Here are pictures of Emmylou 5 days before birth and just after. Mom looks very proud of herself and she should be, it was a very beautiful delivery. Way to go Emmylou you did it again girl!!
Here are Emmylou and the seven pups about an hour after the last one was born. She had 4 girls and 3 boys. They are all tri coloured and weighed in at between 5.5 and 7.5 oz. In a couple of days we will post pictures identifying male and female. Mom seems to have a lot of milk for everyone as you can see by their bulging sides after only an hour or so of nursing. We sure hope these pups have mom and dads temperament. Mrs JRRanch can get some sleep now after the all night delivery. It started at about midnight with nesting as the pups began to position for the delivery. About 2:30 she started hard labour and the first pup was born at 3am. The last pup was born around 6:30am
The pups are 1 week old today. These pictures were taken in the order that they were born. Following is their gender and current weight left to right top to bottom.
They are all healthy squirmy little tykes and it was difficult to get them still for the pictures. They all look like they are predominantly black now but we expect this to fade quite a bit towards brown as they mature. Emmylou looked just like these pups at birth.
Their eyes may be open for their 2 week pictures.
The pups are almost 2 weeks old in these pictures. It was impossible to get them to stay still long enough to take the pictures so I just snapped a bunch and tried to pick out ones that showed a little of each pup. Since then their eyes have opened and they have gone from belly crawling to wobbly walking. The next pictures may show them walking a bit. At 18 days their hearing seems to be developing.
The pups are 3 weeks old here. Their eyes and ears are both working now. This is their first trip out of the whelping room and they are a little overwhelmed by the world at this point. We will take them out every day now for increasingly longer times. In a few days they will get their confidence up and will really start to roam around. In a week or so they will be ready for their pen in the kitchen and begin the process of independance from Mom.
The pups are 4 weeks old now. They come out to play like this a couple of times a day for about 10 minutes. This will increase until at 6 weeks they will be out all day. They are already nibbling away at mom's food in the whelping pen so they will start on a bit of mushed up puppy food soon. This is earlier than most of our litters that start a bit of solid food closer to 5 weeks. Most of the pups are exploring their new environment and walking all over. A couple are content to stay on the blanket but they will catch up in a couple of days and we will no longer be able to let them run loose like this. We will get out the x-pen next week so they can run about without constant supervision. Nov 4/04
Some pictures from one of their first walks outside. They are sticking pretty close to Mrs JRRanch now but in another week we will have a tough time keeping them together. The weather was so nice today they spent most of the day outside. Then they crashed in their training crate. They are fed in their own crate now and soon will be spending the night in them. Nov 22/04
These pictures were taken over the last week. They barely fit in the crate in their x-pen now. They are all sleeping in their own crate and don't wake up until about 7am. What a relief for Mrs JRRanch, she doesn't have to get up in the middle of the night anymore. In the picture below they had a visitor for a day. He was bigger than they were so he got the prime sleeping spot for awhile. This soon changed and they all piled in on top of him.
