well, secret had the litter. if you can call your singleton litter a litter :) kathy moved her clan into my house last weekend, and we've been doing very well here (my dog number is INSANELY HIGH right now, but you'd really never know it thank you for training - the worst is sometimes we get barking when one dog makes some noise and its actually less than normal because rah is on his best behavior) - rah is in trauma mode because kathy is here and she makes him work for everything! you should see the sad eyes he gives sometimes - is she STILL here mom?
thursday was the start of the due date, secret had no signs of labor. same with friday. i had cautioned kathy that there may be no way she would have the litter - we knew there was only one puppy and he was large and even if secret could pass him vaginally, theres a really good chance that one puppy doesn't stimulate enough labor to make it happen. friday we monitored fetal heart rate and it was stable, but saturday it started to drop and he was nearing distress, so we went to c-section. one little puppy was born at 11:30 or so and he's doing well. we brought him home about 2 pm and secret's been... an ok mom :) lets him nurse but still not so sure she wants to clean this baby.
then yesterday afternoon my friends dobe litter (literally 4 min down the road) and she stopped at 4-5 babies - we knew there were more in there, so at 6:30 i went and gave some oxytocin - 2 more came out. and then more. and more! ive never been so wrong on an xray before... it was amazing. 10 babies - and we decided that since brandy as a young first time momma with a huge litter, and secret as a first time momma with a small litter, both the mothers and the babies would be benefitted to have the litter of dobes split up so i took 3 dobe babies back to my house...
they are nursing well this morning. secret still doesnt want to clean them much so thats our job for now. hopefully she kicks in soon. yesterday she was still a little dopey from the csection, today she is much more herself.
im mixed emotions about there being no baby bc for me. part of me is sad that there isnt one - this was the litter i was waiting for, and seeing the xray hurt a little bit - so many plans for this little baby. so many accomplishments, going out into the ring and wowing the people. all the little training things i was going to do, all the changes i was going to make and do differently from my other dogs, fix all the mistakes. so many hopes and aspirations. i had second pick out of this litter, it would have been born in my house, my trainer would hand pick and hand raise this pup with me. multiple OTCH trainer, no less. we had our weekends of travelling up to terri arnold already planned for puppy lessons!
but part of me is relieved. for selfish and not so selfish reasons. first and foremost, i dont need another dog, not really. i mean,i know something could happen to rah at any time and then what... but i dont need to replace him. i have two dogs i can actively train and show right now. they are more than enough, one is showing and training in two sports. i have two dogs i can barely afford to campaign, ha! financially i can afford the dog, but it would be tight no doubt because of all the sports and training and showing - i can cut back LESS now that theres no pup coming. and part of me still felt guilty about not getting a dobe - because they will forever be my favorite, my heart breed. they will the breed i want the most, the breed that catches me and makes me yearn to own them. they are also going to be th ehardest one to train and work probably, and the hardest to find the type of dog i want, but ill get there.
so i guess ill just wait for now - wait and see how things play out. the right dog is going to find me in the future. i checked out 3 dobes in the past year and none of them were the right one. clearly this litter of bcs wasnt going to give me the right one. two people have already told me now that there's no puppy that they didnt think this was the right time anyway and i needed to focus on berlin and rah, and they are right - we're on the cusp of a UD with noodle and berlin is JUST coming into her own right now and we're just setting into our relationship with the princess.
but i will tell you now that i have dobe babies in the house it may be hard to turn one of them away, haha! its why i took reds!!!!!!
4 comments:
Wow. That's very fortuitous that both mommas had their babies so close together so they could share like that.
I'm sorry you didn't get your puppy, though.
Also, this post would be better with pictures. ;)
Hey Kim, I too would like to see pictures and hear about your plans for training puppies. As I now have two near seven-year-old Danes, I find myself thinking about puppies and what early training I would do with one if I had one :)
Aw that sucks! Is Kathy going to keep the singleton? I guess Ann won't be getting another puppy either!
I agree that it wasn't the right time for a puppy for yourself. If the puppy turned out to be absolutely amazingly brilliant (which it looked like!), you'd have to cut back on Berlin and Rah, which isn't really fair to them. But if you kept everything equal, you'd be shorting the puppy.
That's the problem with already having two awesome dogs! It'd be easier if one of your dogs was an idiot and sucked at things, but since Rah and Berlin are so great, you can't give attention elsewhere at the moment.
I can't wait to start going up to Terri Arnold, too! That was my ulterior motive for getting Ann a gift certificate for a lesson with her for Christmas, so that she'd take me with her lol.
And now we need pictures! Bummer about the singleton but the logic makes sense; I know the bittersweetness of that though. It's fun to see a dog learn and grow and achieve and yet,we can do so much more with fewer. Unless we have uber deep pockets. :)
Congrats on getting to have babies around. Sounds like a lot of fun even while there's work. Here's hoping Secret will get on the bandwagon with the whole mom shebang and things will be smooth-sailing from here.
Post a Comment