Look who's starting to walk!

 

Cuteness overload

 The puppies are doing better!!  The little red collar boy I took to the vet Monday is doing great, and they are all starting to grow and gain weight noticeably, as they should.  The diarrhea is clearing up and Ellie is starting to clean them!!  Yahoo!!  This is good for the puppies, and for sure it's good for us, since we don't have to do it anymore!  We are still rotating the puppies for nursing every couple hours, so we are still sleep deprived but things are looking up.

And they are getting so stinking cute!  

This is an early set up for the whelping box: we removed the pig rails since the puppies are supervised 100% of the time, and if Ellie is moving around we move the pups to sleeping boxes (you can see those on the left).

The pups are also getting weighed every day.  Now that the diarrhea has cleared up they are gaining nicely.

Their nails are also getting trimmed each week, more often if I can get to it.  Since they aren't really walking yet, it's not so important for the structure of their feet and legs.  But it's really important for the comfort of their mom - also reduces the chance of them scratching each other.

Before: you can see they are sharp as cat's claws!

And after:

Puppies' nails grow as fast as the rest of them, so it's a constant thing to try to keep up with all the tiny toenails!!

Challenges

 Well the puppies have diarrhea!  This started a couple days ago.  Since Ronnie and I are still having to stimulate them to eliminate, we are very aware of the state of their poop.  It started in just one or two pups, and we separated them from the others but gradually more and more began having the runs.  In addition to worrying about them, it is also a big mess and a time-consuming chore as you might guess.  We found it was easier to just take each puppy to the sink, and after stimulating them we could wash them gently if needed (and it was often needed).

We dosed all the puppies with Benebac, which is a probiotic designed for newborn puppies.  It seemed to help for a day or so, then the diarrhea started again.  The pups are staying well hydrated, which is great since dehydration is the major risk when neonates have diarrhea.  I was planning to consult our vet anyway, and then today the red collar boy started getting weaker and having more trouble nursing.  So off to the vet we went.  

She said he looked pretty good, and didn't need to be hospitalized but did need some meds and to be supplemented until he was nursing again.  So we went home with Clavamox (antibiotic) and some feeding tubes.  

Tube feeding is not very nice, but if a newborn animal can't or won't nurse (either on mom or a bottle) then it's the best and safest way to get nutrition into the baby.  A small, soft tube is put down the puppy's throat into the stomach.  Obviously, great care must be taken to be sure the tube doesn't go into the lungs.  I was a vet tech (a long time ago) and have tube fed baby animals before, but it's been a long time so I got a refresher course from Dr Barnett.  

Thank goodness, after starting the Clavamox and tube feeding him a couple of times, the red collar boy started getting much stronger and was able to nurse.  The bad news was that the diarrhea appeared in all 12 puppies, so everyone was getting Clavamox twice a day!  That proved to be a 2 person job for sure, since it's hard to hold a struggling puppy and squirt a little liquid medicine in its mouth.  Fortunately, the dose is very small, just a couple of drops for pups this size so it went quickly.

 

 Precious red collar boy, I'm so glad he recovered.

 Our kitchen has been taken over by puppy stuff - scale for weighing them on the island and formula, supplements, medications etc. on the counter along with small towels to dry the pups after their baths.

As with many of these posts covering the first few weeks of the puppies' lives, I am writing this a few weeks later and post-dating it.  From this perspective, it's gratifying to know we caught the diarrhea fairly early and were able to give an effective treatment.  But oh my, what an exhausting couple of weeks!!!  I am NOT one of those people who can function for a long time on just 3 or 4 hours sleep.

Who needs sleep?

 The puppies are all doing well, but Ronnie and I are exhausted already!  As is pretty common, since Ellie had a c-section and never truly went into labor (which would have triggered a lot of maternal hormones) and this is her first litter, she basically woke up from the surgery with all these little aliens, and didn't have a clue what to do.  In some cases like this, the mother dog will actually try to attack her babies, but fortunately Ellie has been very tolerant.  She will lay and let them nurse, but doesn't really want to be with them all the time.  That is OK with us, because we made the decision to keep the pups separate from her since there are so many of them, and the risk of her stepping on one, or accidentally laying on it and crushing or severely injuring it.  Which means we are putting the pups on her to nurse every couple hours around the clock.  (Hence the exhaustion).  It would not necessarily require both of us to be up so often, but in another common consequence of an inexperienced mother having a c-section, she is not cleaning the pups. 

Newborn puppies can't eliminate on their own, the mother has to lick them to stimulate them to pee and poop.  If she's not doing that, the breeder has to stimulate them with a cotton ball dampened with warm water, or a little oil.  That is a lot of work for 12 little poopers, so it nearly takes both of us at this point.

What happened?!?

Good thing they're so cute!

 Another problem we encountered was trying to let all twelve pups nurse at once.  It would be fine, as long as we could keep track and make sure the smaller/weaker puppies got plenty of milk.  But we found that was really difficult.  So we split the litter, and just had Ellie nurse 6 at a time.  That worked well for the puppies, but means we have to get puppies onto her twice as often!

12 puppies is a lot for mom to nurse at one time!!

 

Six puppies at a time seems to work much better.

Puppies are here!!

 I have really gotten behind on reporting on this - once the pups arrived we got BUSY!!  But things are under control (hopefully) so I'm trying to catch up.  I'm going to post-date these posts until I get caught up, so the dates make some sense.

Anyway, Ellie had to have a c-section in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Oct 19, 2021.  We did this since her labor wasn't progressing, and some of the pups were getting distressed (thank you Whelpwise for the technology to be able to detect all that!!  Scroll down for a post about them.  They absolutely rock and I can't recommend them highly enough).  I also am so grateful for my wonderful vet Dr Jennifer Barnett at Josey Ranch Pet Hospital, who not only came in to do the surgery but rounded up 3 wonderful techs to help. 

She did have 13 puppies, but we had to have one euthanized because it hadn't developed properly (failure of midline closure) so it's abdominal organs were outside the body.  Sometimes puppies like this can be saved, if the opening isn't too large but this was not the case for this baby.  Breeding can be a heartbreaking thing.

But fortunately the other 12 were healthy, and Ellie did very well.  Six girls and six boys.  They are a very consistent size, the smallest is one and a quarter pounds, the biggest is one and a half pounds.

Brand new puppies keeping warm in the incubator during their mother's surgery.

 

Vet tech helping the pups nurse the first time, to get that all-important colostrum.

Now the fun begins!!

 

The colors (basic rick-rack ribbon) are used to identify the pups, since they all look so much alike.  We have to monitor that each one is healthy, gaining weight etc.

Still waiting...

 Today, October 18 is Ellie's due date, but as with any pregnancy it's an estimate.  So far she is showing no signs of getting ready to have her puppies.  She's calm, and comfortable (well as comfortable as a late pregnancy can be) and eating well.

Thanks to Whelpwise, we have a pretty good idea of the status of the puppies, and so far so good.  But after checking this morning at the vet, her progesterone has dropped below 3, which means she is close to going into labor.  If she hasn't started having them by tomorrow, we'll do a c-section.

Big and beautiful!!  Forgive the distance shot through the x-pen - if she was closer she would just come over and lean on me.

Surprise!!

 Not a surprise that Ellie pregnant - but I took her to the vet for an x-ray today.  This is commonly done in dogs to get a count, check positioning etc.

Well.....

There were THIRTEEN puppies!!  And the vet couldn't guarantee there might not be more, since they were packed in there like Tetris pieces.

Things are about to get VERY busy around here!!

Whelpwise

 -Known officially as Veterinary Perinatal Specialties, Inc.  This is a company that leases uterine contraction monitors and doppler ultrasound units so that breeders can monitor their bitches prior to whelping.  The staff is very knowledgeable, and provide excellent support and advice (in conjunction with the client's veterinarian, of course).

Here is Ellie getting monitored.  The sensor is a flat little disc, and although it can be strapped to the dog, it usually works best to just put it under her when she is laying down.  By the last week or so of pregnancy, the mother usually is sleeping a lot anyway.  The monitor stays in place for an hour, then you send the data to Whelpwise and they call back with the results.

Here is a picture of our latest monitor session.

Setting up the whelping box

 Things are starting to get real!!  We set up the whelping box last night.  It's a 6' x 6' vinyl box designed for raised garden beds.  But some smart person realized they made great whelping boxes for giant breed dogs!  Lightweight, easy to assemble, easy to disassemble and store, and easy to clean!

 We started by laying down a section of inexpensive vinyl flooring - the floors in our den are already very durable and pet-resistant, but as you can imagine things can get messy in a whelping box, so this is an easier way to keep things clean.  There is a layer of carpet padding underneath - I'd like to say that's for Ellie's comfort, but truly I was thinking more of my knees :-)

This was before I trimmed the excess padding away.

You want a whelping box to be big enough that the mother can stretch out comfortably.  But not so big that puppies can get lost.  Ideally you want the opening to be adjustable so it's low at the start when the pups aren't very mobile, and the mom may be sore from either whelping or a c-section.  A few weeks later you'll want to be able to raise it to full height to keep the little darlings corralled.

Ellie playing "find the cookies" in the box to get accustomed to it.

 

Ronnie showing Ellie how comfy it is. (that big cushy bed will actually be removed when the pups are coming.  Overly squishy bedding is dangerous for neonate puppies just like it is for newborn humans.

With most breeds of dog, but especially large and giant breeds where the mother is so very much bigger than her pups at birth, there is a risk of the mother accidentally crushing or smothering a puppy who gets trapped between her body and the wall of the whelping box.  This is also a problem with breeding pigs, and the solution is therefore called a "pig rail".  It's a small shelf or bar that runs around the edges of the box, a few inches above the ground that gives a space for the pup if the mother accidentally traps it against the side.   Here are some shots of the pig rail.  

As the puppies get bigger, we will remove one side of the box and expand it into a puppy play area, and space for their litter box.  

Two weeks to go...