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Chapter 5 is here and after finding our perfect breeder we're finally ready to get a dog! There were 3 litters planned for the remainder of the year so it felt like nothing could go wrong. And then everything started to go wrong...

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Chapter 5 - The Waiting Game

It had been a long road from White Fang to here. From the initial awakening of my desire for a canine companion to the rekindling of the same feeling so many years later. From wanting to get a dog to the decision to actually do it. Deciding on a breed and then finding our breeder. We were now on the waiting list and that was all we had left to do: wait. 

Well, wait and pick a name. 

Now, just like when I talk about other breeds, when I talk about names I’m talking about what I prefer, not what everyone else should do. So, with that in mind, I had some pretty hard and fast rules about the name. People's names, for example, were right out. A dog is the only chance you have to name something Raptor Thrust or Torvil the Great! So why would I name it Bruce? I also wanted a name that meant something. 

We tried on many different names. Taking them for test drives around the house, rolling them around our mouths, trying them out with different calls and commands.  But we kept falling short. When the name finally came to me, I knew it would be his name immediately. I put on my best wicked grin and told Danielle that I had come up with the perfect name. She was understandably skeptical  as my previous suggestion was “Boat Ramp”. I paused for dramatic effect and then laid it on her. 

“Nova!” 

It sounded even better out loud. Danielle couldn’t help but agree. It was a tribute to the place where our relationship began; it was a word that meant ‘new’, just like our lives in Australia. It was short and, I thought, cool. It was the last piece of the puzzle, our dog had a name. He would be Nova. 

Decision to buy? Check. 

Breed? Check. 

Breeder? Check. 

Name: Check. 

Dog: … not so much. 

We weren’t the only ones who were fans of Lynda Friend. We were now on her waiting list which was populated by dozens and dozens of other contenders. We did the math on which females she was breeding and how many people we thought were ahead of us and were fairly confident that our Christmas deadline would still be achievable. 

The time dragged on like a music recital at an elementary school but eventually Lynda called to let us know that the first litter had been born. There was one pup that was still up for grabs but we were still about 6 or 7 people away from the top of the waitlist. If all those people passed though, he could be ours. We allowed ourselves a few moments of hope but it didn’t last long. We knew this wouldn’t be the one. We were also set on picking our puppy from a litter. We wanted him to come bounding over out of the group of litter mates in such a way that we knew he was a Nova and not a Boat Ramp. 

Lynda had a number of litters planned for the end of 2009 and soon enough the next litter came and it was a cracker. So impressed was Lynda at the quality of these pups that she kept the biggest boy and the two best girls for herself. We didn’t exactly sit by the phone waiting for her to call, but there was definitely a tension in the house that week. Eventually we were given the news that we had expected all along. All the other pups had found homes and we had to resign ourselves to wait once again.  Now though, we were at the top of the list and there were still two litters to go. 

We knew Lynda had mated another of her females but we hadn’t heard anything of her pregnancy. Overcome with curiosity and giving up on trying to look nonchalant, I called to get an update. Lynda informed me that this pregnancy wasn’t going well. They were experiencing a number of problems and weren’t sure how it was going to pan out. Sure enough, when the litter was born only three pups survived. Two females and one male and they had sable coats (a sort of marble pattern). The male pup was already promised to the provider of the stud dog and so once again we had to sit back and wait. 

Next was Charesse. Our last and brightest hope. After Charesse, no dogs would be mated until well into 2010. We waited and waited until we got the news that she was pregnant and heaved a sigh of relief. All was going well and we decided to let sleeping dogs lie and wait for Lynda to contact us this time. What could possibly go wrong? Days passed. Weeks passed. A month passed. I couldn’t hold it any longer. 

I called and Lynda filled me in as best she could. Charesse had experienced a phantom pregnancy. This is where her body goes through all the signs of pregnancy but there is no fetus. Her teats lactate, she gains weight, but there are simply no puppies growing inside her. I thanked Lynda and shared the news with Dani. 

We were devastated. Stunned. After all this time, all this waiting, we were beginning to think it wasn’t meant to be. We couldn’t believe this had happened. We had four litters and somehow it had all gone wrong. By the time the next dog was mated, got pregnant, and gave birth we would be half-way through 2010 and thinking about moving back to Canada. We didn’t know what to do. We stopped looking at YouTube videos, stopped daydreaming about what he would be like, and once again the dream of my own White Fang was reluctantly moved to the back burner. I felt completely defeated. 

Time was unusual then. We weren’t waiting anymore. We had nothing to wait for. The days passed as they always do but there was just nothing there, nothing waiting for me at the end. It may seem melodramatic – we could just get another dog from another breeder – but that just wasn’t in the cards. We had already invested so much into Lynda. We knew her and her dogs. We loved how she worked, the care she took with her dogs. How could we settle for anything less? 

Christmas came and went and yet again, we had no puppy. But then, on January 10, 2010 the phone rang and things changed. 

It was Danielle and there was an excitement behind her voice that told me something was up. It was something about her scholarship surely, another paper had been accepted or an award had come through. No, Dani told me that she had just got off the phone with Lynda. I tried my best to stay calm and I’m sure I failed miserably. Dani told me that the dog Lynda had kept from last September was turning out to be a long coat. Why does that matter? Well at the time it was considered a genetic defect and so was not allowed in the professional show ring which meant it would be no good as a stud dog. Which meant she wouldn’t be keeping him after all. Excitement bordering on hysteria was creeping into Dani’s voice and she could tell I wasn’t putting this all together. 

“Darryl!” she said “She wants to know if we want him! We could go pick him up and bring him home today!” 

My heart was beating so loudly that I swear I could hear the thump thump thump of it in my head. I couldn’t quite process what this meant. A dog? Today? That’s crazy. We can’t do this today. We hadn’t met the dog! We hadn’t picked him out! This was crazy. I suggested that we hang up and take a few hours to think about it. This was not a little 8 week old puppy, we had nothing prepared, we had to move money around to pay for  him. We needed to think about this. We needed to weigh the options. We hung up and agreed to talk again in a few hours. I put the phone down and took a breath so I could think this through but there was only one thought running back and forth in my head. I picked up the phone and called Dani back. 

“Let's go get our dog!”