I worry about my dogs whenever they are going through any problem. When the females are getting close to whelping I don’t sleep well. I had friends telling me to just check her temperature. When it drops below 98 degrees she will whelp within 24 hours. That doesn’t really matter to me, I still don’t sleep well. We have some security cameras on the house. I took one and put it on the box that Abby was in so when I woke up I could just check the camera. At least I didn’t have to get up and go check on her.
The camera on my puppy pen.
A blurry Abby in the door of the puppy pen.
Puppies!!!
My vet said there were about as many pups born on their sixtieth day as there were on sixty three days. Sally’s last litter was born on the sixtieth day. I put Abby in the shed on the 59th day just to be safe. In the shed it was too dark for the camera to work and Abby wasn’t very content. I put a light in the box so the camera would work better. I had indoor outdoor carpet on the whelping box and she pulled it up. If she does this when she has puppies she could smother one or more. So I took it out.
After a day in the shed I moved her to the puppy pen. The puppy pen is an off the ground pen with a house on the end. I set the camera on the end of the house but it has to be where the dog can’t chew it. That only gives a small hole for the camera to peep through.
I had a heating pad placed in the house but it wasn’t plugged in until we get puppies. The night time temperatures were in the upper sixties with daytime temperature in low 80s. Abby has been keeping the puppies a hundred degrees while they were inside her. Even 80 degrees will be cold for the puppies. It will be several days before they can regulate their own temperature.
Then Abby pulled the carpet loose in this house. She was bored with being in the smaller area than her kennel. The carpet keeps the puppies cleaner and it’s easier for them to move around, in my opinion. But I can’t let her smother puppies. So I took the carpet out.
About noon on the thirtieth of June she started getting really nervous. Later in the afternoon she was pacing the pen. About 6:30 she had her first pup. I went down and dried it with a towel. She didn’t seem to pay much attention to the pup and didn’t seem to want me there. I plugged the heat pad in and put the puppy on the pad. The puppy pen is close to my house. I went back inside to watch on the camera.
Tur Bo, the puppies great grandfather.
I saw her have the second pup. I went back down and dried this pup. Abby laid down, pulled the pups to her and they started suckling. Over the next few hours she had all of the pups. One of the pups was really small and weak. I dried it and put it on the heat pad. After about 30 minutes on the heat pad I moved it to where it could find a teat. It locked on. By midnight she was through having pups.
When I checked them early the next morning the little puppy was dead. I have heard that if the puppy loses a few degrees temperature the mother will kick them out. I thought putting it on the heat pad before moving it to a teat would help. Sometimes there is more wrong with the puppies than we know.
But we had 7 healthy pups. Abby curled around the puppies that were eating. Some of the pups were on the heating pad. Even when the outside temperature was in the 80s there would be puppies on the heating pad. And with the heating pad at 100 degrees, Abby at about a hundred degrees and 7 puppies, it was warm in the box.
Abby, the mother of the puppies.
I have an air conditioner in the shed so I moved them. The shed stays in the mid seventies so the heating pad was necessary. There is a dog door on the shed where Abby can get outside into the big pen around the kennels. I locked her in the shed the first night to make sure she didn’t try to move her puppies outside. After the first night, I feel she will leave them so she has full run of the shed and big pen.
The puppies, with no carpet, were not as clean as I thought they should be so I replaced the carpet. I stapled it down with lots of staples. It helped, some. One of the puppies had what I thought was poop in the hair between his shoulder blades. My daughter, Dana, her husband, Robert, my grandson, Isaac and girl friend, Shea, came over to pet puppies. When Dana was petting the male with the poop on his shoulder blades, she thought it looked like dried blood.
I took some soap and water down and cleaned the pup. It was dried blood. Evidently, Abby had tried to pick him up and broke the skin. I took all of the pups to the vet for a check and get the dew claws removed. They shaved the pups back, cleaned it and gave me some antibiotics for him. Now I’m giving him some drops twice a day, washing the wound with hydrogen peroxide and keeping it soft with Vaseline.
Sally, the grandmother, pointing a covey.
The big pen that Abby is able to use with the dog door in the shed is the same big pen I turn the dogs into when I clean kennels. All of the dogs are in the same pen. I usually close the shed so the other dogs don’t get into the shed. Yesterday morning I forgot. Sally is a chow hound and she knows there is food for Abby in the shed. She went into the shed to eat while I wasn’t paying attention.
Usually, the dogs aren’t standing by their gate, to go back in, after I clean the pens. I just have to call their name and they come. I called Sally’s name and she didn’t come. I knew immediately what I had done. I walked about halfway to the shed and called her, again. She came out of the shed and got almost to me then went back.
Most of the time Sally minds really well. Not this time. I went to the dog door of the shed and called her. She came out and I grabbed her collar. I took my belt and busted her butt. Not because she ate the food or went in the shed but because she disobeyed. And she knew it. She didn’t resist. She knew she had it coming. She really would like to be in charge and would be if I let her. I put her in her kennel. That’s the first time I have had to do that since I had an old female named Allie, maybe 15 years ago.
Boss pointing a pigeon.
All of this happened around the fire works that never seems to end. The fireworks or thunder doesn’t seem to bother Abby but it used to be really bad for Luke. Although we had a lot of popping around us it didn’t seem to bother him this time. He may be getting hard of hearing.
But Mann is a different story. I think he thought that everyone was shooting birds and he was in his kennel. Every time I got close to his kennel, which with checking on the puppies was often, he ran back and forth in his kennel and whined.
Boss is in South Dakota. In the next day or two I should get my first report on him. I’ve been watching the weather and it’s really hot but most of those guys get out really early to work dogs. It’s hard, even with the puppies and everything else that goes on with the dogs, not to know each day about him. But the guys that go to the prairie couldn’t get much done if they called all of the owners each day.
Abby on point.
Each day after their first day I’ve had visitors to pet the puppies and some of the people are waiting for them to get s little older. The puppies are more fun when they start getting personalities. All of the people petting them, socializes them really well.