Here are some Puppy pictures with their eyes just opening.
Pink Collar Female
Red Collar Female
White-Hot Pink Collar Female
Orange Collar Female
Gold-Lime Collar Female
Purple Male
More to come tomorrow!
P.S. – The reason some pups have multiple color collar names is because the birth color Ric-rack is not always available in the larger sizes as they grow.
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The puppies are making good weight gains, see charts below. They are all over 2 lbs and almost to 3. Several are walking on all four legs and their eyes are starting to open ever so slightly.
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From the beginning, we’ve realized that Wendy could not feed and attend to all 12 puppies together. For the first week we tried separating the puppies based on sex, because the males are generally born large and stronger they will push the girls off a teat. This seemed to work well at first, but the boys nursed to long which meant Wendy needed time to recover before the girls could be placed in the whelping box. It was apparent after a few days of low weight gain that we needed a change. On day 6, we started timing the duration each group spent in the whelping box, giving them 4 hours in/out. During the four hours the puppies would usually nurse twice. Most puppies improved their weight gain significantly.
The down side of keeping the puppies out of the whelping box is cleanliness. Either at the beginning or near the end of their stay in the holding box, the puppies will have a bowel movement. We usually don’t notice until its to late and the puppy is covered in its last meal. I am a strong believer that a clean puppy will be a healthy puppy. So we spend quite a bit of time washing the puppies with a damp cloth, drying them, replacing the linen in the holding box and cleaning the box itself. The cycle is repeated every four hours. As a side note, our washing machine has been going almost non-stop since the puppies arrived. This piece of equipment is the most important item we have in our house right now.
This process of switching the puppies and cleaning up, goes on all day and night. For the most part, I cover the early morning, evenings and nighttime. My darling wife, Deb, covers the morning and afternoon times while I’m at work. I envision this going on for another week and a half until we start weaning the puppies.
Since the puppies are now almost two weeks old, I am considering putting all 12 in the whelping box together for a day to see how things go. I may try that this weekend, so stay tuned.
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Here is a picture of Wendy and all the puppies together,
and close up of all the puppies.
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Yesterday, we took Wendy and the puppies to the vet for a check up and to have the puppy dewclaws removed. She listened to their hearts and lungs, check the palette, and generally looked them over. The vet found the puppies were in excellent health. She removed 24 dewclaws from the front legs without incident. She checked Wendy to make she was also doing well. Wendy’s temperature is back to normal and the small amount of remaining blood discharge is typical at this stage. Everyone is doing great!
I am monitoring the puppies weight daily.They are gaining from 5-10% of their body weight per day, which is typical for puppies at this stage. I am slightly concerned about being able to maintain this rate of increase, since it will mean more mother’s milk. Wendy is currently being feed four times a day and is getting about 3 times her normal calorie intake. In addition to her high quality dog food, she is receiving eggs, cottage cheese, cooked liver, and 4% yogurt (the kind with fat). The charts below show how they are steadily gaining weight.
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During the day of July 16, Wendy was quite restless. She refused to eat her breakfast meal, but did drink some chicken broth. She made many trips to the potty to empty her bowels and spent most of the day panting. At around 6pm, I noticed some yellow stringy stuff hanging from her tail after a trip outside, but on close inspection I could not find anything left on her coat. I was expecting to see discharge from the cervical plug remaining on her coat. She spent much of the evening arranging the newspapers in the whelping box preparing a nest for the upcoming puppies. Then without much notice, we saw a large contraction and out popped a puppies! Deb and I were talking on the couch next to her, so we were semi-ready, but was still I expecting a bit more contractions before the first puppy arrived. It was a female, but the placenta was missing. Did Wendy eat it or was it still inside? We couldn’t tell, but we kept watch in case it would come out later. By the time the night and next morning was over, we had 12 puppies born, 7 males and 5 females. The pups birth weight range from 390 to 580 gr, seven of the puppies were over a pound each. Quite amazing! The chart below shows the details.
The following picture is of Wendy and the puppies shortly after whelping.
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The morning of the 16th Wendy’s temperature dropped, right on time, almost 3 degs, see chart below.
Within 24 hrs she will whelp the puppies.
As I mentioned in the prior posting, Wendy had gained 20lbs over the course of the pregnancy. The picture below show her on the day of the temperature drop just before the whelp.
Her rib cage is bulging out as can be seen better in this image.
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On June 21th, I took Wendy to the vet for an ultrasound exam. She was definitely pregnant! We saw 6-7 puppy embryos on the u/s display. If all goes well her due date is July 16th. Then on July 11th, we took her to Dr. Dove for the pre-whelping X-Ray. The goal of the x-ray was to better estimate the number of puppies to be whelped. However, since Wendy had gained a whooping 20 lbs, it was difficult to get an exact count. We saw at least 8 puppies in the film and there maybe one or two more, little did I know!
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About this time last year, I started looking for a stud dog for Wendy. As you can probably tell I really like the Swedish Flat-Coat type. Their dogs are robust but still maintain the raciness of the breed standard. There are many nice Flat-Coats in our area as well. The Swedish type has many other positive features I like, but that is not the point of this posting. A friend in Sweden, recommended a particular dog, Inkwells Truly Yours, call name “Bamse” the little bear from a cartoon character. As it turns out, Bamse is a son of Inkwell Let it Be, a great Swedish and International Flat-Coat Champion in five different events. Bamse has done very well in the breed ring, in hunt tests and field trials. He has also sired several litter and the offspring have been healthy and had excellent hip scores . Based many on Ulla’s recommendation, I contacted Bamse’s owner, Gunilla Grahn, and over the course of a couple of months we reached an agreement to breed.
The summer months in Sweden is the time for vacations and from my perspective, not much happens. Even the Swedish Canine Semen Bank is mainly offline until early September. Gunilla lives about four hours north of Uppsala and needed to coordinate her trip with a bitch coming into season. All this came together in late September of 2010 after Wendy came into season. I was very fortunate to have also located a superb Flat-Coat just outside of Stockholm, Almanza Wild at Heart, call name “Sune” to breed with in time for last fall. As you can read in our C-Litter postings, the puppies out of that breeding are doing great and the dogs have a wonderful demeanor.
Bamse’s semen collection was performed by Dr. Catharina Linde Forsberg of the Canirep Semen bank. The collection produced good results with 100 million spermatozoa per straw with 65% motility. Prior to Wendy’s breeding, Dr Dove thawed a sample to confirm the quantity planned for used. He exclaimed how excellent was the semen quality and only two straws were needed. So on May 17 and 18, Wendy was breed with Bamse’s semen by Trans-Cervical Insemination.
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