It goes so fast. One minute, they are inert mini manatees, rolling and roiling up and down their mother's side, blindly looking for milk. Then suddenly, their eyes are open, they begin finding their legs, and just like that...Boom! They are puppies.
Surely these are among the most studied puppies anywhere, as Lynn Dee arranges the rest of her pack, the rest of her life, around a watchful tending of this Dashing Nash Bandit/Dreamboat Annie litter of "dreamcatchers."
Firelight Moondance checking out whelping box commotion.
Impressions form of this puppy or that. There are markers Lynn Dee relies on from her experience, evaluating heads and bodies and emerging dispositions. But always there is the part she cannot explain, and that’s the “it” factor.
It’s part experience, part study, and a whole lotta intuition, projecting personality and performance. The puppies’ genetic background and Lynn Dee’s hands-on, hunting 'n' home history with her dogs are huge factors. Sometimes a certain puppy's demeanor, build, maybe even expression, will earn a private nickname - a “Little Sally” or “Baby Tweed/Storm/Seth/Flint/Doc/Kate”, imagery from dogs who have carved their niche into the Firelight Totem over generations.
Lynn Dee recalls another litter was between 2-3 weeks when she had one of those "Ah Hah!" moments. "One female looked up at me and in those eyes was Patch," Lynn Dee recalls. "Patch was four generations prior and was the best grouse dog I have ever had the privilege of owning."
Lynn Dee says, "So when I saw Patch's eyes in that puppy face, I knew she was The One." And she was: that puppy became the wonderful Firelight Kate.
Lynn Dee will gather intel for her placements, matching what she knows about this litter with what she has learned of the folks waiting for a Firelight of their own. It’s more feel than science, and Lynn Dee will be the first to tell folks that what she or they might see at the whelping rail is just that: what she or they see at the whelping rail. Still, no matter how many times they might visit, even the best and most veteran set of eyeballs could be as discerning as the woman who whelped them, their dam, their granddam, their great-granddam…
Those of us who live and hunt with one - or more - of Lynn Dee’s setters know all this to be central to the Firelight Difference: the smart, committed birdhunter at this whelping box and so many that have come before. These next few weeks will be shining times for Dreamboat Annie’s huddle of new upland dreams, sparked there in the grouse woods of northern Michigan.
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