More Puppies for Jaci
By Brother Luke
Jaci’s latest litter of 7 puppies was born overnight on June 7-8. This time the process started in the kennel, not in my room. That at least saved me some extra clean-up work. The first puppy was born just before midnight, and almost like clockwork they came out at 1-hour intervals. Only puppy number 6 was a little problematic. The sac was broken, and I saw the tail coming out, but before I could get hold of the puppy it went back up into the track. So, I decided to give Jaci a small dose of Oxytocin. It was at a time when that posed no danger to her or the pup. It worked, and the puppy came out alive. Number 7 followed 30 minutes later.
Jaci is a Mom on the move. If you have seen any of my videos of her playing, she is always the first of my dogs to retrieve the chuckit ball, and she can outrun all the other dogs. That characteristic doesn’t go away in the whelping pen. She often moves the whelping pool away from the wall so she can circulate around the outside of the pool in addition to nursing and cleaning the pups normally in the pool. After the whelping process is finished it takes her some time to settle down into calm Mom mode. This time she was moving the puppies around a little frantically, so we decided to mask her for a few hours to let her settle down.
By Thursday evening I thought she was doing fine, but to be sure we kept the mask on overnight. The next day we took it off, and I asked Dave Bentley to watch her and if he heard any puppies crying to check in on the situation and put the mask back on if needed. Dave is our kennel attendant, and he does a super job keeping the kennel clean. He helps out with many other tasks as well. What happened that morning was amazing. Unfortunately, we did not get it on video.
While Dave was outside cleaning Jaci’s pen he heard a pup cry. Each pen has a small window to allow for observation either from the inside out or the outside in. So, he looked in the window and saw Jaci with a pup in her mouth, and she was circling around the outside of the pool, as she is wont to do. When the pup stopped crying, she got back into the pool and put the pup down. Another pup cried and she did the same thing. Picked up the pup in her mouth and circled around outside the pool until the pup stopped crying. When it stopped crying she put it back down in the pool. In both cases, the pups immediately began nursing when back in the pool. When Dave told me about this he remarked that humans do the same thing. They can take a crying child up and caress it, walk with it, or even take it for a ride in the car. Jaci caused no injury to the pups at all.
Now the pups are a couple of weeks old. They are all doing well and growing normally. I’m keeping a close eye on one of the boys. Jaci had two boys and five girls. The sire was Kahn, and we would love to have a male pup from this litter grow up to be the new Kahn. Keep a good thought that this happens. My Kahn is now 9 years old, so we know we don’t have a lot of time to plan for his successor.
I don’t usually do this, but maybe some of you have names you’d like to suggest for the new Kahn. The only stipulation is that the name has to begin with an F, since this is litter F-22. Obviously, we make the final decision, but input would be great.
