A cop and his pups

The German shepherdpuppies are just learningto bark.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Knocking on the door at Detective Sgt. Scott White's ranch-style house sets off 11 barking alarms: Bar, Cala and nine 3-week-old puppies.
It's a chain reaction.
Bar's deafening woofs and howls at the front door alerts Cala, stretched out in a spacious whelping pen in a back bedroom.
"Bar, stop it!"
Cala's return woofs and howls stirs her slumbering brood.
"Cala, nie!" (That's Slovak for no.)
Noise
The nine German shepherd puppies -- six females, three males -- start to whimper.
The whimpers escalate to yipping, yelping and yapping.
"They're just learning to bark," White says. "Well, that's what passes for barks right now."
The phone rings.
White's pager goes off.
He stands in the hallway, mumbling in Italian to Cala beyond the closed bedroom door.
Amid the din, a visitor reminds him that Cala, imported from Slovakia, hasn't mastered English yet, let alone Italian.
"Huh, oh, yeah, right," he says with a lopsided, sleepy grin. "They woke me up at 5 a.m.," he says of the pups.
Little ones
White tugs Bar, a member of the Youngstown Police Department K-9 unit, toward the master bedroom, even though the 7-year-old 90-pound male wants to visit the puppies too.
The somewhat crazed look on White's face conveys that it'll be less chaotic to check out the puppies without Bar's getting on Cala's last nerve. The adult dogs, who have the run of the house and yard, "get along great," except when Cala attends to her puppies in the pen, the vice squad officer said.
Eventually, the racket subsides, except for the little ones, who continue to make tiny yips and yaps, figuring it must be time to eat. Why else would they be awake?
They sleep 90 percent of the time. Individual personalities should emerge in another two weeks, along with nine names, all beginning with "A."
That's how breeders keep track of each of a dog's litters, Scott said, explaining that names for the pups in the first get "A" names, the second, Bs, and son on. Owners, of course, are free to change the names later.
Motherhood
Cala arrived Oct. 16 at Pittsburgh International Airport from Slovakia with a 50-50 chance she might be pregnant. White convinced himself that the 2-year-old German shepherd wasn't going to be a mother.
His initial reaction to the impending births? "Oh, my God."
Cala's labor lasted 17 hours, with the first puppy born at 4 a.m. Dec. 1 and the ninth at 9 p.m.
The K-9 officer, who lives alone, expressed great relief that Cala has taken to motherhood, which appeared iffy, at first. If she hadn't, the pups would have to be bottle-fed every two hours.
With Bar momentarily stashed in the master bedroom, White opens the door to the nursery.
The shades are drawn against the afternoon sun, and the room is bathed in the soft red glow of a heating lamp suspended above the whelping pen. A large Indian-print blanket draped over the chain-link pen also helps keep the puppies warm as toast.
Nine squirming chestnut-brown bodies roll and tumble as they negotiate around Cala, who stands, watching.
The protective new mom met the intrusion of visitors with a bark (the real kind).
White opened the pen and climbed in.
He gently persuaded Cala to sit. The puppies made a cockeyed dash to lunch.
The yips and yaps changed to contented coos and grunts as nine pairs of back legs kicked wildly. The scene was a writhing mass of puppydom.
Once satiated, the furry bundles resumed their naps, cuddled in groups.
Competition
White picked up one puppy, then another, and held them close. The minor stress such separation causes helps build their confidence, he said.
Cala, he said, will be trained for sport competition -- called schutzhund -- tracking, protection and obedience. She won't be a police dog like Bar, also born in Slovakia.
Some of Cala's offspring will return to Slovakia and good homes found for those who remain. The puppies' father, Ayk, is a member of the schutzhund world team.
As White closed the bedroom door on the sleeping puppies and their relaxed mother, his face beamed.
"That's beautiful, isn't it?" he says. "I have a whole new appreciation for silence."
meade@vindy.com