’t cry out like I expected him to. Instead he accepted the warmth until he was ready to go. It was nearly instant, but that moment felt infinite. We huddled around the baby. In the matter of an hour I had been witness to life and death.
The day continued with one birth after another until Pocky was mother to seven squeakers. My dad went to his toolshed and took the last of his cedar and crafted a paltry coffin.
The coffin had a cross of cedar affixed to the front. My family is not religious. I’ve only ever been to church as a child when I’d sleepover at a friend’s house and be roped into Sunday services. Seeing my agnostic father craft this cross splintered my heart. I watched as he dug the near-frozen November dirt and buried the puppy whose life consisted solely of one Thanksgiving morning.
I am thankful for cedar, the way it welcomes new life in our whelping box, keeps my family warm in our home, and is the deliverance vehicle of life lost.
