5 more mouths to feed

Some of you may remember our new dog Abbey. We adopted her from an animal Shelter in Cedar city a few weeks ago.

Well, sometime after we adopted her I thought I noticed she was getting a belly. When we took her to the vet he told us that it had appeared that she might have just had a litter.

We watched her tummy and I did some reading on pregnant dogs and found that their belly will start showing only weeks before delivery. We noticed her belly right before we moved and hoped that IF she were pregnant, the babies would come after we moved.

Exactly one week after moving to Idaho I woke up at about 2:30am on March 21st (early Saturday) I thought I heard Paxton crying in the night. It wasn't like him to do this so I jumped up and went running. When I passed the kitchen I froze. I realized the crying was coming from there. When I turned on the light Abbey had three puppies on the ground.

2 live babies and 1 still birth. I cried for Ryan to come and help. He jumped on the computer and start researching what we were supposed to do while I got towels and started both cleaning and helping Abbey deliver her pups.

Nine puppies later she had delivered 3 still births, 1 runt and 5 healthy puppies.

Ryan did a bunch of research about how to feed the runt since she wasn't sucking on the nipple and that night (by syringe) we fed one baby and watched Abbey take care of her babies.

The boys were all excited when they woke up the next morning, to have a bunch of puppies. They watched them and tried to tell us whenever they thought anything was needed.

We couldn't believe what had happened. At this point we hadn't been sure that Abbey was pregnant and we had only had her for 3 weeks now.

Sunday afternoon Ryan looked in on the puppies and noticed that the biggest puppy-the brown one wasn't moving. He was underneath Abbey and was lifeless. It appeared that she sat on him.

Ryan could tell that the boy was still alive but barely. We knew what to do because we had read up on the runt.

We put him under the faucet and shocked him with cold water and then with warm water and Ryan stimulated him and breathed in his mouth. The pup responded to the shocking cold water and started to move. We already had food mixed up and in a syringe to feed the runt so Ryan had me grab it and began feeding the pup. We decided that he had really low blood sugar and maybe that was because he was the biggest. This caused him to be unable to whine when Abbey sat on him and she didn't know he was there.

We tested his skin and realized he was totally dehydrated too. Then Ryan and I tested all of the other pups only to realize that they were all latched on to mommy, but she was dry. They were all dehydrated. They had been starving for over a day now.

Because of the little runt we had food ready to feed and we fed them by hand, every one of them.

Ryan continued to do this with every pup every single day, every three hours. I helped at first but Ryan has pretty much taken over and raised every one of these pups. We realized that night that the runt had a cleft pallet and it died laying with Abbey the next day. This left us only 5 pups.

I took Abbey to the vet and confirmed that she is totally dry. We went to the store and got a bottle instead of a syringe. Luckily they have all started eating really well and today they are big fatsos...well, all except for the smallest girl. We call her Slim.

Abbey is still a good mama. They latch on to her all of the time, she keeps them clean and stimulates them constantly. I don't think she knows that she is dry but she has been really trusting with us. She hasn't given us a hard time about handling her puppies at all!
We read that within 12-18 days they are supposed to open their eyes. We can't wait!

Let me introduce you to (left to right)

Big sky (girl), One ton (boy), Two ton (boy), Porter house (boy)and Slim (the little girl)You can probably imagine our schedule now. Feed Shelby every 3-4 hours, dogs every 3-4 hours, and 2 big boys. We really thought that we would be able to relax when we got here but that hasn't quite been the case. We love these pups now though, Ryan especially. He talks to them when he feeds them and he has bonded with all of them. He is such a sweetheart! Just shows you what a good man I have!