BLOG: (ZERO, ZERO, ZERO): This DOG Made PUPPETS!!!

When I found This DOG!!! (now named Ginger) six weeks ago, I had no idea she was pregnant. I assumed I would find her owners or give her to the SPCA and never see her again. That's why I was feeding her as much healthy food as she wanted. I wasn't paying much attention to her weight until my dad came to visit two weeks ago and joked, "Is this dog fat or pregnant?!"

(Back story: my dad once got a fortune cookie that said, "You're not fat--you're pregnant!" It was really funny because he carries most of his weight in his belly, like a pregnant woman.)

We'd taken Ginger to the vet for a check up two weeks after I found her, and HE didn't even realize she was pregnant. My mom (who legally owns this dog) decided to wait a month or two to have her spayed after the vet's wife told her a horror story about how some people had brought in three dogs they'd found and had them spayed and neutered, but then the original owners showed up a few days later and sued the people for having their dogs altered.

So NO ONE realized this dog was pregnant, and EVERYONE was giving me a hard time for letting this dog get fat. I started paying attention to the feeding guidelines on the packages of food, and cut back by about 33%. This dog did NOT like that. For four or five days, she was always giving me sad faces and begging for food. Then, one day, while she was sound asleep on my lap, something kicked me in the thigh! I though she might have had gas, but I immediately began feeding her about 50% more again. Two days later (Dec. 11) there was constant motion in her belly. A few days after that, if she were standing still, you could see things wobbling around inside of her.

As soon as it was obvious Ginger was pregnant, my mom and I went through the cardboard boxes at Costco and found one 24"W X 18"D with three high sides and a low lip in the front. I set it up in my bedroom with foil insulation around it and towels inside and a folded sheet over the edges and a towel across the top like a canopy. For a few days, she ignored it. On Sunday, I lost track of her and eventually found her hanging out in the box. Monday night, she slept in her usual spot.

On Tuesday night, she was agitated. She went out for nighttime potties at 10PM as usual, but then ran in and settled in the box. Then for half an hour, she kept wanting to go out. I called my mom and told her to be ready to come over. For a little while, it seemed like a false alarm, but then Ginger started panting, meaning she had gone into labor.

Before my mom got here, Ginger's "water" broke, which, in dogs at least, looks like a gray water balloon hanging out the back end. (It's a good thing I'd googled "whelping", otherwise I would have thought it was a puppy.) It took me a while to convince Ginger that it was okay to make a mess inside the house. (Luckily my mom had bought a 14-pack of absorbent puppy-training sheets--by the next day, we'd used up half of them, plus three old towels.) But once she realized I was okay with her leaking all over the pads and towels, she stood next to my bed (the mattress lies directly on the floor) and then looked up at me pleadingly. "No, Ginger," I said. "You may not have puppies in my bed!!"

Sometime after midnight, her contractions were really close, and it became clear she was trying to push the first puppy out. I think it took forty-five minutes. Everything seemed natural and fine until the last ten minutes or so when she began to tremble hard and strain, and I got scared for her. The puppy would start to come out, and then she'd run out of steam and it would go back in. Over and over. Finally, she pushed incredibly hard, and out slipped a little (but comparatively huge) sac about an inch and a half wide and five inches long. You could tell that the puppy had dark spots, and that it had come out backwards. Immediately, she went to work tearing the sac, which looked for all the world like thick, stretchy plastic, and eating anything and everything that wasn't puppy. I was okay watching until she started to tear and stretch and SNAP! the umbilical cord. Ungh, gross! It was a bit violent for me. I got a dropper and helped suction fluid out of the puppy's nose and mouth. Ginger licked him constantly for the next three hours, paying special attention to the cord. I was worried she would hurt him, or miss with her teeth and tear his teeny, tiny penis. I thought I was weird for worrying about such a thing, until my mom said, "He's not gonna be a boy much longer if she keeps licking him like that!!"

After the first puppy, my mom and I took turns lying on the bed (even though I couldn't sleep) while the other tended to Ginger and kept the puppy nearby but far enough from Ginger that she could stomp and scratch and wriggle during her contractions without crushing him. The next puppy wasn't born until 4:15 AM. It was another boy, but with silky, silky black fur. The third, a little girl, was born around 5:30 AM. She was the smallest and most smushed over all, and Ginger didn't seem as eager about getting her cleaned. I had to work hard with the dropper to clear her airway, and I even had to "towel" her off myself with tissues. Ginger had eaten the first two afterbirths so quickly I hadn't even seen her do it, but with this one, she took her time, and it was really disgusting. My mom and I both said at the same time that we couldn't believe that some human women do that now.

We didn't know if Ginger would have more pups or not. She seemed fairly empty--almost as skinny as she'd been when I found her. But now and then she would pant, and we couldn't tell if it was because of contractions or just the heat from the space heater (I was trying to keep the room temperature between 75 and 80 degrees, but it turns out everyone's happiest between 74 and 77).

My roommate came in before she left for work, and she was completely delighted. She's already thinking about keeping one of the puppies for herself. When the first one (Spot) came out, I thought he would be my favorite, but it turns out that whichever one I'm looking at or holding at the time is the very, very best one. Spot is the funny one, with his roly-poly tum-tum and his funny face (my mom calls him an FLK--an abbreviation from her days working in a genetics lab. FLK is for "funny looking kid"... sometimes an FLK would have a GLM (good-looking mamma), and the purpose of the lab was to figure out why. This was the 1960's, hence the lack of political correctness). Blackie is adventurous and greedy. He was the first to get the hang of nursing. Brownie is the sweetie. She likes to snuggle and hug her brothers. (By the way, these names are just temporary. I would stick with them, but nobody else likes them. And I feel kind of weird saying "Blackie".)

Okay, so it could be you're just here for the pictures, right? Here's one from just a few hours after everyone was born, before they figured out there are ten nipples (or "nozzles", as the vet calls them), and they don't all have to fight for the same one. In this photo, Spot is getting his 10 millionth butt-cleaning:

The red spots on the towel are from the umbilical cords. The vet tended to them a few hours later:

When this picture was taken, no one had quite figured out this nursing thing. Ginger was too exhausted to care:

Now they've got it! But poor Spot! He's stuck on the bottom:

Brownie hugs her brother/uses him as a pillow:

Even their butts are cute! Mama Ginger is SO tired:

Spot has the pinkest hands and mouth since he's the palest. He also has the smushiest face:

Here I am high-fiving (or high-oneing) Spot to show how small he is:

The rest of the pictures are from today. Ginger went out for a potty break, and when she came back, instead of jumping in the box with her puppies, she put a foot on her soft bed, then looked at the puppies, then looked at me with her "please" face. I put everybody in the soft bed while I went to work making the box softer, but hopefully not a suffocation hazard, as the soft bed could potentially be. I want Ginger to be comfortable, but I've been very focused on keeping all the pups safe from crushing or suffocation.

Here, Brownie's looking for a "nozzle" but she can't see that she's overshot it by a mile (that's Ginger's tail under her chin). The red flap is her tongue:

Brownie gives up and takes a nap. Ginger doesn't like that I've gotten so close with the camera (that's her nose top center):

Blackie nuzzled into the corner as I took this picture. I lifted him out immediately so he could breathe better. You can see how tired Ginger still is, and how relieved to be in the soft bed again:

Back in the box once more, Brownie hugs her brother:

Somehow, at some point, everyone had had enough milk that they all passed out at the same time, feet in the air. (Blackie's face is at the bottom edge of the frame):