Puppies!

Helping "red" feed

Puppies were born between 3:30 am and 9 am on Monday June 27th!  We got a text around 3:30 am from the breeder saying the first pup was born.  Jim didn't hear it come thru but heard another text at about 4 am.  He woke me up and I jumped up taking about 1 second to decide I was going.  Then her got Grace up and off we went!

It takes about an hour and 47 minutes to get to the breeders house but at 4:30 in the morning it took about an hour and 15 minutes.  We made it in time to see the last three born.

Total score:  2 females, 3 males and 1 stillborn female :-(

This is Grace delivering number four, a male. He had some trouble nursing at first.  He had a weird technique where he was chomping instead of sucking.  We helped him out quite a bit and by the time we left he was finding a nipple by himself and sucking/chomping more vigorously.  In pics, you will see that the tip of his tail is red so he is marked as the one with some trouble at first.  This way he can be watched extra close.

Here Grace has removed the puppy from the birthing sack and Hops is chewing off the umbilical cord and eating the placenta and sack.  Grace had to hold the puppy's leg back so Hops wouldn't accidentally chew it while chewing off the umbilical cord.  This all happened really fast because Hops felt like this was an emergency type job!

Four of the pups waited here while the fifth, a girl, was born.   After the 5th was born, we could tell she was still in labor.  After a little while with no action, we took her outside to go potty as that sometimes speeds things up.  She delivered the last pup, a female, on the grass.  We could tell right away that the pup was the wrong color - she looked bluish.  The breeder quick got her out of the sack, swung her up and down to clear mucus, rubbed and pinched her....then did some breaths.  Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do.  Luckily we were easily able to distract Hops with her other puppies so she didn't notice that this one was gone.  A couple hours later this little pup was buried out under a tree where their other family pets were buried.  May she rest in peace.

Hops was great thru the whole event.  In hind sight, when we dropped her off yesterday, she was in labor.  And, in fact, I think she started going into labor on the way to the breeder's house from the cabin.  I looked back at her in the truck and she was looking back at me with big wide eyes....which is unusual for her as she usually sleeps like a rock in the truck.

You can see she is wet from her post birth swim

When we go to the breeder's at about 3 pm she was unsettled but didn't have other signs of being in labor such as nesting and a drop in her temperature.  But when I went to bed last nite and was watching her on the webcam, I was pretty sure she was in labor because she couldn't get comfortable.  So she ended up giving birth about 12 hours after we dropped her off!

Sweet puppy faces

Hops knew just what to do when the babies were born and was totally calm thru the whole thing.  She rested between pups and even got up twice to eat (a lot!), drink and go potty.  But when she was done with that, she wanted back in to see her pups!

This is "red", also known as Arlo, finally finding a nipple on his own!

Such a sweet mama!

After her final pup was born and we were pretty sure she was done, she wanted to go for a swim!  So we let her go in the pool and then she came back to her pups and took a well deserved nap!

All in all, an amazing experience.  She will now stay with her pups for about 6 weeks to feed them until they begin eating puppy food.