02.06.10
Posted in News at 02:31 by nikki
Well, they are all doubled now and some don’t have far to triple. I’ve added some more photos in the Week 2 album.
Took Skella in to the vets (not a student vet this time) today and apart from the fact that she had a slight fever they couldn’t see anything although from all the info we gave them about how she is acting and the bleeding (of course she didn’t bleed while she was there) they think that quite possibly there was some damage to the uterus and most likely from the shots she got. So they told us to keep a close eye on her and sent Rúnar home (I was at home with the puppies) with some antibiotics but said NOT to give them unless we felt she needed them. They are good and careful that way, don’t give those drugs like candy because it’s so easy to make the body resistant to the antibiotics as so often happens with humans. They feel that we might have to spay her but insisted it not be done if not totally necessary until after the pups are gone. They would rather she be able to care for her pups without extra stress or problems from surgery. Which I’m so totally in agreement.
For the great news. They are starting to open their eyes, Tásla has one eye open now at the 2 a.m. feeding and they are all so big Aron is already 820 grams and he is drinking around 50 ml all by himself! Amazing how quickly they grow without you really actually noticing even though we weigh them many times a day it still comes as a great surprise when they are actually that big already.
The other dogs got to see the puppies while Skella was at the vet’s today and Birta seemed to realize that she was a grandma. If was a bit funny, she sniffed one of the puppies and then went and sniffed Klói’s butt. I wonder if there is a similar family smell to dogs?! I imagine so.
Well, I better get to bed for a few hours before they wake up again wanting more. A couple cute photos taken tonight of the other love bugs in the house. Rúnar has been taking the feedings in the evenings and half the weekends. These guys are feeling a bit left out most of the time so they grab any moment they can with Daddy! Frigg and Hófi got to go to the store with us yesterday and got to run on the way home but it was SO cold.
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02.04.10
Posted in News at 01:21 by nikki
Yay, tonight little Tumi has doubled his birthweight. I can see from the numbers that the others will most likely be doubled by tomorrow night and perhaps the first born bitch Tásla the next day because she is gaining slower than the rest. She likes to play with the bottle and is not as pushy as the others. The two black ones are growing so much faster but they were also the heaviest born so I think it is all going very evenly. They are getting so big that in a couple days it will be hard to hold them while giving them the bottle.
Rúnar has been so helpful this week and has been busy all evening after he gets home so that I can both rest and do other things like mop the floors, do the dishes, make supper etc. They still seem to want their food every couple hours so even though we have tried to spread out the time a bit we’ve gotten up to about 3 hours at the most and then we hear them with their little Mogwai calls and you can hear sucking noises and that means we have to get in their quickly to stop the poor males getting their privates injured. Hehe
Skella has had some extra bleeding the past few days and we are concerned about her. She did have a double dose of oxytosin and I know that can have side effects although the student vet said it was safe. I know of a bitch in Norway who bled to death after a litter because of too much of the drug so, true to myself as always, I’m worrying. I know it’s probably nothing but we called the vet tonight to ask (the same vet that came to our house) and he said that possibly she has a ruptured blood vessel or a vein leaking and that if we want we can bring her in tomorrow for a check-up if we don’t see any difference in the colour or amount of the blood. It’s not really bleeding excessively but enough that we know that our other females have not bled like that after a litter and the blood is so clean coloured not like the typical left over stuff that they rid their bodies of.
She is being a great mom though, cares for them so well and cleans them so we don’t have to worry about any of that. They are drinking a bit from her now because she seems to have gotten some milk just not all that much and of course that can partly be because we are feeding them and she doesn’t have to produce more but we have also found a knot in one of the back teats that we have been trying to massage and see if it will go away.
We got these adorable photos of Tryggur Aron drinking and I just have to share. He started out with a vengeance like he always does, drinks himself silly then he gets all OOOOh I drank too much and lastly he refuses the bottle. He is the cutest and they all remind me so much of Klói’s character. Speaking of Klói he has been able to come see his puppies a couple times and is quite fascinated by them still.
I am so happy with these little puppies, they are so sweet and we have already started some “training”, both scent training and environmental enrichment like different textures. I have not done the Early Neurological Stimulation on them and will not do it with bottle fed pups. They get way too much handling as it is and I also think that because the program was originally developed for kennel dogs that it may be putting some of our pups over the threshold and causing more stress and reactivity than they need to have. I remember thinking this last time and decided that I would not do the exercises with Raggi and Rún. I will admit that through the years the more I learn about dogs, clicker training (operant conditioning), stress and calming signals I have been a bit more cautious as to how I want to raise my puppies and I am thinking that environmental enrichment to build up confidence from the start is probably “safer” in terms of not overdoing the physical stressing. Since it does seem to matter how well each individual dog will cope with the stress. I’ve had dogs in the same litter be totally different even though they all got the same exercises as puppies but I do know that the homes they go into make so much of a difference and no stress exercises will change that! Enrichment to the environment and environmental training will.
I’d done the ENS for years on all my litters (can’t remember when I started it…2001 I believe) and I even advocated it to others and was asked to write an article in the kennel club magazine here because I believed it was an important factor of raising strong puppies at the time. However I have to admit that the easiest most confident, calm and collected puppies I’ve ever had are Raggi and Rún. Whether it is because there were only two of them (I will admit I didn’t spend much more time with them than I have any other puppy because at the time I didn’t have too much spare time to even take them for environmental training). While they were here with us they were so easy to get along with, never any stressing or over the top behaviour, and they seem to be very well balanced individuals from what I’ve heard and excel at obedience work. I also often wonder if the stress exercises caused the cancer to develop in a few of my GSP’s (all had different types of cancer but at least one was a stress induced fast growing cancer!). And so I’m just experimenting with how these puppies will turn out, now of course it won’t be a fair experiment because they are bottlefed and get lots of handling anyway.
I have no worries that they will be great family pets because most breeders I know do not do the ENS exercises but their puppies are very easy to settle in normal situations as well as stressful ones. Like I say I think I’m going to look at this whole puppy raising thing in a different way and we are developing a puppy enrichment class for our school that I’m really looking forward to starting. All the puppies that stay here in Iceland out of this litter will get a free course in clicker training as well as what we are going to call “preparation for the world” puppy class.
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01.31.10
Posted in News at 01:28 by nikki
So here are the little angels. Photos taken today and they are starting their 6th day of life (the photos were taken late this evening). I guess you can say they are 5 days old…I never know exactly how to count that.
Well actually I’m feeling horrible right now, have to lay down at least until the next feeding. I have such bad shoulders and back from crouching over the puppies on the floor, shouldn’t be on the computer. Getting dizzy so I’ll just add the photos and not write too much. 
The one thing I will say though is that the puppy’s second names are the names of some of our best handball players that were playing while they were being born. Iceland is going to be competing for the bronze medal I believe tomorrow or Monday and so we are very proud of our team, it’s the same team that won the silver at the Olympics and got the medal of honour from the president in Iceland. We love our handball. Hehe Well, usually I don’t watch it only if it’s something like this and then I think it’s so exciting! The girls each got half of the name of our best goalie (Björgvin) because when used on their own split up then they are girl’s names.
First born girl: Töfra Tásla Björg (Tásla is a word used by children for toe…she has her daddy’s dewclaws! Björg is a girl’s name and means rescue but it is also the first part of the man’s name Björgvin) Born: 14:25 / 245 grams
Second born also a girl: Töfra Tígla Vina (Tígla is a word for diamonds (in cards) or rhombus, Vina is a girl’s name but also means friend and is the second part of the man’s name Björgvin) Born: 17:15 / 310 grams
Third puppy is a huge boy: Töfra Tryggur Aron (Tryggur means faithful) Born: 17:20 / 335 grams
He’s had a cut on his paw that is healing (you can see a little dark spot on his foot). I think the vet might have accidentally cut him with the scissors when she cut his cord. I have been wondering about how it happened and that’s all I can think of because it was a clean shallow cut almost like a scrape. He is extremely strong and eats like an ox!
Fourth puppy another boy: Töfra Tumi Arnór (Tumi Þumall is the Icelandic name for Tom Thumb) Born: 17:30 / 185 grams
Fifth puppy a boy: Töfra Tinni Alexander (of course because of his “Tinni spot”) Born: 18:25 / 263 grams
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Posted in News at 00:44 by nikki
I just added more photos but I can’t put them in order from some reason. I’m not a computer geek that’s for sure. I have a bit more time today because the beautiful full moon last night brought with it some great happenings. The puppies finally figured out how to use the bottle instead of me having to use a mouth syringe and take an hour to feed them, now it only takes about 10-15 minutes and everyone is happy. They also get more at a time and so the 2 hour feedings are changing to 3-4 hour feedings. Rúnar let me sleep today so I finally got 5 hours sleep, long story short I have only slept 2 times about 30 minutes each time over the past 5 days. The first night I overslept by an hour and the pups lost so much weight and so I was really turning into a nervous wreck, I tried to lay down and sleep but couldn’t, was scared I’d oversleep again and I could have killed them with my carelessness. I was having heart palpitations and all kinds of strange things going on, seeing flecks, my nerves couldn’t take anything and I’d snap. I didn’t eat much myself and forgot to drink most the time, isn’t that ironic that I do everything to keep the puppies hydrated and fed and forget myself. Oh well, it’s all looking up and Rúnar has even decided to go and hold the course tomorrow instead of postponing it a week like he had thought of on Friday when things were still a bit iffy. We can see that she is getting some milk but wonder if she overstressed if she’ll lose it again. I’m hoping it doesn’t stress her too much having him leave in the middle of the day on a weekend. At least I got some rest today!
We had been waiting for Skella to have her puppies on Monday because we thought she would start on Sunday night. Nothing happened until the European Championship game started live on TV. Of course we wanted to watch that Iceland was competing and the whole country watches handball when these specials competitions are. Typical of course that meant we couldn’t watch it so Rúnar turned on his computer in the room with the whelping box and we listened to it. Now whether that was too stressful for Skella we will never know but something didn’t go as planned. I know I haven ‘t given all the details but the birth started out fine and then Skella started to get overly stressed to the point of we knew something was wrong. We called the vet and she told us to come right away and so we packed up the one pup and Skella and away we went for the 10-15 minute drive to the vets. Got there ex-rays were taken and there appeared to be no reason why she couldn’t birth on her own although they all had their feet first so they gave her some oxitosin and soon after 3 puppies were born in a space of about 5 minutes each. The last little guy was TINY (185 gr.) and popped out without us realizing it because the male puppy ahead of him was HUGE (335 gr.). So he lay there in his sack for a few seconds and was turning white drowning when we noticed him. The vet didn’t seem to have delivered many puppies (she is a student vet) or at least it felt that way so I asked is he breathing don’t we have to massage him a bit. She looked at him laying on the floor beside her and said oh, yes then picked him up and did the swing through the legs trick but nothing happened. I asked to have him from her and started massaging as I’ve had to do so many times in the past with my own litters and other people’s.
He started breathing but sounded like he had water in his lungs so she gave him a needle for his lungs and then a little puppy boost paste. He was whining and gasping for breath for so long that we thought maybe we shouldn’t have revived him, it reminded me of Birta when she was born and it took so long to bring her back to life. The gasping and the sound they make is heartwrenching. He was alive though and we put them all up to Skella’s belly but couldn’t get them to drink much because Skella was just too anxious. While the puppies were arriving Skella’s teats and belly as well as her ears were white and the teats looked shriveled and hard instead of pinkish, they remained that way while we were trying to get the puppies to suckle. It scared me actually, looked like dead flesh and reminded me of shock (like in Freyja after she was hit by a car) but when I asked the vet if that was normal (I’d never seen that before!) she said sure it’s fine, the new student tried to ask her again in English because we thought she might not notice or understand what we meant. I think sometimes that the language difference is not a good thing, she does not speak much Icelandic and even when speaking to her in English I sometimes feel she doesn’t understand my accent. She is from Holland I believe. The vet assured us there were no more puppies left in Skella, we were not sure she was right but went home with the new bundles of joy.
About half an hour after we got home we were still trying to get the puppies to drink because Skella did not want to lay still, then all of a sudden Skella jumped up turned around and started licking her backend. As we thought the last puppy had arrived it was 18:25, she had started giving birth at 14:25. This last one was the only one that came head first. So after that she settled down and we thought the puppies were getting some milk because she had a bunch of milk before she started to give birth. I think possibly the stress of everything going on was too much for her and it soon became apparent that the puppies were not getting milk. The numbers were not good, all were losing and losing fast.
Luckily Rúnar stayed home on Tuesday as well and we took her to the vets and said we wanted to give the puppies fluids because they were not getting anything. She gave Skella an injection of oxitosin and some calcium and said now let the puppies nurse on the floor here. Of course they all looked like they were nursing and so she felt they were fine. I was nervous but thought okay the milk will come in now and we were giving them puppy formula every two hours. I weighed them regularly and they kept losing and were almost up to minus 40 grams on the biggest ones. I called the vet in the evening and said that I wanted to give them fluids and that was that! The on call vet who is a man came home to give them each a shot. He no doubt saved their lives by doing that! They stayed stable through the night with the 2 hour feedings but didn’t gain or lost one or two grams. Next day I phoned and said I needed to bring them in again for another shot of fluids under the skin because they were not gaining yet and now they were dehydrated again as well.
When we got there the vet checked them and sure enough they definitely were not in good shape, they got a shot and some puppy boost and I asked if I could have some of that to take home. Long story short…the fluids under the skin helped and although it’s taken a few days for them to reach birth weight again because we took too long to get them started, they are now all gaining well.
I had a real breakthrough last night and I thank the beautiful full moon. Hehe They all finally learned how to drink from the bottle without choking themselves and now I can feed them all including the little guy with a bottle and it meant that Rúnar can now feed them for me so I got much needed sleep this morning when Rúnar woke up I went to bed for 5 hours and woke up refreshed and ready to go. I went outside and cleaned the yard and even got to go onto Facebook and add some photos for my friends there. I just didn’t know what to do with all the extra time I had on my hands, I could do dishes, eat, drink, do the laundry. WOW, never thought I’d miss not being able to do housework. Hehehe It was a very difficult experience and not the first time I’ve been through it but other times I have not been so lucky. So I’m glad that they are growing like weeds now and gaining. I think they are all out of danger and I’m so thankful that we actually did think quick enough (although I wish the vet had helped us more when we first asked for help) to be able to save them all even the little tiny one. He is such a great little puppy, he’s always hungry and eats so well that he’s never been any problem to feed. The only one that is more lazy about eating is the first born little girl. She is so pretty but of course she went so much longer than all the rest without fluids to maybe it will just take her a little bit longer to come to her own again.
Now I’m going to add some photos of them with their new names.
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01.29.10
Posted in News at 17:49 by nikki
New photos of the puppies will be added now and again in the Pages section to the right. Enjoy!
A bit of trouble with milk and I’ve been bottle feeding the whole litter but no time to update at the moment. Things seem to be turning around and all 5 are still with us and appear healthy and strong. I can sleep later when they are big enough to run around and eat.
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