On the afternoon of Tuesday, Dec. 27th the fun begins. Olive starts digging in her whelping pen, pacing, moaning...  Around 4 pm contractions start. Katie Campbell, Olive's breeder and our MC for the evening, arrives and takes over working with Olive. She sits in the whelping box for hours, massaging Olive's back to help with contractions and catching and cleaning up little puppies.

At 6:22 pm the first little pup emerges!  A tri-colored girl who gets the blue collar.  Katie cleans her up while Olive prepares for the next one.  Chris gets to cut the rather icky umbilical cord and helps Olive eat the placenta (gag).  Olive is a total trooper, figuring it all out and doing a great job with her new responsibilities. Janet gets to hold the puppies each time a new one comes.

The first three pups come about half hour apart, perfect timing to clean up the one, get it nursing and start working with Olive on new contractions.  After the first one, the routine is similar... massaging, moaning, and eventually a litle ball pops out with another puppy to clean up and give to Olive to start nursing.  Her "water breaks" again for each new pup to be delivered. Placentas are disgusting - they smell bad and stain everything black. Olive ate them all... ugh.

Finally... all puppies are alive and well, nursing happily with Mom.  We pop the champagne and toast to this part of the ordeal being over with.  Whew...  The final step is to remove dew claws.  Olive does a great job licking the puppies to stimulate them and works on keeping them warm and fed.  She has to learn to be gentle and picks it up pretty fast. The puppies weigh between 7.5 and 9 ounces, which is pretty big considering how small Olive is.  Olive was exhausted and ready to sleep.  One more sleepless night for us as we watch over the babies.

 

 

 

The first three come out without much drama.  Gross, but all are safe and eager to start nursing.  The fourth one waits almost an hour before showing up. Olive is getting tired at this point.  The fifth puppy (green collar) was a breech birth with too much drama for our taste. Olive was exhausted and had trouble pushing. There was a few moments of panic when the embrionic sac broke and the puppies feet turned blue.  Katie had to go inside and help Olive force it out.  It was scary and we were worried we'd lose it, but once it finally came out, it was breathing and seemed OK.  Greenie is now perfectly pink and seems to be doing well!