It's puppy week!

It's puppy week!  Boy were we surprised . . .  Tacie's 'due' date was to be this coming Thursday (Jan 12) . . .  that's 63 days from the 1st breeding.  The pups are actually fully developed and 'safe' to enter the world at 58 days and various mamma dogs will whelp on different days (although they most usually are predictable for their own term once they have had a litter or two.)  One of the tricky parts about a girl's first litter is that we have no experience whelping with her so we don't know what HER term is.  In this case Tacie proved to be 5 days early giving birth to a fine litter yesterday, on Sunday January 8th.  As of 6 PM Sunday she had birthed 5 pups. We went back and re-examined her x-ray from Friday and decided that what we thought was the 6th pup was actually a shadow behind the colon and our wishful thinking.  We are accustomed to larger litters and that had something to do with our interpretation as well.  They are all white and she has had 2 males and 3 females.  They are all over 1 pound 4 ounces with two of them weighing as much as 1 pound 8 ounces . . .  big pups!  Almost as big as Dr. Will joked about (as big as full grown Yorkies), they are big and healthy pups which gives them a 'head start' on life.  The down size of such large puppies is that it can be hard for the mom to birth them.  In Tacie's case she did great. A couple of the pups were difficult but she came through each of the deliveries well and is doing a great job of caring for her newborns.  I expect to be able to post a litter picture and provide an update with our next post on Wednesday.

until next time . . .   Eliot    www.rosehallkennel;.com