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Birthday Girl and Puppy Pix

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Penelope's Pups at One Day Old

Barb pointed out to me that I forgot to mention that Penelope’s pups share a birthday – with Penelope! They were born two years to the day from Penelope. What a nice birthday present!

Penelope has lots of milk now, and the pups are thriving. She’s not quite got the knack of the whole cleaning them off thing, however, so I’m spending a lot of time dabbing them off with wet wipes. This is especially noticeable on the creams, who seem to have a penchant for pooping on each other, and for managing to get themselves covered in Penelope’s blood. Nothing says adorable like poopy pups with blood spattered heads!

The creams are darkening up already, and on the largest girl you can already see a tan colored dorsal stripe up her back. As they age, they’ll gradually look less white, and more a pale golden color.

Puppy Pile

More photos of Penelope’s kids are here, on Flickr.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about little Heart! She celebrated her one week birthday yesterday, and if it’s possible, she’s gotten even cuter. She has definately gotten fatter, that’s for sure, and it’s no wonder since Tula is giving enough milk to feed an entire herd of dairy cattle.

Suction Tongue!

Her nose freckles are getting more noticeable, which is good – we want her nose to fill in completely, until it’s totally black.

She’s not just a pretty puppy, either – she’s a calm, mellow, content little baby. She rarely cries, she’s not fussy and she’s happy to be picked up. She’s not slow, either – she’s vigorous and crawls enthusiastically. All together she’s been a joy to watch growing up, and it’s hard to resist kissing her on the forehead every time I see her.

Look at this face – who wouldn’t want to smooch it?

Kissable Face Frenchie Baby

More photos of Heart and Tula are here, and if I get time (and a nap) I’ll shoot some video tonight.

By the way, if you’ve phoned or emailed I am not ignoring you — I’m just a little swamped at the moment, between caring for two litters on two floors, and trying to get in some work when I get a chance. Bear with me — things will be better by middle of next week, and I’ll try to get caught up on replies and return phone calls by then.

Penelope Got Milk

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Well, that sucked. Penelope had a little colostrum at the clinic, so I came home sure that nursing wouldn’t be an issue for her.

Wrong. What little liquid she had dried up, and around four am I had some screaming mad, super hungry puppies to contend with, and no mommy milk to offer them. That’s when I remembered I had a walking dairy bar sitting upstairs. I packed up the kids, and took them up to Tula, who after an initial reaction that clearly said “Where the hell did all of these come from?”, calmly proceeded to clean them, nurse them, and nudge them into a tidy little pile, with Heart smack in the middle of it.

While this might seem like a solution to the problem, it’s really not. Newborn puppies don’t need milk – they need colostrum. Colostrum is the liquid gold that new moms produce in the first 24 to 48 hours after delivery. It’s a thin, watery consistency with an almost pale yellow color, unlike the rich white milk mom will eventually produce. It’s vitally important that puppies receive it, for several reasons.

Colostrum info on Wikipedia —

Colostrum is high in carbohydrates, protein, and antibodies and low in fat (as human newborns may find fat difficult to digest). Newborns have very small digestive systems, and colostrum delivers its nutrients in a very concentrated low-volume form. It has a mild laxative effect, encouraging the passing of the baby’s first stool, which is called meconium. This clears excess bilirubin, a waste product of dead red blood cells which is produced in large quantities at birth due to blood volume reduction, from the infant’s body and helps prevent jaundice. Colostrum contains all five immunoglobulins found in all mammals, IgA, IgD, IgE, IgG and IgM. There are many beneficial proteins in the colostrum, including a variety of growth factors (IGfs).

One of the most important aspects of colostrum ingestion is that it passes on maternal antibodies to the puppies. These are what protect the puppies from diseases and infections until they receive their first shots. So, even though Tula would have been happy to continue feeding the pups, I knew I had to get Penelope’s milk flowing.

First thing in the morning, I was on the phone to our vet’s office, hoping they could provide me with some shots of oxytocin so I could kick start Penelope’s colostrum production. Oxytocin is a naturally occurring hormone that aids whelping by stimulating the uterus, and assists in the let down of milk. A subcutaneous injection of oxytocin can help to stimulate milk in bitches with sluggish production.

First shot, and nothing. I urged Penelope to drink, repeatedly urged the puppies to nurse, and crossed my fingers hard. Second shot, and this time the pups were much more interested in nursing. A check revealed that Penelope was finally producing colostrum, albeit not as much as I’d like, but a small amount goes a long way, so I was finally able to breathe again.

Here’s a short video of the pups enjoying their first real nurse on mom. Me, I’m off to have a nap, and explain to Tula that she can’t keep the extra puppies after all. Poor little Heart, no puppy pile to snuggle in…

Penelope Kids

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Mz. P decided she didn’t want to wait, and presented us with five pups — 3 cream girls, a cream boy, and a black masked fawn boy who can scream down walls. All of them are huuuuge — the largest weighs 12.4 ounces. By comparison, Heart weighed 9.1 at birth.

Photos now, updates later, sleep hopefully soon…

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A few more photos are over here on Flickr.

Preparing for Penelope's Puppies

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We’re in the final few days before Penelope is due to whelp her puppies, and as a result today was moving day. Tula and Heart have been downstairs, in the room we’ve designated as our ‘whelping room’. It’s basically a spare bedroom off of our family room, which we’ve tiled and added a large wall heater to. It has all of our puppy supplies in it, from heating pads to rubbing alcohol to wet wipes, and the walls are covered with photos of puppies past. I’m sure it makes for an interesting ambience for the overnight guests who stay in it from time to time.

Heart in the Upstairs bedroomSince this room is the most convenient for me to get to quickly throughout the day while I’m working, it makes sense to put the youngest puppies into it. That meant moving Tula upstairs, to the second spare bedroom.

I’ve never before had to move a mother with a young puppy, and I was a bit apprehensive that Tula might be nervous at being in a new place. We moved the pool she’d been using downstairs, and I kept the same pad and towel in it for her, in hopes it would give her a sense of continuity.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry.

After ten minutes of sniffing around, Tula popped into the whelping box and settled down to nurse Heart (who couldn’t have cared less about where we moved her, so long as her personal milk bar came along for the ride).

The next step was to let Penelope come into the downstairs whelping room for a good sniff around. She looked at the pool, shrugged, and walked over to the bed and waited for me to pick her up. I popped her into the whelping box and suggested she take a good look around, as she was about to spend quite a bit of time in there, like it or not.

Again with the shrugging, although this time she deigned to at least pretend some interest in the towels and whelping pad. Honestly, she was more concerned with getting out the living room and grabbing one of the good hooves before Dexter got to it. I’m not sure the whole ‘motherhood thing’ concept has kicked in yet with her.

There’s a baby monitor base set up in the upstairs bedroom, and the hand held unit is downstairs, where I can turn it on. This will let me sit with Penelope and her puppies, and listen to Tula and Heart at the same time.

We had it on during dinner, and Sean and I spent ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell Tula was doing up there. We heard what sounded like light construction, including what could possibly have been a load of gravel being dropped out, perhaps for foundation work. Every time the sounds became too intriguing, one of us would dash upstairs, only to find Tula sitting innocently in the whelping box, looking at us with an expression that clearly said “What did you expect to find?”.

I’m thinking about installing one of those Nanny cam things, just so we can figure out where she’s stashing the backhoe.

Heart of Gold continues to grow exponentially cuter with each passing day. If she continues on at this rate, she will radiate a force field of cuteness that can be felt all the way in California. Today, she did the coveted “tongue stuck out milk bubble ear twitch” triple combination, which I believe has been made illegal in two states and at least one territory.

If you look at the large version of this photo, you can see her little nose freckles starting to appear. Over time, they’ll increase in number until her nose and muzzle are completely black. On her ear, you can see the little fringe of white hairs that outline the top edge. It’s a tiny, perfect little outline.

For more cuteness, check out her other photos here.

Frenchie with a candle fetish & Nell demands a retraction

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Veterinary Pet Insurance Announces First Winner in Monthly Contest Highlighting Bizarre Pet Accidents

from The Sun Herald —

BREA, Calif., Aug. 26 — Most people’s diets contain too much sugar. But for Sugar, the Jack Russell terrier, the problem was too much turtle. After meeting a wild turtle in the back yard, Sugar decided to have her new friend for dinner. Sugar’s method for disposing of the turtle’s shell — eating it — left her with a small piece of the shell lodged in her nasal cavity. After weeks of respiratory difficulty and inconclusive X-rays, veterinarians performed surgery and found the piece of shell, which Sugar’s owner, Ginger Reynolds, now has in a small glass tube.

“She started having trouble after eating the turtle, but we really didn’t think that part of the shell was stuck in her nose!” said Reynolds. “The veterinarians had never seen anything like it, and they did an amazing job given the unusual circumstances. Thanks to them Sugar is back to normal.”

Reynolds’ claim for Sugar’s surgery was one of more than 80,000 claims received in the month of July by Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI), the nation’s oldest and largest provider of pet health insurance. A veterinarian’s note included with the claim caught the attention of VPI’s claims department: “Sugar was caught red-pawed eating a turtle.” The claim was considered among other unusual medical claims submitted in July and, at the end of the month, VPI employees voted Sugar’s claim the most bizarre of the bunch.

Though undeniably unique, Sugar’s claim was not without competition. Honorable mentions included Louie, a one-year-old French bulldog who ingested more than 50 tea light candles; Ember, a six-year-old mixed breed dog who chased and caught her own tail, breaking it in several places; Bubba, a two-year-old Boston terrier who was shut into a recliner; and Oakley, a ten-month-old Labrador who ate a box of disposable razors. All of the pets with a claim considered for the distinction have fully recovered and received insurance reimbursement for eligible treatment costs.

50 tea lights? Even Bunny couldn’t eat 50 of them. 20 maybe, but not 50 – although she did eat a clock radio on the weekend.

And now, a statement from Ms. Penelope —

Penelope would like me to point that she is not, contrary to my previous post, cranky. In fact, she’s merely discomfited by the fact that something the size and shape of a cantaloupe is lodged underneath her rib cage.

Point taken, Ms. P, and my apologies.


Penelope says “You carry this around all day and see how rainbows and butterflies you’d be feeling”.