"Nooo, I didn't say that. Everybody needs some slutty friends. It's an honorable calling."

He is. Rambling.

"You do need to be careful with any females in estrus, though, you wouldn't want a pup transforming in the middle of the woods with a mother who didn't know how to deal with that."

The malamute mothers at the mills didn't really know either, but they were at least acclimated to human presence, and the breeders - for all their many, many other sins - were invested in keeping most of the pups alive.