Skye, Day 47 (pre-parturition)

Skye and puppies daddy Storm.

Sassy Skye continues to be as active as ever. She enjoys being in the air-conditioned house when it is so humid outdoors. The occasional bird or squirrel has her preoccupied outdoors, but she quickly realizes that it’s too hot outside and she’d rather just come inside to cool off and enjoy a bone.

Diet is so important at this stage as the puppies are beginning to grow rapidly now. Over the next few weeks as her abdomen expands, Skye will obviously begin to slow down.

Skye has always had a voracious appetite and she certainly continues to eat her food in record time and is always looking for more. She is enjoying an unprocessed raw diet including all the natural vitamins and minerals required along with folic acid, prebiotics and probiotics daily. As her waistline expands, she will have less room for food so we will increase the frequency and reduce the size of each meal. Skye’s abdomen now measures 76.2 cm or 30 inches.

At this point, the embryonic sacs are a little over 4 cm. Although several sacs were detected during the ultrasound at day 25, it is still difficult to determine exactly how many babies Skye will have. This is when the puppies will head into a huge growth stage. Their heartbeats can be heard easily, and their canine features are becoming more pronounced. They are developing toes, eyelids, whiskers and claws and beginning to look more like puppies every day. The fetus is about 45 millimeters long and has developed skin pigment.

Fetus at approximately Day 39

The gestation period in dogs is approximately 63 days and that means approx.18 days to go. We are looking forward to the miracle of birth once again on approximately June 27th.

Stay tuned….

Comments

Storm & Hannah Litter – Week Seven

“The Shell Game”
It was another hot and muggy day in Caledon and the previous evening’s rain had done little to break the humidity. The puppies were outside for their usual morning romp. These days, the little ones don’t always acquiesce when it’s time to come back inside and today was no exception. One by one, we gathered them up and deposited them in the whelping box. When we did the headcount, we were one short and it’s not as if there were that many to count yet there were no other puppies visible anywhere. We searched high and low and then by chance we heard a whimper, but it was coming from the most peculiar place and that’s where we found her. Since it had rained the previous evening, we tipped the little turtle-shaped pool up against the fence to empty. It seems that Miss Omelette had crawled behind and nudged it so it slid down and trapped her under the shell. Despite our own trauma, the little girl was unfazed.

This week included a car ride and visit to our friendly veterinar…

Chapeau and Chanel Litter – Week One

“The Guessing Game”No two pregnancies are the same. We checked Chanel’s temperature at 1:30 am and determined we had a wee bit of time, so we extinguished the lights and settled in for a little nap. Little was right. At around 2:00 am, Chanel was becoming more restless so when we got up to investigate, not only did she just deposit Mr. Brut (light green) on the bedroom carpet, but she’d already deposited Miss Opium (red) on the ensuite tile floor. She continually kept us guessing. Miss Dior (pink) made her entrance on the patio and Miss Obsession (beige) graced the tarp we’d put on the bedroom floor. It wasn’t until the birth of Mr. Jovan Musk (orange) that Chanel improved her aim and began having puppies on the bed. The rest of the group was rounded out by Mr. Polo (forest green), Miss Shalimar (blue), Miss Chanel no5 (white), Mr. Aramis (brown) and finally Mr. Hugo Boss (grey) approaching 9:00 am. Of course, sleep is out of the question as we now had to tend to Chanel’s precious lit…

Chapeau and Chanel Litter – Week Seven

“Nature’s Charcuterie”The weather here finally cooperated suitably for the puppies to get outside. While a little tentative for the first two and a half minutes, they wandered over to the milk truck, aka Chanel who provided them with a little snack al fresco, despite their twenty-eight razor sharp teeth. After that, there was a huge free-for-all. The pups ran off in groups of two or three or sometimes solo. As their confidence grew, they explored the yard in ever-widening circles. They scaled rocks and little mounds of snow and chased one another around a big cedar tree in a seemingly endless game of tag. When they were ready to wind down a bit, a sampling of nature’s charcuterie followed. This consisted of sampling a variety of twigs with a chaser of a mouthful of snow.

Most of their neighbours, namely the pups in Faith’s litter departed for their forever homes over the weekend. We used the opportunity to give everyone a bit more room by putting the five boys in Faith’s whelping box a…

Regalgoldens Golden Retrievers

Search This Blog