Redwing Australian Terriers

For those of you who were watching the live stream last night and saw Ruth escape the whelping box, first let me assure you that Ruth and pups are doing well this morning. I will try to share with you the events leading up to her discomfort last night.

Pups had not been gaining as was optimal, so we upped Ruth’s meals and increased their frequency to improve her milk production.  We also started supplementing the smaller puppies to keep them from falling behind their bigger siblings.   We’ve been walking Ruth frequently to help with the output from all those meals.  She was walked last night at roughly 11pm.

Sometime after that she needed to go out, and eventually escaped the puppy pen.  She was unable to return to the puppies.  Thankfully friends and puppy midwives made some phone calls and I was eventually roused.  Ruth was returned to her pen, the pups were fished out from under the bedding and all is well.  And, as I was finishing up giving the last of the pups a little extra nighttime snack, the Lawrence County sheriff’s department showed up to do a “wellness check”.

Finally, we’ve made some changes here so hopefully there will not be a rerun of last night’s debacle.  In the rearing of puppies things are always evolving, and we are constantly adjusting our care and changing management strategies to provide the best possible environment for our girl and her pups.

For those of you who have been watching our live stream from last night, we are back online now.  Everything is fine, thanks to Theresa and Elaine, Ruth is back in with her puppies and the babies are all fine.  You may have to refresh your browser to see the current stream.  More on last night later.

It’s been brought to my attention that in some places on the website we’ve said that there were 5 puppies.  This was our initial count, prior to our little surprise.  Our token boy is doing well, definitely on par with his sisters.  So the final count is 6 puppies.  All seem to be doing well and thriving.  They are featured below.

So for those watching, looks like the fun wasn’t over yet.  I was watching on the computer and saw her pushing.  She’s been doing that off and on, and i thought she was getting rid of a placenta, but no!  There was a 6th puppy.  This one is a boy (yay for gender equality).  Maybe she saved the best for last.

For those of you who were snug in your beds last night, I’ll share the news with you now.  Ruth had her puppies last night from about 4:45 until 6:30 this morning.  She had 5(I was only expecting 4) and they are ALL GIRLS!  I’ve never had an all female litter  before  so this is a first for me.  There are 4 blue/tans and 1 red.  They are all crying, crawling and nursing, and appear to be healthy and vigorous.   Go Ruthie! Click the photo to see them live.

Ruth’s temp is still down, but she shows little interest in delivering puppies.  She polished off a nice dinner, chased the neighbors loose dog and invited me to play ball.  So for now, the wait continues.

Ruth’s temperature this morning is 97.9, a significant drop from her usual 99.5.  It looks like the sign we’ve been waiting for, that would indicate the onset of labor.  It will still probably be some time before the pups are actually born, but does appear that things are moving along.  I will run errands this morning and retake her temp at noon.  Keep your fingers crossed, everyone!

It would seem that getting a webcam up and running should be an easy project.  But coaxing an old computer to work happily with various other old and used up bits of technology has been challenging, to say the least.  Today’s success has been getting the webcam working so we are ready for the big event.  The link below should take you to the webcam, which is currently focused on the empty whelping box.  Soon we hope to have more entertainment there, in the meantime check back soon.

Now that April the giraffe has had her calf it is time to start the puppy watch here.  Ruth is due Thursday, though a few days before or after would be considered normal.  The whelping room is ready, the webcam still non-functional but hopefully a new, longer ethernet cable will fix that.  So now it’s up to Ruth.  I will be checking her temperature twice daily and look for a drop in her normal temp to indicate the onset of early labor.

For the puppy watchers, and those of you numbed by the seemingly endless giraffe watch, here is the first puppy monitoring session for Ruth’s litter.  Ruth is due around the 20th, so we have a ways to go yet, but I enjoyed, and thought you might too, a little sneak preview.  Enjoy!