THE BIRDS AND THE BEES AND. . . . THE PUPPIES

I don’t know why I am always on the receiving end of the difficult conversations with Maggie. On Sunday, as we were getting ready for church, she springs this one on me, “How do girl dogs get puppies in their tummies?” I was brushing my teeth at the time, so my answer came out something like, “da same way dat women get babiesh in der tummies.” I was hoping that my half-discernable answer would be sufficient and that Maggie would run off and play and leave me to finish scrubbing my pearly whites, but alas, that was not to be. No, she persisted like a firing squad with the questions. Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.

Maggie and I have had the basic “sex” talk about how women get babies in their tummies. She seems to actually have a pretty good grasp on it, especially relative to her age. She understood that there was a connection between how people created a baby and how animals created a baby, but she wanted details - - lots of them.

Growing up on a farm, I learned at a very early age how animal babies came about. I recall being very little and seeing the pigs mating and asking dad about it. I am sure he was as thrilled as I was to try to provide details to the situation. However, having no available barnyard nearby to take my daughter to for a more graphic depiction of animal babies in the making, I did my best to explain how a female dog goes into heat, that she releases a scent to let the male dogs know she is ready to make babies, that the male dogs are attracted to that scent, etc.

Still, she pressed on for details. Dempsey looked at me like I was nuts as I used him as my model to try to explain the difference in boy and girl dog reproductive parts. One question she asked that made me laugh was to ask if dogs got married. I explained as best I could that female dogs were not particularly picky about who helped them make the puppies. She also asked if Dempsey could be a Daddy sometime, and I explained that Dempsey had been “fixed” so that he couldn’t be a Daddy dog. She had lots to follow up questions as to why, and I did my best to answer them all.

When I got done, I was pretty proud of myself that I had shown no fear and no embarrassment about teaching my child some of the basic facts of life. But Lord help me, just once I would like Chris to be on the receiving end of these questions!