Let The Blogs Begin

Well, I was going to wait until the first of next week to start this blog but as big as Jenga is I think we may be busy whelping puppies about that time. Her "official" due date is Thursday, April 29. She is GIANORMOUS!!! At least as big as she was last year when she whelped FOURTEEN puppies. These pictures were taken just last evening with technically 11 more days to go. She ain't goin' make it that long.

She has slowed wwwwaaaayyyy down too - which is to be expected when she's hauling around the load she's hauling. If you think about it, last year she whelped 14 puppies with an average puppy weight of 12 oz. OK let's round that up to a pound what with placentas and all the other "stuff" associated with birthing and she was carrying around at least 15 extra pounds. Now do the math - when she only weighs about 50 pounds not pregnant and you add 15 pounds that's about 30% of your body weight being added. That's a LOT!! And I would hazard a guess she was closer to having added 20 pounds of body weight.

Poor dear, she's not eating much either right now but that's to be expected. Her stomach is all squashed with puppies so the best she can manage is to graze from the bowl of food we leave in her crate during the day. Of course, once the babies arrive and she's feeding them all, she'll eat us out of house and home.

And Alan said he felt puppies moving around for the first time yesterday too. In my experience, you can usually start to see and feel babies moving around during the last week of pregnancy. So I think we're within that last week window.

I won't be able to post too much this weekend. I'll be in Terre Haute helping to work our all-breed kennel club show. Thanfully, I'll only be an hour away in case anything starts to happen. She can go into labor anytime after Day 58, which is Saturday ... so folks, we'll all be on Puppy Watch starting Sunday. We'll keep you posted.