Mae’s Labor and Delivery story
Mae’s labor and delivery
Things are looking up for Mae’s future with us. I was almost ready to throw in the towel with this momma dog who didn’t seem capable of producing a litter. We had one litter of 6 where two died immediately, one missed heat, and one singleton litter. When my aunt expressed interest in one of our retired dogs, I was so tempted to just give Mae to her.
Earlier this summer, our youngest had a medical scare and hospital stay. During that time, Brian noticed Conley mounting Mae and realized she was in heat. It was terrible timing. We didn’t want a purebred litter from her as we have more Bernedoodle deposits, so Brian put her in with Winston and hoped for the best. We’d never seen them tie and wrote it off as another missed heat. However, as she approached 5 weeks into the pregnancy, she was starting to look more filled out and was developing more around her nipples. By week 7, we used the doppler and found heartbeats! There’s no better sound than that fast beating of a puppy’s heart.
The only problem was that we still didn’t know if they were Conley’s or Winston’s or both! Given Mae’s history and our uncertainty about the father, we decided not to announce the litter until they were born and healthy.
We had her due date set for August 12th, but were keeping her inside the house well enough in advance just in case. On the morning of the 8th, Brian took her out to go potty and put her in one of the pens while he worked on a few things. He came back a little while later and she’d had a puppy! I asked him later if she seemed like she was in labor and he said no. She was panting and whining a little, but she always does that when she’s excited to see us.
We rushed the puppy and Mae into the whelping room in our basement and got to work cleaning them both up. The puppy was surprisingly strong and healthy! Thankfully, that was a day in which we didn’t have much planned, so Brian got comfortable, turned on the Olympics, and helped with whelping the litter while I took care of the kids and the household.
It was a good thing we didn’t have much going on, because it was a slow delivery. She had a puppy every one or two hours. She made us nervous a couple of times because it seemed like she was pushing for a long time without producing a puppy, but they all came eventually.
At the end of the day we had a litter of 6:
5 girls
1 male
3 merles
1 tri-color
2 phantoms
The “Fall Litter”
These puppies will be ready to go in October, and since there’s been a bit of a chill in the air, we decided to name this litter after my favorite season - Fall. Here they are:
I’ll get better pictures and a dedicated page up for them sometime this week. We do have some people on the waiting list, so we won’t know which puppies are available until after picks are made. If you’re interested in joining the waiting list, you can learn more by clicking the button below:
