Animals

Four puppies were born late in May to our German shepherd, freya.during the first ten days of their life the pups were blind, unable to walk. Their world was an old sleeping bag which Freya used as their nursery. When the pups were awake, they were either eating or jostling one another as they attempted to eat. When they were not eating, they were sleeping. Their activities, ambitions, abilities were as simple as that.

At about ten days, three marked changes occurred in the puppies. Their eyes opened. They began to walk-unsteadily of course. And they became vocal, making harp, plaintive cries which sounded like the gabbling of weak-voiced soprano geese. These three new skills, seeing, walking and crying were in a sense interrelated. It might have proved dangerous for the pups to have possessed one of these talents but not the others. Before they could see, they were of course safer if they could not walk. And, before they could walk, the ability to see would have of little use. All their attention and needs were centered on the sleeping bag and Frey's body, both of which they knew perfectly well by the feel of them.

In the same way, the pups' ability to cry out developed precisely when it was first needed. By the time they were two weeks old they were going off on short exploring trips. Stumbling and falling, they would became hopelessly entangled with chair legs, confused in corners, and just plain lost .

A young puppy needs to stray only a short distance and time before it become hungry, cold, and fearful. The cry is a direct response to these unpleasant sensations. There is nothing a lost, cold, hungry pappy can do for itself. The one creature that normally can free them up from its trouble and satisfy its physical needs is its mother. Thus crying, passing along information of the predicament, is the one practical response the pup can make.
Freyas response to the distress call of her pups was immediate and automatic. While her pups were wandering, sounding off, she was restless, alert, very much on guard. She would trot between the strays, nuzzling, them back toward the sleeping bag, nudging them out of trouble. Strictly speaking, she was not so much coming to the aid of an individual puppy as she was reacting to the puppy distress call.

The mother hears and responds to the cry of a pup as though it could be translated,'need, need.' The cry is an immensely practical sound symbol which links the pup to the mother. The behavior is inherited, developed over thousands of generations by the dog family. The pups cry because they must. Freya answers them because she must.

Many centuries ago the ancestor of Freya was a jackal-like creature. The land was wild and rough. It would be as easy thing for a foolish pup to stray out of sight, to starve or freeze if the mother could not locate it by its cry. Also there were hunting reptiles, birds and mammals that could make short work and quick meal of an undefended puppy. The puppy cry then would bring a snarling mother to snatch her offspring from under the shadow of eagle's wings. It was of far more importance then than it was for freyas puppies growing up on as enclosed porch. Nevertheless, the impulse to give and answer the distress call remains in dogs because this reaction has helped the family survive. As freyas four fat, safe pups cry when they are caught under a chair leg, they probably use the same signal that their ancestors did under the shadow of the eagle. The distress cry of a pup is a link across space and time, binding it to its mother.

By Edward Ombaka Adeny