LIVING IN THE BASEMENT

BY JIM MAHAFFIE

So much for 10,000 years of evolution and natural dens and nature taking its course.

Breeding dogs nowadays requires a huge wood thing called a whelping box. It has taken over our basement, and Maizey stays in it with the pups, taking bare minutes a day to do her thing outside. Elise is frequently sitting in it, too. Surrounding it is a fencing thing, hung with blankets and towels. Surrounding all of that are the various accoutrements of puppie-dom – scale, thermometers, towels, piles of newspaper, bedding, paper towels, duct tape (you always need duct tape, don’t you?), scissors… and of course laptops, phones, paper and pens, some mail, dishes, banana peels, and bedding for Elise – who is sleeping down there.

Apparently, puppies cannot regulate their own temperature for a while after they’re born, so the room has to be 80 degrees or more. Space heaters take care of that (thanks neighbors), and Elise likes it too, as we have the old too hot/too cold impasse in our relationship.

With all the things that go wrong with dogs, how did any ever survive, thrive and evolve over the past centuries? The monks of St. Bernard didn’t have space heaters and duct tape.