This afternoon I was blessed with being witness to the interaction between seven newborn pups about 10 hours old and their mom Kanaloa, a cocker spaniel, a recent addition to the family of some friends of ours.

Kanaloa is a bit young herself yet this was her third (and last) litter. She showed care and attention to her young ones very naturally, who just wanted to be close to their mom. Kanaloa is a sweetheart to start off with and stole my heart when I first met her. Seeing her take care of her pups made her even sweeter in my eyes.

If ever there was a role model for us humans, here is one. She started giving birth at 3:00 AM, without a whimper or cry, with ease, grace, and dignity. She tended to each pup as s/he emerged from their sac, and continued to clean them up and feed them. One was a stillborn, but Kanaloa didn’t linger in the past but moved forward to take care of those in the here and now. She’s a medium-sized dog and to see all those puppies around her it’s hard to imagine how she managed to be in such great spirits in the last several days of her pregnancy carrying all that weight.

And, now that she’s back to her former slender figure (not so quickly for female humans), she’s bouncing around, ears flopping, with a smile of such joy on her face.

Kanaloa is a cuddly bundle of love and joy, surely a gift from God. The father of her babies is a Labrador Retriever whose character is not known; therefore, we’re all hoping the pups have Kanaloa’s temperament. So Rog and I are thinking that we just might have two little bundles of love and joy come live with us in a couple of months. Then I’ll be blessed to be showered with God’s unconditional love on a daily basis not only through Rog, but channeled through these little pups as well.