Puppies!!

Puppies!!!
Hey everyone, Just wanted to let you know that after 2 days of labor and no sleep for us. Skye gave birth on Sunday March 15th to 5 beautiful babies! 2 boys and 3 girls. 4 of them look JUST like her. The other little boy was all black like his older sister Kaci. He was the runt.

Skye was delivering for about 6 hours, a little over an hour a pup. The little runt wasn't nursing. His little mouth was too small for mommy's nipples. Also his umbilical cord fell all the way off. So he was bleeding from there and lost a good amount of blood for being so little. I called the vet but he was out of town for a few hours - he called when he got back at 9pm (baby was born at about 3pm) I took him in and he looked at his belly and said "thats not good" What I thought was a blood clot where his belly button should be was in fact facets of the inside skin coming out. It looked like intestines but the vet said it wasn't. He had to put a stitch in his little belly. We then fed him through a tube that we had to feed down his throat, it was really easy to do. The vet said to do this every 2-3 hours. So we took him home and fed him at 11:15pm, I set my alarm to feed him again at 1:30am, then again at 4am. When we got in the room, he was already gone. It must have just happened within about 20 mins because he wasn't very cold yet. Skye was licking him like she was trying to wake him, she continued to clean him. So we let her lick him a little more and then removed him, put him a shoebox and then went back to bed - so much for sleeping though, I couldn't after that.

We went to our appt at 9am and then when we got back we took him to the vets to dispose of the body. The vet said "he was really small, its sad but that happens sometimes, there could have been something more seriously wrong with him that made him so small, you just never know." What I am thinking is that his umbilical cord fell off so easily (skye had a hard time chewing off his sisters and brothers) that maybe there was a problem with it that caused it to not get enough food as the rest - making it smaller, and if that is what happened, what else was wrong with him? We will never know. But Skye is not herself right now, and so I would like to ask that everyone wait to come and visit her and the puppies until she has adjusted to him being gone. She doesn't even want us touching her babies at this point. She even growled at Emily for just petting her. So I think its best that she be left alone with them until she is over his loss. I don't think she knows he died, because he was still moveable when she had him. She looks at us like "when are you bringing my baby back" everytime we walk in the room. She is always staring out in the hall like she is looking for him. She no doubt knows she is missing a baby and I don't want her to be anymore insecure or become depressed - Yes, dogs can become depressed. Thank you. (This is a little older blog - but the update is that Skye is doing much better now with the babies and people holding them. She even allowed kids to visit with the puppies today!)