Kaia’s litter came in the middle of the night like they usually do. That is to say her first puppy came in the middle of the night at 1:22 AM to be exact. Her last puppy wasn’t whelped until about 10:30 AM so her entire labor lasted nearly 12 hours! All the pups were born healthy, weighing from 13oz. to 16oz. and they were all born hungry!
Luckily, Kaia was ready to feed them. She has been a perfect mama, feeding and caring for her pups. They managed to double their weight in the first seven days! It is a wondrous thing to see nature at work. Even though this is Kaia’s first litter, she knew exactly what to do when they were born. So much of the instinctual behavior of humans has evolved out of us. It looks almost like a miracle when we see it in our dogs.
As each puppy is born, Kaia first tears open the sack near the head so the pup can begin breathing. Then she licks the pup all over to stimulate its respiration. Once the pup is breathing normally she chews off the umbilical cord and eats the placenta. It’s very tempting to jump in and try to help, but our vet told us that we should sit on our hands for thirty seconds and let Kaia do her thing before we tried to interfere.
It’s hard not to help! We were literally sitting on our hands and counting to thirty (as fast as we could). It just seems so amazing that she knows exactly what to do and really, if everything goes ok, she doesn’t even need our help!
Well… that’s not entirely true. We were there to administer calcium supplements to guard against eclampsia and she also got an injection after the 9th puppy to make sure all the pups were delivered. We also cleaned up A LOT! Wow! Birthing 9 pups is messy!
As I write this she is in the whelping box feeding her puppies. They are starting to get very noisy. Their little eyes are just beginning to open and their little voices are…well.. not so little any more.
We were delighted to find that we had all three Lab colors represented. We have 4 blacks, 3 yellows and 2 chocolates. I’m seriously considering keeping one of these puppies for myself. The girls keep asking me, “which one, Jon, which one?” I honestly don’t know. I think they’ll all be awesome dogs. Lyn likes black because the black dust bunnies aren’t as conspicuous. Kailin is in love with a chocolate. Hmmm. I dunno. Why can’t I keep ‘em all?
