First-time breeders scramble up steep learning curve

No. It’s something (arguably) more terrifying.

It’s Roxi and Zanzi’s first — and potentially only — litter of seven puppies.

Readers might recall Shepparton couple Melissa McCann and Shaun Greenfield’s groodles, who’ve both featured before in a Pet-icular kind of love.

Well, now the pooches are parents.

And the humans: pseudo-grandparents. Pseudo-exhausted-grandparents.

“Shaun always wanted a litter,” Melissa said, grinning before delivering her next line.

“He thought it was going to be easy because ‘it’s just nature; the mum does all the work’.”

Roxi, whose inner clown was calmed the moment she became a mother, did exactly that in the early days: feeding, cleaning their poo, keeping them safe.

“She would wake Liss up if one of them fell out of their bed,” Shaun said.

“Zanzi was also a very protective and great father. He was more barky at sounds and alerted Roxi or us if something was up.”

The ‘McFields’ said Roxi’s maternal switch flicked off as swiftly as it had switched on when she gave birth, and they were left holding the bundle(s) when she returned to her “crazy” youthful behaviour about three weeks after.

“Round-the-clock care has been exhausting,” Melissa said.

Born on June 17, the puppies arrived at the coldest time of year, and therefore had to be raised inside.

They spent their first four weeks living in Melissa and Shaun’s bedroom.

“It was getting hard to live in,” Melissa said.

“We didn’t get much sleep. It was exhausting, like having a human baby. They wanted to eat every couple of hours.”

Besides the frequency of feeds, there was the added load of regularly cleaning their area and several additional loads of washing daily.

It takes around six months before a puppy is toilet-trained, so you can imagine the mess one makes, let alone seven of them scooting through each other’s.

“It took a while to get the stomach right to deal with,” Shaun admitted.

“Melissa isn’t so helpful, she will say, ‘I didn’t want them’.”

They estimated that Shaun, who fortunately was on leave for the first couple of weeks, had been doing about 80 per cent of the work, while Melissa picked up the balance.

“I was clear that I couldn’t put anything more on my plate,” Melissa said.

Still smiling, she jokingly added: “I’m tired, I’m angry, I’ll like him (Shaun) again in four weeks.”

Despite not being ready for puppy grandmotherhood, Melissa said it had been “amazing” watching Roxi birth her pups and “awesome” watching the six males and single female grow.

“When they’re gone, I will miss them heaps because they are so fun,” she said.

The pups are now eight weeks old, looking for new homes, and the McFields are facing the tough decision of whether they will keep one or not.

A less challenging question is whether they will breed their standard groodles again?

“Probably not,” Shaun said without complete conviction.

“No,” Melissa added adamantly.

They warned potential puppy breeders who saw dollar signs in the exercise that it was not as easy money as it might seem.

Not only has there been loads of work and a fair expense in raising them, there was also grief to contend with when an eighth pup sadly didn’t make it through the first 24 hours.

“I tried to resuscitate it for 20 minutes, I didn’t want to let it go,” Shaun said.

“Zanzi was weird about it. I was sad for a couple of days. It just affects you.”

They advised anyone who was considering breeding a litter of puppies to do it in the warmer months, surmising that they might have breezed through the process if they were able to raise their fluffy little family outdoors.

After all, you don’t want to bark up the wrong tree, or you might end up with a seven-tongued, 14-eared, 28-legged beast to tame.