Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Puppies, friends, mentors


Mark Thorson photo


Not necessarily in that order...

It has been a week of all, with the highpoint being this morning at the o'crack o'dawn.

Beautiful Polly presented seven pretty blue babies to the world.

She was bred the week that Kim and I were road tripping to SoCal. Casper saved his best for this litter. Stunning patterns in blue, black and white.Add the monstrous bone from Polly and I think this will be a fun litter to watch.

I have whelped out, on my own, three litters of Scotties and two litters of Goldens. I have assisted with kiddings and foalings. However, this was really different. Very short cords make it near impossible, if not impossible, for the pup to be completely out with the cord still attached. That means that the pups also are likely to need a bit more stimulation, and a higher risk of mortality. Scared me. A lot!!

Mark was in the whelping box delivering pups and Kim sat out of the box stimulating pups. They worked quite well together; in sync with the needs of Polly and all the babies. And, they were on three days of very little sleep. Impressive.

Polly wanted an audience. She was not pleased if any one left the room. We saw that the day earlier. She was digging a hole to China in the backyard; I think she might have known it was the most populated of countries. She simply wanted a bigger audience!!

In the end she proved to be quite the doting mama dog. She was literally dripping milk, so when I left all seven were fat and sleeping, with Polly curled around them ready to nap.

Thanks, Mark, Kim, Jason, Alta, Polly, and Casper. What a ride it was.

G2

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for being there and the lovely recap.

Carolyn Cannon said...

I've only had corgis so long that I forgot that other breeds can be born with the placentas still attached.

High infant mortality is a problem. I was extremely lucky the last litter (free whelped). The three previous litters were c-sections

Sandy ~~~ said...

My ride on the virtual whelping train began at 4:10 a.m. when the first text came through. Then about a half hour later and then more and more and more. I felt so "included" in things and thank you and Kim for keeping me in the loop.

I think I seriously exceeded the limit to my FREE texts for the month!