Harriet the Great

The news is that all of the puppies have now been delivered, and all of the puppies have a good birth weight. The weights range from .795 up to 1.020 lbs. - having a tight range of weights is very desirable so that is a good start!

The larger litters (eight pups or more) have two or more heavier pups over 1 lb., and the rest are in the .700 - .800 lb range, and a smaller litter (five and fewer pups) will have heavier puppies, and its sometimes difficult to deliver large puppies.

The girls have the majority for the first time ever, I almost cannot believe it!

They have already started to get into little piles for warmth, and they are surprisingly mobile and vocal (its always surprising). The next milestone is that the umbilical cords should fall off in about 2 days.

This is the first born, a girl. She will be known as "Miss Pink"

Harriet did so well, I am so proud of her. It looked like a battle zone there for a while, but we made it! She is getting all of the best food that she loves tonight, and she is sleeping as much as possible while the pups nurse, and "army crawl" all around her. I know she is exhausted, she was sleeping in between puppy deliveries with her head up and her eyes partially rolled back in her head, trying to stay alert, but so tired.

Here she is cleaning things up a bit. As you can see, every pup has its own ID color, this helps in tracking progress with weight gain and development.

I will be posting official first pictures (when they are cleaned up) tomorrow!

Thanks for all of the good wishes for Harriet, and kind thoughts in general from everyone, it means a lot to us to hear from you!