As the summer heat came on, Doxie’s belly grew so large it scraped the ground. We had to airlift her to the yard and make sure she stayed in the grass to avoid harsh and hot pavement. As P-Day drew close, we asked Mom if we could keep one of the puppies before she put the price tags on the rest. We all agreed if one of the pups was a red female, it would be the newest Budell. The family each had a guess on the number of pups she was carrying. I picked 6, my brother and sister had 7 and 8, Dad came in low with 4 and Mom predicted 22.

 I was asleep one night when I heard a commotion. Mom was yelling that Doxie had gone into labor and was delivering! We gathered around the baby crib Mom transformed into the nursery. Sure enough, the first one out was red, but Doxie growled when we tried to get close. It was the cutest little thing … a few inches of red fur, curled up and eyes closed. We waited for the next one. And waited. Soon it was the next morning. Mom was hysterical.

“No dog that big could be carrying just one puppy,” she wailed. “I’m taking her to the vet to see if the rest are stuck!”

An hour later, Mom returned looking quite stunned. An x-ray revealed no more puppies awaiting birth. She wasn’t mad. Just shocked. We all were. While not immediately clear, it set in what we wouldn’t be doing with the puppy money. But even so, it didn’t take Mom long to resign herself that there was no way we could sell the one and only offspring. We named the new, little red wiener dog, Heidi. Dad got promoted so Mom never considered incorporating Heidi’s uterus (do dogs even have those?) and creating another potential cash cow.

A few months after the non-baby boom, my mom shocked my brother, sister and me by announcing SHE was pregnant! The three of us never considered the possibility of another sibling—we had been a trio for 10 years—so this was quite exciting.

Mom had one baby—we kept her too—and today she’s a nuclear physicist (really).

And I’m still not sure what Schultzie and Doxie were doing in our basement all those years ago, but whatever it was, one thing is $ure—it wasn’t enough.


Greg Budell is a 25 year veteran of South Florida radio and has currently joined the BBC (Bluewater Broadcasting Corp.) and works for a group of radio stations in Montgomery, Alabama, Monday-Friday. He commutes back to SoFla on weekends to see his daughter, Janelle, & “son,” Zeus. You can reach him at: info@lifepubs.com.