What a whirlwind the last 72 hours have been! Cheeky’s temp had dropped on Wednesday night, but then showed zero signs of labor on Thursday. Temp dipped again on Thursday night, so the vet office thought Wednesday was perhaps an inaccurate reading and the real temp drop was Thursday evening, putting her on track to deliver on her due date, Friday.
However, as of Friday night, she was barely showing any signs. Digging a little here or there, but mostly I wondered if it was just because I was annoying her with bedding options. Another call to the vet clinic and they said if she wasn’t in labor by the morning, to take her down there to check heartbeats (I did have a doppler at home and heartbeats were remaining high and happy.
This morning arrived and still no signs of labor. Since it had been 24 hours since her temp drop, they recommended we head down. Initially, I was going to hold out a little longer as I was monitoring heartbeats and no one was in distress. Dr. Hess (our repro DVM) said I could wait for a bit, but there was no good reason to believe she was just suddenly going to go into labor since she was showing no signs up to now. That was enough and I hopped in the car with Cheeky and Halo and gave Marc a ring to meet me down there to grab Halo.
When I got there, the ER doctor said she’d already called Dr. Hess as one of the puppies was getting a low heartbeat reading and they needed to take her to c-section. When I heard that I texted my friend Mary Delisa (the same that lends me all her whelping box and supplies) as she is a c-section professional breeding Frenchies and Mastiffs. Mary and Marc were both there before Cheeky even went under. The three of us waited patiently in the exam room and then they wheeled in 4 HUGE puppies! 2 boys and 2 girls!
We each held and cooed over the very fat babies and commented on how pretty all their heads were already! Cheeky was wheeled in a little bit later and she was still SUPER out of it. I sat on the ground and had her head on my leg (you have to closely monitor c-section dogs as they have no idea why they wake up and gerbils are attached to them) and Mary went to work getting them all attached to a nipple and feeding. And so we sat for 2 hours just in absolute awe of the 4 thriving puppies Cheeky and Goose made!
Before leaving, Cheeky had some bloodwork done and Mary showed me how to get the puppies to potty. Hopefully, Cheeky’s instincts will kick in soon and she will take over this job, but they said to expect it to take up to 48 hours for her to realize they are her babies. Mary helped me pack the babies into a warming box she brought for me and then helped us all into the car. This whole breeding process post-break up with Marc has really made me realize what an incredible village I have.
And without further ado, I introduce The Amazing Spiderlings:
: Fang, 19 ounce boy
: Venom, 17.3 ounce boy
: Charlotte, 16.2 ounce girl
: Itsy Bitsy, 16.3 ounce girl
