Back to the blog I started a few years back with an earlier litter. I had transplanted it to my website that I create with my iWeb program on my MacBook. Unfortunately Apple decided it didn’t want to be in the website hosting business anymore and the blog portion of my site won’t work. There are more than one ways to skin a cat, right?
Anyway, my Havanese dog, Maxi, whelped her first litter of puppies five days early on July 3. Ten boys! Four of the pups were premature. Oddly, dogs can conceive puppies on several different days during their heat cycle as long as their eggs are still viable. Once released, the eggs remain fertile for up to 48 hours. However, not all eggs are necessarily released at the same time. So puppies conceived with the first eggs could easily be several days older than the ones conceived with eggs released a few days later.
This was likely the case in Maxi’s breeding. Her puppies’ birth weights ranged from 80 grams to 180! Quite a disparity. Four were under 90 grams which is definitely on the preemie side of the coin and dangerously underweight. We lost two, sadly. But I consider the other two to be my miracle babies.
To complicate things further the first puppy was born totally lifeless. Maxi was not interested in removing the sack or cutting the cord so I did both then went to work trying to revive him. 45 minutes later after warming his very cool body and rubbing him as vigorously as I dared with a soft terrycloth towel, he let out two cries! I knew we were on our way! Meanwhile Maxi delivered three more puppies. We both had our hands full. I am happy to report that that first puppy is not only thriving but is the largest in the litter!
