Lynn writes:
Charlotte had refused to eat yesterday and this morning . . .
even with adding liver, yogurt & cottage cheese to her food to tempt her.
I was hoping that it was because she was getting close to delivering.
Wellllllllll . . . she was.
Her first puppy was born around 10:30 this morning!
Charlotte is a good mom.
She cleaned up her firstborn and chewed off the cord.
We have a girl! She looked more like an Airedale than anything else.
I am scrambling now . . . what to do first?
The puppy is a little chilly . . . too chilly? I had a heating pad ready in a box.
The instructions I was given by my vet said that the pup could wait
until the siblings are born and then eat.
Put the pup in a box with a heating pad and keep her warm.
But this pup wouldn't stay in the box (well, she must be mostly Airedale).
I finally cuddled her close to warm her up.
That worked . . . and it felt soooo wonderful to hold this tiny life close.
I tied a string around the cord per instructions from the vet
and dabbed the end with iodine. Then I waited. Nothing.
In the meantime, I got a call from Airedale breeder, Sue Kuhn.
She said that if I let the puppy nurse, it might stimulate the mom to give birth.
The pup did manage to get a little milk . . . but still nothing.
It was two and a half hours since Charlotte's firstborn made her appearance;
all the advice I was given indicated that it was time to get her to the vet.
After all, Charlotte is 10 years old . . . and something could be wrong.
Egads . . . can you imagine having a baby when you are 60?
My husband helped get Charlotte in & out of the car
while I held Little Miss Firstborn in my jacket under a towel.
She was the hit of the vet staff.
But we didn't spend much time in the lobby, as we had Charlotte to attend to.
To make a long story short . . . all efforts to induce labor failed.
We were there for an additional three hours and still nothing.
My vet had taken additional x-rays and found that the remaining two pups
were still up in the horns and had not yet dropped.
Charlotte's old muscles probably
didn't have what it took to push them down.
A C-section was not what I wanted to hear, but it was time to do it.
I gave her a big hug just before they took her to surgery
and promised that I would be back in a couple of hours.
Little Miss Firstborn stayed with the vet in an incubator,
which was probably a good thing;
I had just realized that I had not had anything to eat today.
I went home to take care of the stomach grumbles I was beginning to hear,
then sat down at the computer to find 88 emails. OMG!
So many of you were sending Charlotte and her puppies good wishes.
Charlotte has to be okay.
My husband & I were at the vets at the appointed time and all was well.
Charlotte's other two puppies seemed healthy and
were "clawing their own way out of their sacs"
according to the vet who did the surgery.
Charlotte was just lying down . . .
totally zonked after a really hard day at the office . . .
with three youngsters crawling all over her.
Well . . . it was no mystery any longer as to Whoz the Daddy?
He was most likely a Black Lab
The other two pups were black with a white blaze on their chests.
We have three little baby girls. Awwwww.
Well, one of the emails I read during dinner was from Andréa;
today is her birthday, and in celebration, she wanted to name
one of the puppies . . . sooooo . . .
Little Miss Firstborn is now Misha.
Now I need to come up with names for her two sisters.
Any suggestions?
Misha the Mighty is not to be outdone when it comes to the nipple stations.
She latches on and gets her belly full!
Of course she has about seven hours head start on her sisters.
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