Puppies and Procreation

Most of us grew up never seeing where life actually comes from.

Some people experience it through pregnancy or birth or raising their own children. That is its own profound initiation into the world of tiny heartbeats and rapid growth. But even then, in many modern societies, we often stay removed from the wider animal world. We rarely witness goats in labor or dogs nursing their newborns or kittens wriggling blindly toward their mother.

Life in its first moments tends to happen somewhere else.

Somewhere private.

Somewhere we do not look unless life places it in front of us.

And because of that, we often forget something ancient and powerful without even realizing it is missing.

I did not realize how much I had forgotten until my mother’s dog had a litter of six Cheweenie puppies. By some stroke of cosmic luck, I met them at two weeks old. They were still in that newborn stage where their bodies move in soft, wiggly waves, like they are still learning the edges of themselves.

Tonight, at five weeks, I lay flat on the floor. Two of them climbed onto my chest, curled into my ribs, and fell asleep. I did not move for an hour. I did not want to. I listened to their tiny breaths, felt the warm weight of their trust, and realized with sudden certainty:

I am keeping one.

His name, at least for now, is Wurly (actively reconsidering this ;)

Rhymes with curly and burly. And he is exactly that. Soft and sweet, but bold enough to explore the world long before his siblings even thought about it. He is the most independent, the most curious, and somehow also the biggest cuddler of the bunch.

With his little face tucked under my chin, I whispered, “We get to spend the next…forever together.” He did not respond. He just sighed and kept sleeping. Something in my chest expanded, as if an instinct older than language stirred awake.

And that is what witnessing new life does. It wakes us.

The First Miracle We Ever Performed

We forget this part too.

Every single one of us began as a single cell.

One.

Just one.

A sperm cell carrying half a story.

An egg cell carrying the other half.

And the moment they combined, creation began a choreography so astonishing that even our most advanced scientists cannot replicate it.

That first cell knew exactly what to do.

It divided.

It differentiated.

It became heart and brain and bone and breath.

It created a self assembling, self repairing, self regulating human being.

Supercomputers do not do this.

Robots do not do this.

Nothing we build can compare.

But your body did. Mine did. Wurly’s did. Every baby, from puppy to foal to elephant calf, did.

Embryonic development is not only biology. It is intelligence woven into our species long before any of us arrived. It is so delicate and so reliable that it unfolds perfectly billions of times a year across the planet.

Yet most of us never witness the early moments. Even parents often see only a sliver of the vast choreography happening inside the body. And unless life brings us close to animals or newborn creatures, we rarely see the miracle unfold in its rawest form.

The Return

Tonight, with two puppies sleeping on my chest, I felt something soften. Something return.

Maybe this is what humans felt for most of history. Maybe this is what our nervous systems expect. The smell of milk. The warmth of newborns. The tiny sounds of creatures learning how to be alive.

Maybe this is why holding a baby, human or otherwise, makes us feel more grounded and more present. It is a reminder that we came from the same beginning. The same cellular spark. The same ancient intelligence.

Wurly is not just a puppy I get to raise.

He is a reminder.

A reminder that life is warm and vulnerable and astonishing.

A reminder that beginnings are everywhere.

A reminder that the miracle that made us is still unfolding all around us.

And when we let ourselves witness it, something inside us remembers who we are.