01/14/25 Pupdate (and a side quest)

It’s been an adventure already!  Carmela is settling in to motherhood very nicely.  She is very clear about exactly who is THE Mama.  She’s ok with us looking at them and touching them but is not on board with us taking them out of the pool.

As you can imagine this makes holding our weight watchers meetings more difficult.  It’s already fun trying to weigh wriggly puppies when one has to wait for the talking scale to get around to telling the weight but with her ‘helping,’ it’s quite difficult.  It’s a combination of her wanting her puppy back where it belongs and being nosy.  (I weighed a spoon and she was checking to see what was going on with that but wasn’t insistent on taking it)

She is eating well and has a pretty good handle on feeding and cleaning the puppies (whether they like it or not.). I’m glad she’s cleaning them up and I’ll let her take care of that as long as she chooses.  I do NOT let her give me kisses right now though.

While we were gone, a Dalmatian appeared on the cameras going all around the house whining at the doors.  It was very cold so I worried about her but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  I thought I heard her Monday night but it was dark so I didn’t go searching.  This morning, when the MSU was on puppy duty after my nap, I went looking for her.  She was hanging out up by the pond and was VERY hungry.  I fed her, gave her some bedding in her chosen spot and more in one of the crates up there that I also covered because it was quite cold and getting colder. I also took pictures and videos and enlisted one of our neighbors to help find her people.  She was wearing a collar but I wasn’t sure she was going to let me check the tag (tirns out she ‘smiles’ but I wasn’t sure she wasn’t snarling although she did also wag her tail) so I gave her a little while to decide if she wanted to go into the crate. The MSU got the number on her tag and determined she wasn’t snarling so I also took the fleece dog coat I bought many years ago for Jack (he wore it once and was obviously too hot in it so it wasn’t worn) and put it on her (she was skin and bones and it is cold so I needed her to have more than the blankets and bedding)

Her dad found out through the facebook postings about the time the mom got the messages we’d left on her phone and they came to get her.  She was obviously in pain from her injury (she must’ve been hit by a car because she was going down the driveway fine Monday morning but came back up limping not very much later) so I helped her walk a little supporting her rear and then I just carried her down the driveway to meet them.

The MSU hung out with the puppies and Carmela during that and I took back over after I changed clothes and washed any potential germs away.  The puppies tooj it all in stride although Carmela is quick to jump up and greet us any time we come back into the room.  We are trying to convince her that we’ll come to her and she’s waiting for us on occasion now.

She’s also started the digging phase but only wants to dig in the pool, the couch or the chair.  None of those are really ideal for us but we’re working on alternatives that suit all of us.

The puppies attended their first dog training club meeting with me via Zoom and were mostly well behaved.  They did some singing and lip smacking but not too much squalling.

I’m still rearranging the rubber room nursery.  Having been sidetracked somewhat by the new ankle, I didn’t get everything set up before hand.  Plus, it’s been 4 years since we’ve had puppies and there have been some additions to the room.  I’m still working on getting the waves out of the blue vinyl coin flooring but I have a while before the puppies start escaping from the pool!

Nighty, nighty nighty while we work on sharing puppy breath on cue

01/13/25 We have PUPPIES!

         I can’t believe it’s been 4 years and yet it seems like this litter took more than 4 years to get on the ground.  Carmela decided to come into season on the 4 month plan (she does have a double dose of JillyBean after all) so we had daily blood draws for lh testing and period progesterone testing.

The girl is an ABSOLUTE statue for blood draws (especially the jugular ones).  It’s rather amazing how excited she was to get on the table at the vet each day.   She was however NOT particularly cooperative when we had to get the cytology swabs.  After a few fake outs on the lh tests (we’ve only ever had a faint positive live when we then had the real positive the next day)

We’d all just about decided that she was going to do a split cycle (her progesterone stayed at less than 0.2 for 12 days - and we’d had to get more cytology slide to make sure it all indicated she was taking her time much to her displeasure) and I ordered more lh tests.  Much like the best way to get a bitch to come into season is to enter her in a non-refundable event that she can’t participate in if she’s in season; apparently buying a lot of fairly expensive, not returnable test kits that will expire before you will be ready to use them the next breeding is the way to get her to ovulate.

Of course, the (real positive) lh surge was on a Saturday evening so we had to get our ducks all in a row for arranging the breeding.  As we were arranging for out trip to North Ridgeville, I noticed that the vet that would be collecting and shipping Eddie’s contribution was 15 minutes from my sister’s house.  So we went south instead and visited in GA.  Apparently, we do that with the brown girls because we also did it with Carmela’s Grand dam Bela

The MSU (aka not the Mama by the dogs) had a total ankle replacement in early December so that threw off our schedule for getting the ultrasound.  The Villagers were also recovering, having grand skin puppies or otherwise occupied so I enlisted my niece (technically, she’s my cousin’s daughter but since our mothers are twins, we are genetically siblings so  niece it is drove Carmela and I to North Ridgeville and back to hear/see puppies on the ultrasound.

Just to keep things interesting, my “birthday snow” this year was a massive event with lots of snow and some ice (any ice is too much) followed by more snow and a lot of very cold temperatures so that it didn’t melt,  We managed to pre treat the driveway so we eventually had the driveway cleared enough to let another round of snow cover it Friday night.  One of us can’t see and one of us was in a walking boot from that total ankle replacement so it was a an adventure getting off the hill and to North Rdigeville for the xray and a progesterone test on Saturday.

Sunday, we met Tootsie with Debbie Totten at Scott’s bakery for a nice visit and some goodies before heading over to have another progesterone test and an ultrasound to decide whether the puppies were likely to hold off until the next day.

And, fortuntely for us, they DID!  The best part of them waiting for me was on Monday, “Uncle Dr Brian” as he is known by us (I have no idea ig he knows that’s how we refer to him but I guess he definitely will if he reads this 😀) was working abnd brought Bagby to visit us while we were there.  Bagby is from our second litter (Jill X Boo) and it was great so nice to visit with him (and give him lots of treats).  Debbie Totten met us at the clinic so the MSU could rest with his ankle up before the long drive home.  We both really appreciated her help!  She even took Carmela for her second poop of the day while I got the pool set up for the long long ride home!

We got home and even made it up the driveway after a few tries.  Mama and puppies are all settled in; now the humans will work on getting into soem sort of routine.  GrandPaw Deja says he is available to assist when needed, too.

Nighty nighty nighty from the 7 newest Allyn PWDs: 5 black wavy girls, 1 black wavy boy and 1 brown wavy/soft curly boy