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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01.25.10
Posted in News at 20:34 by nikki
Puppies decided they didn’t want to wait any longer and thank goodness for that because it meant Rúnar was home SICK, yesterday he took the car into Reykjavík and I didn’t know if she was going to have them then or not. I’m so glad she waited until today at least and it’s such a relief that the stress is over for the moment. They are a couple days early (although we were told she also had her litter on day 61 last time) and it didn’t go exactly as planned but we are happy that it all turned out well. We’re just SO TIRED, totally exhausted at the moment so I’m going to throw in a few photos and then I’ll try to get back to tell a bit more about our last couple days adventures. Rúnar has a stomach flu or some bug and poor guy had to get dressed to drive me to the vet’s with Skella and the pups today.
The short of it is that 2 puppies were born at home, the first and the last, 3 were born in the span of 20 minutes or so after an oxytocin injection at the vets. All are doing well.
We have 3 boys and 2 girls, all have double dews. One boy is black and one girl so that was fun to get. The little tiny guy we were told is probably a bit less developed than the rest. He is half the size and wasn’t breathing when he was born. He looked dehydrated when he was born and got a needle with some medicine for his lungs she said and also some puppy booster. He was gasping for breath for the longest time all the way home too so we’re glad to see that he is drinking now and although he is being a bit whiney (when he rolls down after climbing on his siblings to try to find the milk) but Skella is taking it in her stride. She was so anxious at first but now she’s calm and taking good care of them.
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01.18.10
Posted in News at 20:36 by nikki
Skella went with us to town today when Rúnar got home, we needed to get some gas in the car and stopped along the way to let her run. Well her idea of a run wasn’t exactly what we had in mind but she is pretty cute sometimes. Rúnar lifted her out of the car, she can jump but we don’t want her doing that because she is such a goon and would probably be back heavy. Hehe So as soon as she got out of the car she ran a couple hundred meters in two directions and then came back and layed down, rolled around like she always loves to do and then wanted to go back in the car. She seems to be sleeping alot lately and is pretty tired, she lays in her whelping box off and on, her hair is falling off her belly getting ready for puppies. There’s a whole bunch of kicking going on in there too so it’s pretty fun when she comes to cuddle. Here are a few photos from this evening. This stupid program won’t let me put the photos in the right order, I write the number I want them to be and it shows up correct in the gallery settings but it doesn’t show up on the screen like that. So I took them out of a “gallery setting and just added them here slightly smaller. I think they are still big enough to look at though.
Had a great theory class on Sunday and Rúnar did it almost all by himself, I tended to butt in once or twice. Hehe Great new slides show but we figured out that we did forget a few things so no doubt the classes will all be slightly improved each time. Such is the life of a teacher/trainer learn from experience. The students appeared quite happy with it and we had a couple there that had come to our old two day class and they liked this new “less scientific” lecture better because they felt the other class was a bit too complicated for beginners (that they were at the time). I used to explain too much and half the info I gave the beginners would have been great for an advanced class. I tend to be afraid to forget something and want to tell people everything I can in as short a time as possible. So now I know at least what I can use for the theoretical part of the advanced class. Rúnar did a great job on the new slides and put alot of work into it was up half the night before finishing because the printer decided it was going to be a pain in the butt. Got two photos (the others didn’t turn out) of the class, we had 12 people there so were very happy with the interest.
I guess I’ll let that do for now but I’ll try to update more often now that I’ll be stuck at home more. I do have a bunch to do though that I should get doing. Haven’t been doing any writing and I now need to put together a whole advanced clicker class as well as a puppy class and a breeder’s info lecture. That’s just a few of the ideas we have at the moment. I need a kick in the butt these days! Hint, hint.
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