#118. or, Dog Pile!

 I have news!  Old news, really. About a week old. We now have 13 dogs. Which sounds rather hillbilly-ish, I know, but it's not quite like we're crazy dog hoarders......just yet, anyways.

  Remember a couple months back when I posted about helping our good old male Labrador Retriever, Tuke,  find a little quiet time to get jiggy with our other, sexy young Lab? (you can read about it here.)

  Turns out that the old boy still had it in him and now we have 10 new puppies. Now, I realize that sort of makes me some type of dog pimp, but I live on the farm and we get to call it animal husbandry, which makes it all good.

  Anyways. the puppies.

   It had been obvious that Abby, the mother, was pregnant for the last month or so. She was getting rounder by the day. The week before she gave birth, I could put my hand on her while she was laying down and feel a bustle of activity going on inside of her belly. She had been spending some of her time looking for private places to hide. We had to follow her about and board up places that she seemed to find interesting, to keep her from burrowing under a shed or someplace we couldn't get to her when she had pups. I was a little concerned that she might crawl under the deck and I'd have to shimmy under there on my belly to get them all out. In an effort to encourage her to take advantage of the dog house, I had Little Son get a bale of straw and pack it in there to make it cozy and more appealing. Then we hoped for the best.

  The days before she gave birth were like each one was Christmas morning for Little Son. He'd get up and go to check if the puppies had arrived. On the day they did, it was pretty obvious. Tuke was practically beside himself. Anybody that came into the yard, received the same treatment. He's come barrelling up to you, full of excitement, spin about in a tizzy, then go bounding back toward the dog house. Like, COME QUICK! LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENING!!! Thankfully, Abby had decided to give birth in the dog house.

  When she was done, she had 10 puppies. 4 yellow, 5 black, and 1 brown. You could nestle them nicely in your hand, their fat little bellies resting in your palm. When you'd walk up to the dog house, you could hear them all  squeaking away inside as they all crawled over each other, struggling to find their way toward lunch.

 

about a day or 2 old

  It's been about 10 days since Abby had her pups. The tiny pile of dog in the nest of straw in the doghouse has gotten substantially larger. Now one pup spills out of your hands when you cup them together. They don't even have their eyes open yet, but I can tell we're going to have to set up new diggs before too long. It's hard to believe how fast they are growing.

that's a pile of dog!

about 10 days old

  While Abby is busy being a good mother to her new puppies, I don't have any doubt that Tuke will be an equally good daddy. One time when he was younger, a neighbour stopped over for coffee on his way home from the veterinarian after having his box of puppies there for vaccinations. He set the box out of the truck for us to look at his little dogs and as they'd scramble out and scurry off, Tuke would run after them, pick them up by the scruff of the neck and bring them back and drop them into the box. While he's beginning to show the signs of getting a little older, I think he's still as excited as any new young dad could be.

  So, the plan is to not keep all of these adorable little puppies. The thought was to see how their personalities develop and maybe keep one that appealed to us. Right now though, they're all pretty damned appealing. We may have underestimated our ability to resist the adorable cuteness of a basket of puppies.

 



   I am submitting this post to Dude write this week. It's where guy bloggers come together to submit posts, that get voted on from Sunday to Tuesday evening to see whose was most popular. I encourage you to pop over and take a look at them and maybe come back and vote on your favourites. 
You can get there by clicking on THIS LINK.