An Official Answer: Dawn’s Second Litter = 11 Pups
The Smith Street 11, 11 days old
Mason layering their “den” with cedar chips.
The Smith Street 11’s “den”
The half that guessed Dawn had 11 pups was right, seven girls and four boys. Officially, Dawn’s had 19 puppies in six months.
Mason and I had been about to leave for Smith Street on Friday when the rain started, and it didn’t stop until 4 AM this morning. It stormed hard all night long, hard enough to flood local creeks.
I knew exactly when the water stopped pounding down because I was wide awake, worrying about Dawn’s second litter of stray pups born under a junk pile in the ghetto, imagining the makeshift “den” collapsing or those pups drowning.
The sky finally cleared at sunrise, and we drove mid-morning to Smith Street, buying a brick of cedar chips on the way.
My fears were over-exaggerated but sound. As I started pulling out pups, all alive, all squealing, I realized the bottom of their den was soaked, nothing but wet mud, and they were shivering,
We carried the litter to the grass, using a flashlight to make sure we didn’t miss any, wrapped them in a blanket, and layered wood chips on the floor. While I dried off the pups, Mason secured a second tarp above the first, anchoring the edges with cinder blocks.
At one point in our thirty-minute visit, Mason was close enough to touch Dawn with the catch pole – basically a stick with a noose at the end – but she eluded the slip knot, scrambling for the tree line twenty feet from her new family.
As far as a tranquilizer gun, the zoo hasn’t said no, but they haven’t said yes either. Before the weekend started, ICHBA was told they were “discussing it.” We’ve also contacted several local wildlife control agencies, the folks that capture fox, snakes, etc, but none had the permit required to buy and operate a tranquilizer gun.