Pepper, Day 56 days (pre-parturition)

Our cuddly Pepper hasn’t skipped a beat. She continues to happily hang out with the pack and enjoys cooling off indoors in the air conditioning. She has however excavated a lovely den in the backyard for her pups. Since she’s due next week, we will introduce Pepper to a lovely clean warm environment known as “the whelping box” for her to house her puppies in.

Pepper is loving her three meals a day. Usually a very slow eater, she now devours her meals which consists of a nutritious and “unprocessed” raw meal of veggies, meat/bone, raw eggs, beef liver, pre and probiotics and vitamins. Today she is enjoying a spa day with lots of pampering in preparation for the big event.

National Geographic image of a Golden Retriever puppy fetus

At this stage, the puppies have a full coat of hair and can be felt moving around in her tummy which measures 33 inches or 88.8 cm. The coat is one of the last organs to develop along with the intestinal tract. The majority of a puppy’s growth in size takes place the last couple weeks of gestation.

Pepper is shedding the hair on her belly in preparation for the birth. She is a very affectionate and cuddly girl at the best of times, but she now just wants to hug and cuddle all day long.

Stay tuned....

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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

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