A Litter is Born

SeQueL gave birth by Caesarian Section to two healthy girls between 1:10 and 1:20 pm May 1, 2013.

Geoffrey and I have posted/will continue to post many pictures on Facebook and, in higher quality, on SmugMug.  Here are some of the basics about our girls.

SeQueL was inseminated on February 28th and again on March 1st.  The stud, Ehren, lives in Texas, and FedEx assisted in the pregancy.  An ultrasound on March 26 showed three puppies were growing, and the reproductive vet, Dr. Janice Cain, gave her the due date of April 29 or 30.

By May 1st, SeQueL was huge and started mild contractions.  Our regular vet, Dr. Jill Chase, came over because the labor was progressing slowly.  She took us to get X-rays where we discovered that only two puppies remained, and they were huge.  The vets said we should go to Dr. Cain’s ASAP, and so we drove to Bishop Ranch Veterinary Center where we we got to watch the surgery that gave us the puppies.  (Copies of the ultrasound, X-ray, and surgery are all in the SmugMug gallery, btw.)

Since Wednesday, one of us has been in the spare bedroom with the puppies in a whelping box more or less continuously.  Absolutely continuously at first, and now we’re mostly there.  Our watch is to make sure that SeQueL continues to be a good mother and doesn’t accidentally squish or ignore a puppy in distress.

Puppies are supposed to gain 10% of their weight every day at this time in their lives.  They have a nice, new, Williams Sonoma food scale to measure their progress on.  So far, they’re thriving.

All the pictures, videos, X-rays, and an ultrasound are on SmugMug.