Bailey and Frank’s Litter – Week One

Bailey is so devoted to her 8 precious babies.

“The Wet Nurses”

For the weeks leading up to the birth, a mother-to-be knows she’s going to have a litter. When puppies are delivered via C-section, it’s a bit confounding for her because somehow the babies have miraculously appeared. We welcomed: Miss Bubbles, Mr. Hangover, Miss Champagne, Mr. Crystal, Mr. Firecracker, Mr. Sparkler, Mr. Tuxedo and Mr. Balloon. It can take a while for mom to come to the realization that these are her babies, but in the meantime both Whitney and Sierra came to Bailey’s aid by helping to nurse some of her puppies.

Part of mom’s job description is to stimulate her newborn pups to eliminate by licking them. In this regard, Bailey’s maternal instincts kicked in fairly quickly and she became a very focused and loving mother, attending to the needs of her little family with every whimper. The puppies have all gained well and easily doubled their birth weight by the end of the first week. We weigh them at least twice daily for the first couple of weeks in order to carefully monitor their progress.

Since the gestation period in dogs is short, the trade-off is that puppies are quite helpless at birth. Biologists refer to species that produce immature dependent offspring as altricial, which means “to nurse, to rear or to nourish”. It refers to the need for the young of these species to be fed and taken care of for a long period of time. The puppies are born functionally deaf since their ear canals are closed. They are also blind, since their eyelids are tightly closed, but both will open during the second week. Newborn puppies are also unable to regulate their own body temperature and for the first three weeks, their temperature climbs one degree until it reaches the normal range. When mom is on her break, we use a heat lamp to keep everyone warm and cozy, but when mom’s around, they’ll either snuggle up with her or lay intertwined with their siblings.

Despite all of the creature comforts that we’ve provided to Bailey, she still spends some of her time during breaks to continue excavating a cave under the spruce tree in the yard as a place to rear her babies. This crater is so big, we swear we can hear an echo in it and every day she returns to the door after a hard day’s work sporting the latest look in blackened paws.

That’s it for now, but be sure to join us next week for another enchanting installment of “Puppy Tales”.