"Okay, genetics. But first-first I'd like another cup of coffee.
Anyone else?"
KING'S INDIAN-KARLA VOM HANCKSCHLOSS
Alpha Litter, Age 4 Weeks
Abstract prepared by Dr. Lily Quick Physicaclass="underline" Sound, conformation good, one female with overlarge head, washing of some nails to near gray, big-boned, deep chested thick necked favoring classic German typology.
Vision: Good.
Hearing: Good.
Olfactory: Above average.
Sensitivity, Voice: Erratic, evaluation difficult at this point.
Sensitivity, Touch: One male, one female average; balance below average.
Intelligence: Average to medium high.
Responsiveness: Average to below average.
Alertness: Very high.
Curiosity: Average to above average. Autonomy: Above average.
Aggression: Erratic, from average to above average. Assertion: Above average.
Remarks: An interesting litter that warrants close monitoring.
Heightened autonomy and boldness were desired from this breeding and seem to have been achieved. An unexpected bonus in apparent keenness of scent. Some minimal slippage in the high intelligence we've come to expect from Indian's progeny. Secondary goal was escalated alertness, and that is present. Sensitivity to human voice is worrisome possibly erratic because of slow maturation, hopefully not to instability.
Lowered responsiveness to handlers probably correlates with increased self reliance There appears also to be a greater emotional integrity than we have seen before (all but one of these pups withstood stressing procedures more easily than previous subjects, averaging 13.2 % above usual maximums). Continued maintenance is indicated for the entire litter. I recommend standard socialization for four of the pups (to serve as controls and to ensure full train ability but reduced contact (the minimum required to activate the personality and ensure later manageability) for the remaining three. L think it important with this litter to observe at least two or three maturing as undirected as possible.
Rhoda I's pups were seven days old; fat, furry caricatures of the dogs they would be, clumsy and squeaking, with blind rumpled little faces.
They piled atop one another in Toby's cart. Toby talked to them cheerfully, though he knew they were too young to take real comfort from his voice.
Rhoda I had whined in her whelping pen when he'd loaded the pups. She was a skittish animal. The trainers called her a spook. She wasn't his favorite dog, but he felt sorry for her anyway. He'd reassured her and promised to bring them hack right away. Toby liked all dogs-from quaking fear-biters through berserkers to the forlorn animals at the SPCA shelter. But he had preferences, and spooks were at the lower end. Rhoda I was the only dog with such a temperament at BDI. She was kept for her high intelligence and spectacular scent ability. Most of her pups were destroyed in a few months. Only one was still alive, Rhoda II, a hitch everyone was fond of, smart, a great tracker and with her father's-an imported Schutzhund III-solid, outgoing temperament.
Now and then a handler was bitten taking young pups from their mother, so sometimes they'd lock the dam away even though it was against regulations.
Toby never did that; he thought it cruel. He'd never been bitten in his life, though he'd sweated it a couple times. Outside of the area guards-animals with a deep native sense of territory who had been taught to regard everyone but their trainers as enemies to be attacked on sight-he could handle any dog at BDI, and there were a couple of hard cases.
Toby wheeled the pups from the whelping area, which stood apart a little from the main bank of kennels, down a gravel path and through a break in a hedgerow into a two-story green cinderblock building; past the service elevator from which an attendant was pushing a gurney on which a drug-groggy dog with a bandaged leg was strapped, and into the first room on the left.
A rack of clipboards was mounted on one wall, a large plastic sheet marked with grease-pencil notations on another. There were a steel writing desk, two filing cabinets, and an open-topped metal drum with small containers riveted around the inner circumference of its mouth.
Power cables ran to the bottom of the device, and to a simple control panel beside it.
"Hi, Bill," Toby said.
"Toby." The technician wore a hospital shirt. "Smiler's pups? Out of Rhoda
" I?"
"Yeah, that's what they are."
"Delta litter." Bill checked off an entry on the schedule sheet.
They removed the pups, which had been marked BDI's, notched, two days ago, and placed them in the drum containers. The pups whimpered. Toby stroked them. One tried to nurse at his finger.
"Okay," Bill said. "Two Gs for three minutes." He turned a calibrated dial and set the timer. "Here you go, gang." He depressed a stud.
The dynamo turned over with a clank, an electric whine rose, there was a chunkk, and the drum began to turn. Toby made himself watch. It was a penance he inflicted upon himself for participating in the work. The centrifuge brought twice the force of gravity to bear on the pups, pressing them against the outer walls of their compartments. Skeletal structures came into relief, they struggled for breath, their terrified cries were audible above the noise of the machine. Toby let his eyes go out of focus, saw the spinning tub as a shiny blur with a ribbon of black and silver. No, no, he thought, you must watch. He ticked off the seconds in his mind, tightening as the number mounted, and when he reached 180, and as the machine disengaged, and the sound of the motor faded, the drum slowing to a gradual stop, he exhaled and unclenched his hands.
The pups were crying. Most had voided their bladder and bowels.
Unsteadily, some tried to stand. One was shuddering violently, another lolled drunkenly on its side. Squinting at them, Bill jotted quick notes on a clipboard.
"They're all yours," he said. "Take 'em back to mama."
Toby lifted the pups gently. He crooned to them. They piled atop one another in the cart whimpering and pawing.
When Toby wheeled the cart back up to the run, Rhoda I pressed her nose through one of the diamond spaces in the chain link and whined. The pups called to her. She barked and went up on her hind legs. Toby had trouble keeping her in when he opened the gate. She put her paws on the cart and ducked her head, began licking the pups. Toby got them out. Rhoda sniffed each carefully, as if to assure herself they were truly hers, and all there. Then she relaxed and lay down to feed them.
The pups shouldered each other for her dugs. Rhoda began licking them clean of the feces and urine they'd soiled themselves with in the centrifuge. Toby wetted a rag in her water dish and helped her.
"So in the end," Mandelberg said, "there's nothing truly innovative in our genetics program. Where we differ from other breeding programs is in the number of traits we want to fix. It's substantially higher than has been undertaken before, and so the difficulties are commensurately greater, the problems more complex. I'd say we're about halfway home.
We've come up with some outstanding specimens, but we're still four or five years away from breeding true with confidence.
"My personal excitement lies in what we're accomplishing in psychobiology.