Puppies

It has been a very long and exhausting week with our dear girl Wynter going into labour prematurely after one of her babies died in utero, causing a second puppy (a pretty little blue boy) to be born premature before the deceased puppy was birthed. With vet intervention we tried to keep the remaining two puppies from being born too early, but after a day it was clear with one beginning to go into distress that we needed to deliver the puppies via cesarean even though they would still be premature. I am thankful I made this call, as during the procedure it was discovered that Wynter’s uterus had ruptured in three places, which if we had waited for a continued natural delivery would have been potentially fatal to Wynter and her unborn babies. After the great work of my trusted vets to deliver the puppies safely (a black tri and a white girl), perform a hysterectomy on Wynter and decontaminate her abdominal cavity and administer intravenous antibiotics, Wynter woke slowly in my arms as her anesthetic wore off. The following days have been tough, with Wynter not wanting to eat and with trying to get her milk to come in for her three babies. Being quite premature they had little hair and needed help learning to latch on to their mum as well as feeding top-ups every few hours around the clock. Unfortunately, despite all of this, we lost the first born boy who needing resuscitating at a few days old and couldn’t flourish after that. The two girls are finally starting to latch feed on their own sometimes and are getting fat milk bellies and looking like full term new borns with their hair growing in. Wynter is doing much better now too, still on a course of antibiotics but now eating with less encouragement as you can see in the video. The ups and downs of canine breeding are certainly a roller coaster that can be heartbreaking and expensive, though I am grateful for the broken lack of sleep when I see these two little babies starting to thrive.