In the past 14 years, St. Charles native Susan R. Luginbuhl has “mothered” an estimated 500 Labrador retriever puppies.
“Right now we have nine adult dogs — five breeding and four in retirement — and I’m down to six puppies from two recent litters that produced 17 puppies,” Luginbuhl says in a phone call from her home outside Ellington, Conn.“We keep the older moms and dads, the senior citizens who are no longer having puppies, as part of our family.”
Luginbuhl, a 1976 graduate of Chesaning High School, says she’s always been an avid letter writer, telling tales about her canine escapades.
“And I was always calling my nom and telling her what happened and she’d say, ‘Are you writing these down.”‘ (Mom and dad, Richard and Jolan Jackson, still live in St. Charles.)
Enter “Puppies From Heaven” (Llumina Press, 190 pages, $12.95), containing 27 heartwarming and often humorous stories from eight of those 14 years.
She says she grew up with hunting dogs around and thought, those 14 years ago, she’d like to get a female Labrador and allow it to have one brood — so her four sons (now 26, 25, 21 and 16) could witness the experience.
“I’d read that Labs were good with kids.”
From that came 10 puppies born in a family closet. The family kept two of the pups. Her stay-at-home career was born and her husband’s carpentry skills put to use building shelters and pens. And those puppies today, by the way, fetch $800 each.
She never has any problem selling them, she says, since New York and Boston are a close distance and she advertises in major newspapers.
“I never did write down the stories I told over the years, so what is in the book are the ones that stood out in my mind and I remembered. I’ll always wonder how many good ones did I forget.”
Photo from Amazon.com.
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