Day 2! Meet The Lucky Sevens!
Everyone did great overnight, Alice was much more settled other than the usual post-whelping diarrhea (improving but still a few trips outside overnight), and getting up for overnight meals (she has kibble available all the time but I am feeding her meals of canned gastrointestinal food, mother’s porridge and tripe).
Just after lunch she wanted to go out and DEMANDED to play some fetch. It was nice to see her shift out of mom mode and into Alice mode, then she shifted right back and wanted to come back into the puppy room. She had a great time running around again, she hasn’t been able to run normally for several weeks because she was so huge.
I’ve been enormously impressed with how easily and quickly Alice settled into mothering. Usually a first timer can get a bit panicky with the first puppy or two, but she’s such a steady dog in all respects that this was no different, she took on mothering just like she’s taken on everything else. No muss, no fuss. Being a good mother is so important, there are breeds that tend to be awful mothers and I can’t imagine how much more work that is for breeders. Most Vallhunds tend to be great mothers and my lines certainly are.
The world pretty much stops when a litter is born here, at least for the first few days. As nice as it is to think about time off work and nesting in with the puppies, it’s actually a lot of work, especially at the start. I was so sore yesterday after spending most of Monday on my hands and knees crawling around on the floor, and I have a rug burn on my elbow from getting puppies suctioned and cleaned up.
We put collars on the puppies today. Usually I don’t because they’re easy enough to tell apart with markings, but even though we have some really flashy markings in this litter, two of the females AND two of the males are similar enough that it was making me anxious that I couldn’t reliably tell them apart, and that really matters for weight checks since you need to know if someone isn’t gaining as they should. Just like last time, the collar colors are not gendered and are simply rainbow colors in birth order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and pink). These are breakaway collars but even so, someone is in the room with them just about all the time just in case!
So without further ado, meet the Lucky Sevens (in birth order):
Alfa (red collar) female with four white feet and a white chest and belly with a black stripe on her white belly. Birth weight 213 grams, weighed in this morning at 246 grams!
Bravo (orange collar) male with no white on his front feet, a tiny white stripe on his chest and white back toes. Birth weight 205 grams, weighed in this morning at 231 grams!
Charlie (yellow collar) female with a white neck spot, all four feet white. Birth weight 173 grams, weighing in this morning at 194 grams.
Delta (green collar) male with a white chest with a white stripe to his belly, four white feet. Birth weight 220 grams, weighing in this morning at 257 grams!
Echo (blue collar), male with no white on his front feet, and a little white stripe on his chest. Birth weight 176 grams, weighing in this morning at 206 grams.
Foxtrot (purple collar) female with four white feet, white from her chest to her throat and a black spot on her umbilicus. Birth weight 213 grams, weighing in this morning at 256 grams.
Golf (pink collar) female with no white on her front feet and tiny white back toes. Birth weight 225 grams, weighing in this morning at 249 grams.
The puppy room is our guest room off the family room, so the puppies get the sounds (when they can hear) and smells of the household while still being in a secluded spot so mom doesn’t get stressed. We have a baby gate across the door to keep the other dogs out. Grandma Zhora and Great-Grandma Nina are fascinated, and Zhora cries when the puppies are squeaking like she thinks she needs to come in and tend to them.
I am very lucky to have an awesome husband who, while he won’t touch puppies before they’re born (he thinks feeling puppies moving in the womb is “gross” and “probably aliens”), he spends a lot of time cuddling with them once they’re born. He will probably hold one of his Zoom lecture classes from the puppy pen.
