September 05, 2005
september song
The aspen leaves are golden, the autumn wind blows, and inevitably they start to fall to the ground. As I cut stovewood for our winter fires I feel my sixty years. With me is ageing super-leader TONYA OF SEPPALA who will be ten years old on the first day of November.
She has been so valuable at lead that she hasn't been bred much. Her first litter was an experimental outcross that did not deliver what we had hoped for; her second litter, pure Markovo-Seppala, gave us a flock of nice males but no female to replace the Queen. On around four separate heats I bred her to the ageing SHAKAL IZ SOLOVYEV but without results.
So it's pretty much now or never. She's in good shape, she has two previous trouble-free whelpings to her credit. One more mating seems reasonable. I hope I'm doing the right thing. For the past two or three days PAVEL OF SEPPALA (a son of SHAKAL IZ SOLOVYEV) and TONYA have had the run of the exercise-yard together for an hour or so in the afternoon.
It's definitely a "September Song" kind of romance. PAVEL is an intense, active dog, but he has great confidence in what his nose tells him. "Too early." For the first couple of days he hardly acknowledged her presence as he restlessly cantered around the perimenter of the big enclosure. TONYA, too, has been casual, but very open and friendly with him. Today, though, she stayed closer to the people (seated beside the firepit in the middle of the yard) and he in turn stayed much closer to her. Once, today, he decided to make a cautious effort to make love to her, and for awhile, she let him -- then yelped and snarfed (gently) in his face, "it's still too early, bub -- but we can play."
They both seem quite deliberate and leisurely about things. TONYA seems to like him a lot (he has run at point just behind her many, many times on our first-string team). She's playful, receptive but dignified and in full control of the situation. PAVEL himself, though he has never mated a bitch previously, is no young dog -- he was born in December 1997. Last night he howled quietly all night, so today Isa and I decided that we'll put TONYA in the bitch-yard for the duration and give him a stakeout close by, where he can keep watch over her. Although she's a house-pet "girlfriend," I doubt that she'll object.
Probably tomorrow or the next day they'll begin to consummate this September-song love affair.