As you can see from these pics the fertilizer we used on our lawn this year was wicked good stuff. There's funny brown mushrooms everywhere! They're soaking up the rays like crazy and growing like weeds! Today was their first journey into the great beyond and I think they enjoyed it; they are certainly sleeping soundly now back in their puppy enclosure.
Cocoa inspecting the brood
Soaking up some rays
A good cuddle in the grass works wonders
Chai was a little surprised by the size of the brood once it was all spread out.
Napping or exploring; it's all good!
Cocoa is proving why she's such a good Mom too! She's very flexible; you can see here that she's discovered that nursing standing up offers optimum access to everything important.
I've got my eye on you Mom; don't you dare move.
June 24, Monday -- The next step
Over the weekend we tried introducing some solid food to all the puppies by mixing crushed dry puppy food with goat milk; to say the results were a hit would be a dramatic understatement. We fed it to them again today and will, for the next few days, give them solids like this once a day while we figure out how we're going to make water available in a way that won't be constantly spilled. If you've any ideas please post a comment! Because they all continue to nurse several times a day we have a few days to get it figured out.
As you can see from this video they are certainly more mobile than they have been; bigger too! I thought it was funny that as soon as I went to start taping the puppies Mom and Dad had to get into the scene.
Monday, 24 June 2013
June 21, Friday -- Emergency and Emergence
I couldn't go to work today because downtown is shutoff from the flood that began last night; they are saying this may be the worst flood in Calgary's history. Gordon couldn't get to the crossroads market either; it had to be closed because of the flooding in Inglewood and on many of the roads that people access it via.
While I was at home I was delighted to discover that the puppies are opening their eyes; some more than others but we were beginning to panic. Apparently there was no need.
As you can see in this picture the puppies are beginning to look around (see the one in the back) and also clean one another a big (front puppy licking middle puppy). They are also becoming a bit more independent and forming smaller groups with one another at times instead of all being together. However, as you can see here, they still like to be together when they sleep.
this picture is a little dark because it's evening and we are trying to avoid using the flash when we're dealing with 9 sets of newly opened, sensitive, eyes :-)
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
June 18, Tuesday -- Room to grow and to piddle
The puppies have been trying to stand and walk around a lot the last couple of days; not seeing doesn't seem to be hindering them. They are also starting to break away from the others and wander for a minute or two on their on. The book on dog breeding I read says this is a very good sign; we should be able to try a little solid food with them in a day or two because they are beginning to express some individuality and independence. I noticed yesterday, when I was transferring them to the smaller box to replace their bedding, that one of the smaller pups had two little open eye slits which is very encouraging because they are certainly taking longer than average to open their eyes.
In light of all the moving around they are starting Gordon decided to move the puppies back downstairs into a 4' x 4' puppy play pen we had bought; originally thinking we'd use it outside when the puppies were big enough. Turns out it fits into the space between the corner and the kitchen table perfectly. It has a gate that we haven't even bothered to put on yet because there is a 4" rail underneath that space which is big enough to keep the puppies inside the pen. The back half Gordon set up with a washable rug, covered with a towel; the front half he put down newspaper. The puppies are instinctively starting to go to the bathroom on their own now; they move away from the area they are sleeping in to do this. I think the play pen is going to work out perfectly for them in the kitchen for the next little while.
You can see in this picture that one of the puppies has moved away to take a potty break; you can also see we're going to be going through a lot of news paper.
This will give you an idea how much they are growing; the nearer puppies are all either standing or sitting in this picture instead of lying down. The darker one at the back is the little female runt; she's very sweet and despite being surrounded by bigger dogs she continues to grow.
I'll be interested to see how Cocoa takes to having the puppies no longer in our bedroom; you'll remember from an earlier posting that the first few nights she was absolutely frantic until we realized it was because she wanted the puppies closer to us so she could jump up on the bed for the odd powernap. I hope she's okay with this change now that she doesn't feel the instinctive drive to be with them almost constantly. Tonight might be another sleepless night; we'll see how it goes.
Sunday, 16 June 2013
June 16, Sunday -- More energy and personality
The puppies are now showing more energy; they actually stand up and walk around their bed some. When mom tries to climb in I'd describe the action as strongly resembling a swarm of piranhas but with legs, hair and no water -- not much of a resemblance after all :-) While they all sleep a lot there seem to be a couple now that cry more for attention and a couple of nights ago, at 3 am, one of the puppies barked for the first time. It was the cutest little woof I've ever heard but it was definitely a bark; it didn't sound at all like their normal puppy cries.
While changing their bed today I weighed each puppy and took a picture of it; I did miss one picture and I've no idea how I'll get that rectified but you can see them below with their individual weights recorded for today. There is quit a variation in how dark brown they are. You'll notice that one of them even tried to climb out of the Tupperware container I use for weighing them; very cute.
I'll post the pictures form the smallest to the largest; and I made note of their gender too.
Male -- 1022 grams; birth weight 290 grams (+252%)
Male -- 1160 grams; birth weight 300 grams (+287%)
As you can see there is variation in colouring; the three males, however, are all relatively dark compared to the others.
This picture shows all nine puppies in the box we use for "transferring;" we put the puppies into this box while we take them out of the whelping bed and after we have weighed them so we can keep track of which ones have been weighed and which haven't. The first one you put in this box will cry and cry and cry and then as soon as there is another puppy they curl up together and sleep; as you add extra ones they wander around until they are comfortably grouped with the others and promptly go to sleep.
As you can see they are filling this box up pretty completely now -- next time we're at Costco we'll have to find one that's a little bigger and has higher sides (you may have noticed that a couple of the puppies decided they wanted out of this Tupperware container while they were being weighed; we had to turn the whelping box around so the lower side was against the wall as a precaution to be sure none of them accidentally climbed out of the box).
June 14, Friday -- Finding a rhythm
We are finding a rhythm in the whole process now. The puppies continue to eat and grow; we've decided once a day we'll get Cocoa to lie down on our bed and we'll lift the smallest three puppies up to get a little extra food in their own private feeding. I lie down beside Cocoa and pet her while they're nursing and she seems to enjoy it; the puppies eat like crazy too so I'm sure it's good for them.
Today's pictures are one of mom lying down in the kitchen enjoying a little break and all the puppies in their whelping bed; I'll try and include the picture from the day they were born for contrast.
Mom having a little break
The litter on May 30; happy birthday. This picture does not show the whole whelping box; I zoomed in some to get a better image.
The litter on June 14; 15 days old. This picture shows the whole whelping bed and you can see they are taking a lot more room. In fact they are starting to move around more freely and it's getting harder for mom to climb into the box to be with them because as soon as she steps on foot almost all of them become more animated searching for her to nurse.
Friday, 14 June 2013
June 13, Thursday -- Milestones and memories
The puppies are two weeks old today and it's my 54 birthday. We went to Tony Roma's for supper with our friends Don, Sherry and their daughter Tasha. It was a nice meal and visit and when we got home we weighed the puppies and changed the towel in their bed; one of the puppies has opened one eye. FINALLY! Now I can stop worrying because I bet by the time I get home from work tonight almost all their eyes will be open.
I've been thinking about Cocoa and Chai while they were both puppies and I'm going to add a couple of puppy pictures of them below. I'll post my new weight chart for our puppies too; it shows their birth weight, current weight and the percentage they have increased their body weight in these first two weeks. I couldn't believe it; the largest puppy was 1 gram shy of a kilogram (300 grams at birth). My goal this weekend is going to be determining gender for each and adding it to this chart plus giving them working names like "Pingo" -- a Spanish coffee drink that consists of 1 part espresso and 2 parts steamed milk or "Guillermo" -- an Italian coffee drink that consists of 2 shots of espresso with a twist of lime; hopefully I can find 9 names for caffeinated beverages so we can continue our tradition.
This is a picture of Cocoa looking at the new addition to the family; it was taken only one day after we got Chai home (September 21, 2012). He was almost black when he was a puppy.
This picture is of Cocoa before she was a year old but after she's had a haircut and it has grown in some. She really looks almost identical to what Chai looked like before his last haircut. We always thought it was funny that Cocoa, when she was young, would never eat unless she was lying down like she is here.
30-May
13-Jun
increase
1
red right
225
595
164%
3
purple right
255
630
147%
2
purple left
260
670
158%
4
blue right
268
780
191%
8
blue left
271
805
197%
9
green right
271
845
212%
6
272
7
black right
285
880
209%
10
green left
290
912
214%
5
red left
300
999
233%
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Sunday June 9 -- Continued growth
It seems like not much changes from day to day now with the little dears. They continue to grow and at this point we are still waiting for the next two milestones; the puppies will open their eyes soon and a day or two after that their ears will open.
This little video shows the puppies sleeping; we made the decision to not use flash, etc., as we get close to when their eyes will open so it starts out a little dark before I started using a flashlight to give it a little light. Notice how they kick in their sleep to build up their legs for when they'll be able to run and jump! I apologize for the heavy breathing; my camera seems to pick up my breathing while I'm recording video if there isn't a lot of sound going on in the picture area.
The table of their latest weights is below compared to their weights on the first day; I've indicated how much they've grown in 10 days too. The marking with colour marker didn't turn out to work either; somehow Cocoa managed to clean that off them as well LOL -- I'll give her credit for keeping a ship shape crew. The puppy weights are in grams:
30-May
9-Jun
1
red right
225
477
112%
3
purple right
255
498
95%
2
purple left
260
515
98%
4
blue right
268
575
115%
8
blue left
271
660
144%
9
green right
271
668
146%
6
272
7
black right
285
680
139%
10
green left
290
693
139%
5
red left
300
750
150%
Monday, 10 June 2013
Wednesday June 5 -- Increasing confidence and joy
It has now been almost a week since the day Cocoa surprised us with 10 little miracles. The nine who remain continue to grow and Cocoa is settling into a rhythm. She is increasingly comfortable with the puppies and with leaving the puppies for a 1/2 hour or an hour if she needs to lie down and have an uninterrupted rest. The puppies spend a great deal of time sleeping, pretty much 100% of the time they aren't eating.
As you can see from this picture they continue to grow and there are a couple of different colours; the vet noticed when we were there last Saturday that the darkest ones are the 3 boys; though I think it's still hard to tell. We weighed them all today and the weights are up across the board and I got non-toxic coloured markers so I coloured the inside of each puppies ear flap while we weighed them. I hope this will prove to be more successful than the nail polish was!
Weights today I just sorted from smallest to largest and attached them from smallest to largest to the previous values since there wasn't anyway to tell which was which. Not a big issue though since they all seem healthy and growing.
Red right ear; started at 225 grams now 410 grams an increase of 82%
Purple right ear, started at 255 grams now 425 grams an increase of 67%
Purple left ear, started at 260 grams now 425 grams an increase of 63%
Blue right ear, started at 268 grams now 468 grams an increase of 75%
Blue left ear, started at 271 grams now 522 grams an increase of 93%
Green right ear, started at 271 grams now 525 grams an increase of 94%
Black right ear, started at 285 grams now 550 grams an increase of 93%
Green left ear, started at 290 grams now 555 grams an increase of 91%
Red left ear, started at 300 grams now 575 grams an increase of 92%
Not bad at all. Cocoa is doing a fine job of caring for them all and they seem contented, clean and healthy.
To give you an idea of where we are headed this is a picture of Chai taken when we first got him; less than 8 weeks old.
Monday June 3 -- Success and Nostalgia
Moving the whelping bed upstairs into our bed room turned out to be a huge success! Cocoa only woke me up 4 times during the night instead of bothering me constantly and she wasn't crying at all. I'm not sure how we'll deal with this when they're a little larger but one step at a time.
From day to day the puppies aren't changing much -- just getting bigger. Cocoa seems to be doing a great job of keeping them clean and feeding them.
I thought, over the next few days, I'll post some more pictures of the parents.
This is a cute picture of Cocoa from early 2012 looking back at a small piece of bone. You can just see her asking herself "How did I miss that -- I was sure I ate the WHOLE thing!" She had been groomed a few days earlier and her coat is still quite fluffy.
This picture was taken January 30, 2013, and shows both of them lying down at the back door. You see that Chai has much deeper colouring still because he is still immature (about 6 months old in this picture). We think his adult coat may be slightly redder than a typical wheaten because of his Airedale mom but we won't know for sure for at least another six months; their coats are not always the final adult colour until they are well over a year old. He definitely has a wheaten terrier coat though; there is absolutely no wire hairs in his coat (Airedales have a curly wire hair); in fact, while Cocoa has a few black guard hairs on her back Chai does not seem to even have these -- his coat is wonderfully soft and fun to pet.
Saturday, 8 June 2013
Sunday June 2 -- Anxiety and Insight
I was worried sick about this morning. I had been booked about 6 weeks earlier to lead worship for Springbank United Church this morning. This was the original due date the vet had given me and in light of that I had asked if there was anyway I could switch Sunday's with someone; it turned out to be impractical. They offered to ask someone else but I won't make that kind of commitment and then break it for any reason. I had even arranged for my mother-in-law, who used to breed toy poodles, to come in and be with Cocoa as a dog-sitter if the puppies hadn't arrived yet or had just arrived.
We decided that having a dog-sitter for four hours that day wasn't necessary in light of how well everyone was doing but as I left I was pretty anxious; this would be the first time Cocoa had been left alone for more than 1/2 hour.
My sermon was about the power of gratitude and I have to tell you I was feeling a lot of it; no more puppies had been lost and Cocoa was becoming better and better at this mom gig. Cocoa is also eating more food than the last couple of days and looking less and less like she's starving; she lost a lot of weight during the birthing process -- I suspect she was as much as five pounds less than her pre-pregnancy weight after the puppies had all been born.
It turned out that I had nothing to worry about. When I got home everyone was fine and I spent the afternoon cat napping to try and catch up on my sleep. I realized we'd have to figure out what was bothering Cocoa at night so much or it might be weeks before I'd get a decent sleep. That evening we discussed it and we decided that maybe it was just that the whelping box was downstairs in the kitchen while we were upstairs sleeping. Cocoa normally sleeps in our room on a dog bed beside our bed. It will be interesting to see if that makes any difference.
Saturday, June 1 -- Pride and sleep deprivation
I continue to sleep downstairs in my lazy boy so I can hear if any puppies are in distress. Cocoa keeps waking me up, though, crying and I can't figure out why. I let her outside and she goes out but comes back in very quickly. I make sure she has water and give her a dog biscuit or a little food. I wish I could figure out why she is so frantic at night.
On a positive note my friend Don came by this afternoon to help me with the task of transferring all the puppies to a box and taking them to our veterinarian to have their tails docked. This is a standard for the soft coated wheaten terrier breed though many people think it's a bit cruel. I met a wheaten with an intact tail once and discovered the practical reason for this; they are the perfect height to wag their very strong tails and hit males in a particularly sensitive spot bringing tears to man's eyes if he's strong enough to remain standing. Since I've never met a wheaten who's tail was not wagging it suddenly made more sense to me. Our veterinarian insists that this be done when they are three or four days old; he says by the time they are five days old the nerves in the tail are beginning to develop and he won't do it. He put a drop of local anesthetic in each tail, docked it and put a stitch in to make sure the tiny wound was closed and minimize the possibility of infection. It only took him 45 minutes to do all nine pups and he gave us some really good news -- he felt that Cocoa was doing a fabulous job with the puppies; they were all incredibly clean and obviously healthy. At this point he does not think there is any reason to worry about supplemental feeding for any of the pups; even the smallest ones are a decent size for this age.
Kudoos to Cocoa!!
About three hours later all nine pups started to cry within a half hour and it took me a minute to realize that probably meant the freezing had come out. Within 15 minutes they were all asleep with mom in their bed and there haven't been any issues at all.
The vet also suggested that instead of nail polish we buy some nontoxic markers and simply colour a little bit of the inside of the pups ear. I'll be sure to get some before we weigh the pups again and we'll see if that works better than the nail polish idea.
We decided the pups and mom had had enough stress for today and we won't weight the puppies again for at least a couple of days if things continue to develop so well.
No new pictures either; from day to day the puppies aren't really changing enough to make pictures very interesting.
Friday May 31 -- Sorrow and Reassurance
When I let Cocoa out this morning I discovered she had inadvertently crushed and killed one of the puppies; it was a sad time and I tried some puppy CPR for a couple of minutes with no change. My partner looked at the puppy too and we agreed it was gone. We were able to keep Cocoa from seeing the puppy and I hope, because she is so busy with 9 puppies, that she won't ever know or understand what happened. Nature can be a little harsh at times, a 40 pound wheaten terrier does not usually have 10 puppies; for a first litter it is very uncommon and the poor dear is making a valiant effort to feed and clean her litter.
We buried the puppy in the corner of our garden in a little box in the same spot we had buried Tammy, our black Cockapoo, almost 20 years ago. Obviously I got a little paranoid after this and kept jumping up anytime I heard a cry from the puppies in case Cocoa was sitting on one of them. She did sit on them a few times but I think they would have been able to get out okay; I lifted them out gentle and set them in front of her.
Cocoa is struggling a little with feeding; her lowest 4 mammary glands are producing milk quickly and are visibly getting bigger to handle the load. Two more seem to be starting to grow and produce milk. Her last two are still very small and are not very effective yet. That means the poor thing is having to feed nine puppies with only four really effective mammary glands. She probably spent a total of 10-12 hours today just feeding her puppies and she is starting to look exhausted. She's drinking lots of water but not eating at all so this evening I mixed a cup of dry puppy food, some low sodium fat free beef broth and a little chopped up hard boiled egg (Cocoa really likes egg); I warmed it in the microwave for a few seconds and the bowl was practically empty before it even hit the floor. I felt much better that we got some food into her and we'll keeping feeding her like this four or five times a day if she'll take it; my book on raising puppies says while she is nursing she will consume as much as four times her normal amount of food (that would be 8 cups of dry dog food a day). Hopefully she'll start eating her plain dry dog food soon; we have a feeder that guarantees there is always food available if she wants it.
As you probably know puppies cannot go to the bathroom by themselves at this age; they only urinate and defecate while being licked by the mom so she can consume it and keep the whelping bed cleaner. The picture below shows our clever mom's solution to the dilemma of having only four teets giving a decent amount of milk and having to keep nine puppies clean.
Her solution -- she's nursing them sitting up so she can allow puppies to feed and clean the ones that are on the outside (not currently feeding) at the same time. As you can see in this picture that means she sits down then spreads her front legs leaning forward and stays that way for a long time (sometimes 1/2 an hour or more); she's getting exhausted and I've caught her falling asleep sitting up a couple of times. We're trying to encourage her to lie down to nurse so it won't be so tiring but she isn't really catch on to it yet.
We weighed the puppies again tonight and much to our relief every puppy seems to have grown -- the nail polish thing didn't work out and there was only two puppies who we could still tell which one they were. So I just listed the weights and match them up with one another; the lowest tonight with the lowest yesterday, up to the highest to the highest. We did know which puppy was the one we lost. It worked out that all nine weights were higher than yesterday so we know everyone is getting some milk and starting to grow. Very reassuring; some of them have grown by 10% in a single day as you can see below.
Puppy chart
225 grams and now weighs 249 grams
260 grams and now weighs 290 grams
255 grams, 270 grams (the smallest increase but still an increase)
268 grams, 290 grams
300 grams, 333 grams
the puppy we lost :-(
285 grams, 311 grams
271 grams, 305 grams
271 grams, 312 grams
290 grams, 330 grams
Perhaps not exact but very encouraging.
Friday, 7 June 2013
Thursday May 30 -- Shock and Awe
I was in a bit of shock I think; happy but a little afraid too. Questions were running through my head; will she produce enough milk to feed them, how do we keep her from crushing the puppies (in her eagerness to be a good parent and look after each puppy she had already sat on puppies a couple of times and we'd had to gentle scoop them out from under her), are the puppies healthy and term? I phoned our veterinarians office and left a message asking for a call back when they opened.
Dr. Milcius, who we have used now to help us with four dogs and whom they all adored, called me. He explained that while she may only have two mammary glands that are full of milk right now the actual act of nursing releases a hormone that stimulates milk production -- so the more she feeds the more she'll produce. He was confident her body would catch up with the puppies very quickly. He suggested weighing the puppies often for the first little while to help ensure they are thriving; if a puppy starts to loose weight, or stops gaining, you know that little one needs medical attention. Since her deliveries had all been smooth and none had been still-born the puppies were full likely term and going to do just fine. Dr. Milcius also said that though it did happen it was rare for a mom to crush her puppies; we should just continue doing what we were doing, lifting them out anytime we noticed it, until she got a little more settled and used to being a mom.
Here's a picture showing her feeding the puppies; they are hard to pick out against the green blanket but there are 10 of them.
We did some reading about how to mark puppies so you can track them; we decided to try nail polish on a couple of nails on one paw. We marked them and weighed them:
The results:
225 grams -- red nail polish on back left paw
260 grams -- red nail polish on left front paw
255 grams -- reg nail polish on right front paw
268 grams -- blue, left front
300 grams -- blue, left rear
272 grams -- blue, left front
285 grams -- white, left front
271 grams -- yellow, left front
271 grams -- yellow, right front
290 grams -- no mark
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
Wednesday May 29 -- Midnight
Cocoa woke me up to let her outside. When we came downstairs there was a little puppy lying in the middle of our kitchen floor. I quickly woke up my partner and we moved the puppy into the whelping bed we had prepared and encouraged Cocoa to get in there too ... the adventure begins.
The happy parents are Cocoa, who is 100% soft coated wheaten terrier from Northern Saskatchewan, born February 21, 2011; she came to us by Air Canada air freight about 10 weeks later.
and Chai, a soft coated wheaten terrier (dad) and Airedale terrier (mom) cross, born July 23, 2012, and who I picked up from just outside Edson, Alberta, 7 weeks later -- as you can see he takes after his dad and has no Airedale characteristics except a slightly different face shape; he is also slightly larger than a typical soft coated wheaten. He's only 10 months old so either his colouring has still not lightened quite as much as it will or he may have inherited a touch of red colour from his Airedale mom.
10 days before the puppies came we had an X-ray done to determine how many puppies she was carrying. The X-ray showed 5 clearly and what looked like the tail end of a 6th puppy with it's head tucked up under Cocoa's ribs. We were told to expect 5 or 6 puppies on June 2.Cocoa and Chai had tied on Easter Sunday in the kitchen; I had spent 1/2 hour walking around them while trying to cook a little Easter dinner -- another wheaten adventure). The gestation period for dogs is about 63 days.
With her in her whelping bed with her 1 puppy she was very nervous and anxious at first. She wouldn't allow it to feed, which seemed a little weird because she had obviously cleaned it and cleaned up after this birth that had happened so quickly and quietly it didn't even wake me up. She went outside twice and we went with her just to keep an eye on her. She kept going underneath our deck. We began to wonder if she had already had a puppy before we went to bed, we grabbed flashlight and looked carefully but there was nothing there.We guess it was just because it was a dry place and we'd had a lot of rain. We got her to finally settle down a bit and I turned on a light at the other end of the kitchen and pulled up a chair; reading a book between the births and watching closing during each birth to be sure things seemed to progress okay. She did great with the second one and all of a sudden it was like she was an expert; she cleaned it, ate up the mess (which seems kind of gross but I guess that's the way nature intended these things), and allowed both pups to do a little nursing. After each pup I petted her a bit, encouraged her, brought a bowl of water right to her in case she wanted a drink and then I sat back in my chair and watched as she settled into the routine of giving birth to two puppies a few minutes apart with a much larger break between pairs. The birth schedule is shown below in case you are interested.
When six puppies had been born I gave her lots of encouragement. Chai had to check out his new kids too. This picture shows Cocoa in the bed with the 6 puppies and Chai looking on in fascination.
I took Chai upstairs to jump into bed with my partner and closed the door so Cocoa and I could be downstairs uninterrupted. I went into the next room where I could hear everything, and hopefully grab a few winks, but not be quite so in her face to let her recover and feed the little ones.
Then I heard her licking herself furiously and ran into the kitchen to discover she had already given birth to number 7 and was cleaning it up. Before too long number 8 had arrived. After waiting more than an hour, and taking her outside a couple of times, no more came. I thought cool -- 8 puppies and went back to my nap in the lazy boy suffering the effects of a bit of shell shock. This birthing puppies thing is harder than I expected and I didn't even have to do anything.
When I woke up a couple of hours later I woke up my partner, who had to work, and said come downstairs -- we've got 8 puppies -- "EIGHT!!!" -- yup eight. We got Cocoa to go outside and checked on the puppies but something was wrong; there weren't eight after all but actually ten. I hadn't even heard the last two being born. Here's a picture of them.
Well that's all for this post. The table showing birth times follows, obviously we don't know the exact time the first one was born or the last two but everything happened between bed time on Wednesday night (10:30 pm) and when I woke from my nap at 6:30 am on Thursday.
