Oh Yeah, You Blend

This is Nina today:

Nina - January 12, 2010

…feel embarrassment (I sure hope they don’t!).

Nina is a week away from her due date and the camera is not as flattering to her as usual…it still minimizes her hippo-like bulk though.  Crappy cellphone picture (the good camera is moving downstairs today):

As Jennifer says: Oh Dear

As Jim says: she looks like a miniature hippopotamus, and she weighs 27 pounds today (the scale was jumping between 26.8 and 27.1).  She weighs about the same as Rakki does, and he’s a much bigger dog than she is.  I ordered whelping supplies from WhelpWise today…next week I will start taking her temperature…tomorrow we will move into the guest room where the whelping box is…it’s getting close!

She is huge and getting pretty uncomfortable.  Lying down now involves a lot of grunting and adjusting.  Eating involves a lot of me sitting on the floor hand-feeding tempting tidbits (today needed some crackers with peanut butter before she decided to eat her food), 6 times a day or so.  Going out in the snow to take care of business leaving tummy-prints is adorable, except she can hardly hunch now to poop.  I can easily feel them moving around in there now, and if the light is right, sometimes you can see them moving, like little sea monsters.  Jim is convinced they are chestbursters or facehuggers, he won’t feel them.  Today I ordered some supplies: a SnuggleSafe warmer, some CDs of thunderstorms and agility trials for early desensitization, a litterbox (I’m gonna give litter training a go with alfalfa pellets for litter, that way if the puppies eat some, it’s just alfalfa).  Tomorrow I will order a DeeLee suction catheter, a preemie nipple and a bulb syringe.  I will get feeding tubes and syringes from work.  I will start sleeping downstairs in the guest room (which will be the whelping room, just off the living room) this week.  I dewormed Nina with PPS today, because we are TWO WEEKS from her first due date (I wish I’d had more time for progesterone testing).  EEK!  It’s getting exciting.

I was just looking at agility pictures from last summer, and then I look at her big, pregnant, bulging self.  Bad cellphone pic because I am too lazy to go get my real camera:

Nina January 3, 2010

Over the last few days (i.e. Christmas), Nina has started growing at an amazing rate (the puppies do most of their growing in the last three weeks of gestation, which we are in…holy crap!).  She is HUGE!  She weighs 24.9 pounds today (her good lean agility weight is 19 to 19.5)!  And she is still reasonably lean, she has a small layer of fat (as she should have at this point), but the rest is all puppies!  She is happy and content and loves going for her walks as much as ever, but she is much slower than usual and is happy with shorter walks.  She’s eating a few small meals a day instead of two bigger ones (there’s no room in there!).  We have a few inches of snow here and she is leaving belly prints as well as pawprints in it, which is really cute.

Hard to imagine that it’s only 9 days since that last picture was taken!

Nina - December 29, 2009

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…on the deck this morning, making that “oh not AGAIN” face at me pointing a camera at her.  This is a pretty slimming angle, she looks bigger in person.

Nina - December 20, 2009

WOO-HOO!

Tomorrow we go to see Dr. Metzger at Orchard Park for an ultrasound.  Then we will know for sure if Nina is pregnant or not, and hopefully get some idea of a number if she is!  Further bulletins as events warrant.  Exciting!

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…and after a brief but thorough crash course in palpation (and numerous reassurances that I wasn’t going to hurt anything), I thought I felt little hard-boiled eggs in Nina’s uterus yesterday. Tonight, I definitely feel them! I can’t tell if I’m feeling a few different ones, or the same one, since they’re slippery little things and slide away so easily (and I have zero experience doing this with dogs!). Still…I think she’s pregnant!

While subjecting Nina to her Halloween costume last weekend, I noticed she was looking like she might be thinking about going into heat. Then Sunday she was near-perfect in agility class (always a warning sign of impending heat).  And then Monday November 2 was day one. So this week we’re off on a road trip to hopefully get her pregnant!  We will start progesterone testing her early this week.  Further bulletins as events warrant.