Oh Yeah, You Blend

…this eating like a Hobbit thing is pretty good! Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses…the puppies are really starting to grow, and smaller meals on a more frequent basis seem to be the order of the day now.

She is BIG! She has gained just under a pound since Monday (she was 24 pounds today).  While I AM planning to let her get a bit plush while she is still eating well (since she ate almost nothing in the last week and a half last time and was leaner than I was happy with by the time she whelped), I don’t want her to get too fat, or she will have a harder time whelping. So we’ll monitor things. The puppies are just entering the stage where they do most of their growing (the last two weeks), and Nina is still fairly lean, so I think most of that weight is puppy.

It finally cooled off here today, so I walked Nina and Tish to work with me to draw blood for another progesterone test. She was THRILLED to go for a walk (it’s been WAY too hot for more than a quick zip around the small block), although her usual beautiful, floating, effortless gait was actually more of a somewhat ungainly waddle some of the time…Stephanie at work (the head tech who helped with whelping last time, and who volunteered to help again this time, AND who gave up some of her Saturday more than once to come in and draw blood for the nine zillion progesterone tests while we were waiting for ovulation…Stephanie helped so much!)…anyway, Stephanie at work hasn’t seen Nina in a couple of weeks, and she was amazed at how big she is, she says Nina will need to wear a bra soon!

Renee at Dr. Hutchison’s clinic sent me the supplemental progesterone overnight so that we will have it if we need it. I hope the fact that I have it means I won’t need it! We will see what today’s results are. I really do think the nesting is just her being an experienced mother, but given the awful luck some of my fellow breeders have had with tragic losses of litters due to inadequate progesterone…I’d rather be prepared! She isn’t nesting any more than she was, just goes in and putters around in the whelping box and moves the bedding around for a few seconds now and then. I think she’s just making sure things will be ready when she is. Her eating is quite leisurely now, she is still eating very well, but takes her time (she is eating in the puppy room behind the baby gate now, so she has her own dining room and doesn’t feel rushed, the other dogs keep her company and eat on their own side of the gate when it’s their mealtime too, or look at me with big sad SPCA commercial eyes when it’s one of the Nina-only Hobbit mealtimes).

Two weeks from this Saturday is the official whelping date, we’ll see what Nina has to say about that!

So I just got off the phone with the awesome Renee at Animal Clinic Northview. I feel MUCH better now!

I’m going to retest tomorrow, and she is shipping me the progesterone supplement injections in case I need them (since we’d want to start asap if we do need them). They are not terribly expensive, and the peace of mind is worth ten times that! If her progesterone drops below 6 ng/mL with more than 10 days to go, we will supplement (it’s an intramuscular injection of progesterone in sesame oil once every 72 hours).

I’m also going to take Nina’s temperature three times a day, just to keep an eye on things (a dog’s temperature will drop before labor to the low 98’s usually).

We have a plan, I feel much better. Nina doesn’t mind anyway, as long as there are cookies!

Progesterone was 9ng/mL. Depending on what you read, it needs to be at 10 or just above 5…Dr Hutchison is out until Friday, but they don’t seem perturbed by 9, we will retest Friday.

Nina continues to be normal, eating like a horse and not stressed. I am hoping she is just feeling pregnant and being proactive about finding her spot. The nesting is brief and not frantic at all when she does it. Could well be normal and I am just neurotic, but better safe than sorry!

So Nina’s progesterone test that we drew Monday (because of the nesting I noticed that morning) didn’t make it to the lab (I had a meltdown about that). We drew another sample today (Tuesday), but won’t have results until morning, and she nested for two very brief periods (literally into the box, shuffle some bedding around, out of the box) tonight…so now I am sitting here at 1 in the morning, trying not to panic, trying not to be angry about the first test not getting done (it’s water under the bridge now), and mostly worrying about Nina. I called the more-likely-to-help emergency vet, and they were no help whatsoever, they clearly don’t have a vet on who does much repro. Dr. Hutchison can’t do much until we know the progesterone, and I don’t know if I’m panicking over nothing or something.

We came downstairs to sleep where it’s cooler (it’s crazy hot here), because Nina was panting upstairs where the small a/c can’t compete with the heat. She dug once in the whelping box for two seconds when we got down here, and is now lying quietly at my feet snoozing. I took her temperature and it’s 99.4, which seems low-ish, but then some of the repro vets say it’s normal to be low-ish in the last trimester. There is usually a drop to 98-ish when labor is imminent. and 99.4 seems far too close to that number for comfort.

I asked on the awesome Facebook Canine Repro group about it, and most of the breeders who answered said their dogs nest throughout the pregnancy, or at least in the last few weeks, and that this is nothing to worry about, she’s just an experienced dam getting her ducks in a row, one said it could be a sign that her progesterone is dropping early (which can be supplemented if caught in time), one said her dog nested early and then whelped early and she lost the litter. I am scared, and I keep thinking about a Vallhund breeder friend who lost a litter (also a frozen semen AI) because of a too-early progesterone drop recently.

There is nothing I can do right now it seems except wait (and keep checking the lab’s web page for test results). There is nothing else unusual going on with her, no discharge, she is eating wonderfully (demanded a bedtime snack tonight), acting just fine (she enthusiastically did some low-impact clicker training today), but the nesting worries me. She isn’t restless now that we’re in the cooler part of the house, she ate a cookie with gusto as her reward for the indignity of having her temperature taken, she doesn’t seem stressed or anxious…I hope it is nothing.

Nina is becoming steadily more torpedo shaped. She weighs 23.1 pounds today (normal for her is 19-20).
She was nesting under the couch today (dragging a blanket under there with her and digging), so I took her in to work for a progesterone test just to make sure all is well (she hasn’t done it since, but I am a nervous Nellie!), my breeder friend Kim thinks she is just being proactive since she is an experienced momma now. She is eating fine (she convinced Renee to share her lunch when we were at the clinic) and otherwise acting normal. We got the whelping box Kate made for us out and it’s all cleaned and set up.

Nina today (our lawn looks horrid since we’ve had almost no rain here), crappy cell phone pictures:

Nina, July 16, 2012

Nina (with Tish) July 16, 2012

Tish says “let’s zoom!”, Nina says “Queen Bulkette prefers not to”

Tish and I went to All Dawgs Academy for CPE agility today. She went 3 for 4 and it was HOT inside! We’re having teeter issues still, but she is running nice and fast, driving lines, developing some nice obstacle focus, and the few puppy brain moments we had were almost all her driving off to another piece of equipment, instead of going visiting. Very happy with her…just need to sort out that teeter! She finished her Level 2 Fun Games title (CL2-F) and is now in Level 4 Fullhouse!

Nina didn’t get to come and play agility, and I know she is feeling pregnant because she barely complained about it. I’ve had some lovely feedback from other Vallhund folks about what a nice choice of stud Tempest is. She was six weeks along as of yesterday, just three weeks to go! I’m getting the shopping underway for supplies (you can NEVER have too many towels!), Jim dragged the whelping box down from the attic, ready to be cleaned and freshened up, I went through my big box o’whelping supplies, threw out expired things and ordered replacements. I will move downstairs into the guest room (AKA the “whelping lounge” located off the family room) with Nina soon, so she is happy and comfortable in there well before the puppies arrive. She is quite round, but not enormous yet, the puppies do most of their growing in the last two weeks. I can feel them moving a bit now, just little fluttery movements, not the comparatively rowdy bumping around they’ll do in there in a week or two. She is having a bit of trouble navigating being a lap dog with her tummy, but she is still very much in the “content” stage of pregnancy, eating well (she loves getting lunch!), very cuddly and mellow, sleeping a lot but still has energy to play with the others (she and Tish had a good-natured jaw wrestling session on the couch when we got back from the agility trial this afternoon), being the queen about having the choice spots on laps and on the bed. We forgot her lunch one day last week and she SHOUTED at us until we realized and sheepishly served it up! She is HUNGRY. I am cautious about overfeeding her, since excess weight can make whelping more difficult (and can give you enormous puppies, too), but I won’t mind if she gets a little bit plush at this stage, since last time she ate very little in the last two weeks, except for bits of scrambled egg and Nutri-Cal that I begged her to eat.

Nina – July 9, 2012

This is Nina today – nearly 5 1/2 weeks along and no longer her svelte self.

…and Nina is starting to look pregnant. We are halfway through already (!) and she’s got a definite tum now where she was svelte before! She was annoyed to miss out on being an agility demonstration dog for Canine Sports Complex at the Riverside Park 4th of July celebration, when Tish got to go, so she made up for it by accidentally piercing Tish’s ear last night while they were running around and wrestling like idiots. Tish is fine, although it bled like nobody’s business.

We ultrasounded Nina at work today, we’re relatively new to ultrasound, but we’re pretty sure we have grublets in there! We think we saw three in one horn and possibly two in the other (last time the experienced ultrasound repro vet said “at least two”, and we had 7, so ultrasound isn’t so useful for counting numbers, more for pregnant yes/no).

Here are picures:

Looks like two grublets in this view!

One in this view (the black glob).