Successful Delivery

We got home last night after spending 24 hours at the vets office in Fort Collins, Co.  I’m glad to report a successful delivery, we have all eight puppies resting with mom.

Kona’s temperature dropped sometime Thursday before I got home from work (on average whelping will start 24-48 hours after the dogs temperature drops), we had already decided to use a vet that had a natural whelping area for Kona’s delivery as we wanted to be prepared if she needed help, so that we would have a successful delivery.

We loaded up our overnight bags and Kona of course.  We arrived at the vet just before 7pm.  We were welcomed and everyone was very nice, we were told we could sleep with Kona or we could find a hotel close by and bring Kona in when she started labor.  It was a good thing we decided to stay there.  We laid out our sleeping bags and settled in for the night, watched some videos on my computer and slept off and on through the night.  At 6:30am, the technician that had stayed at the clinic with us knocked and came in, she had been passing by and noticed Kona licking.  She told us we had our first puppy! Boy were we excited. And it was a boy.  He was dried, weighed and returned to mommy, who had already cleaned him fairly well.  We marked him with a blue piece of yarn and prepared to wait for the next delivery.

It was about an hour later that we actually got to observe a puppy being born.  The second puppy was a girl, and turned out to be the biggest of the group.  It was about an hour again and the third was born. and then less than half an hour for the forth.  We then had a long wait ahead of us.  It was over three hours before the fifth was born and we had started to worry, before he made his arrival we decided to perform and ultrasound to check on the remaining pups.  They all had strong heartbeats and we had decided to wait and see how things progressed.  It was only a few minutes after the ultrasound that the contractions started and #5 made his appearance.

We then had another long wait ahead of us.  The sixth puppy was a long time coming and after two and a half hours we again started to worry, she was given a drug to induce contractions and another ultrasound was performed when after 15 minutes passed and she had not delivered the puppy yet.  The puppy that was next in line to be born had a slower heart rate and we were discussing a c-section when she had a few contractions and he was born.  He was very healthy and soon cleaned, weighed and given to mommy for a first meal.

Then we had a talk with the vet to figure out how to proceed.  It was believed that she might be suffering from Uterine inertia, secondary inertia is symptomized by a cessation of uterine contractions due to uterine fatigue.  We decided to go with the C-Section.  Since the last two puppies had had good heartbeats we let the newest puppy finish his first meal before she was taken to surgery.

All went well and we soon had the last two little puppies resting in an incubator with the rest of their litter mates.

I’ll write more when I get a chance.  We still have a couple unspoken for contact us if you are in the market for the newest member of your family.