Ice Cream Sundays and Hushed Puppies
an excerpt

Ethel struggled under her own weight, the rain pelting her soft brown hair; every movement executed through sheer willpower and an unyielding determination. An unidentifiable message in her brain-instinct perhaps- pressed her onward as she clambered down the steep bank; mud sliding between her toes, her nails biting into the muck. Mere feet below, the small creek, now burgeoning with excessive water furnished by the continual downpour, roared by her; small twigs and leaves raced by like impossible catamarans on some uncharted course. The noise, debris, and rain all unnoticed by Ethel as she made her way down to the small ledge jutting slightly above the turgid water. Ethel turned around several times, judged the firmness of the muddied protuberance, and, satisfied, eased her girth downward onto the ground with a heavy sigh. This will do, she thought hazily; this will do.

The first thing one would notice about Ethel upon seeing her was that she was, in fact, a beautiful Bassett Hound. The second thing one would notice was that she was, in fact, extremely pregnant. She was, to coin a phrase, not only merely pregnant, she was also most sincerely pregnant, and due any day by her owners (or, as she reasoned, the people that fed her) estimation. This was not entirely accurate. To be precise, Ethel was due any minuet, and she had chosen the steep and muddy bank of a creek in the back of the property where those-who-fed-her had their house in rural Wilmington, North Carolina, to give birth to the six puppies she was carrying on this stormy day in the summer of 1974.