“Are puppies hard to sell?” “It’s very difficult,” she said, “especially for backyard breeders.” Yes, I was one of those. She went on. “You can’t advertise online unless you’re a registered breeder.” Driving home, I felt shattered at the thought that I might not find homes for these puppies. As a child, I had found homes for Scottie Flora’s six pups by touting them around the neighbourhood in our egg basket. But now, with Flora’s poodle pups, not only could I not advertise, but I was in competition with the increasingly popular and worthy rescue dogs – slow greyhounds and other neglected dogs with horrible tales of abuse. At our local park, the rescue dogs held the moral high ground. And here was I, bringing poodles into the world, with their fancy looks and whiff of snobbery. When we took Flora to the vet, the ultrasound showed three puppies, which seemed manageable, but a couple of weeks later, an X-ray showed seven. The nightmare of seven pups never leaving home haunted me. I struggled with the guilt. Flora didn’t like pregnancy. Of course, she didn’t appear to know she was pregnant, a fact which led to some deeply philosophical conversations with my grandchildren. But Flora was deprived of her great pleasure of running and playing with other dogs. She couldn’t thunder along the hall to greet people at the front door. I wondered how she was processing her changing body. I sat with her late at night and handfed her peanut butter sandwiches and told her how I had babies (not puppies). I told her it was fantastic, but she just wanted more sandwiches.

When she went into labour, I settled her into the whelping box we had installed in our lounge room. When the first pup started to breech, Flora looked around, slightly alarmed at whatever it was emerging from her rear end. When the pup was born, she looked blank but finally instinct took over. She bit off the umbilical cord, ate the placenta and licked the baby vigorously and nudged it to feed. But she showed none of the joy that Scottie Flora had displayed. The pup was tiny, pink, with sparse white hair and truly beautiful. My husband said it looked like a rat. I was ecstatic and felt a visceral connection to each of the seven puppies, which was exactly what I felt when Scottie Flora had her pups. But 1959 had been a time of innocence. Since then, I’d had children and experienced the highs and lows of motherhood. So I understood Flora’s mood. Did she have enough milk? Yes, the pups doubled their weight the first week, then continued to grow at a miraculous rate and developed a fine poodle curl in their tails. She was feeding and cleaning them, but it looked purely dutiful.

I diagnosed canine post-natal depression. As they grew bigger, the puppies were ruthless, almost brutal about getting milk, latching on tightly, pounding Flora with their little paws. She became wary of going into the whelping box and wary of lying down. She was having five meals a day but was still exhausted. We decided to start weaning the puppies in the fourth week and moved them out to a kennel in the yard. That first night, I went out in the darkness, worried they’d be cold or that one of them had fallen out of the kennel. Neurotic? Yes. They were sound asleep in one big puppy pile.

The writer in 1959, aged 11, with her Scottie dog, Flora, and pups in the family egg basket. Credit:Courtesy of Helen Townsend They were extraordinarily cute. They were mad for their mother, but they loved humans too. We got a rock-star welcome every time we went into their yard. They loved being patted, cuddled and cleaned. We had a gate on the yard and Flora jumped over it to see them. They were big enough to swing off a teat, feet barely on the ground. She’d put up with it for a few minutes and then jump back over the gate. She did get a little anxious about the puppy worshippers who visited us – and there were a lot – but she was happy enough to have people handle her pups. When we took them to the vet, crammed into cat cages, Flora came with us. She did us proud by shaking hands with each admirer. Soon half the clinic staff had come to see the pups, cuddling them and taking selfies. “Litters are pretty rare round here,” the vet told us. “Almost all dogs are desexed.” Our whole family was in love with the puppies. My grandchildren made a list of 47 names and we picked seven. The pups all had different personalities. There was the committed eater, the barking one, the one who liked to rumble, one who liked to dig. They trimmed the garden foliage. They were endless work and endless amusement. I was exhausted, but I adored them.