Five Fours make Twenty Baby Paws!

Give me Five

   My grown up daughter went to her child care centre armed with photos to show the children! And my 'little' children are still watching over them. I think I made a mistake earlier - I think there are only 5 puppies, sometimes the uterus is still bulky initially before it contracts down, so it feels like another pup! Bokkie has contracted down well now. Mummy is going so well, has had something to eat and mostly dozing and and clucking over he pups. They are lightening up in colour now they are properly dry, one girl looks more golden, with white... time will tell as they change again with longer fur. Each child chooses one to 'look after', so there is much discussion now as to what they look like what they like best about each one and what names suit each look, it is sooo cute. There is always a child with the camera....we always have a million puppy photos! Erica is 12 and wants to be a midwife, so she has spent the last little while listening to heartbeats  in utero. With the children 'puppy sitting' I need to go and make up the gingerbread recipe so they can make gingerbread men and gingerbread houses later on! (My 18 year old with write some emails while he 'watches' for me!) We always watch Mummy and babies for the first few hours!

One

 Plus One

 Equals two!

Plus one more equals 3!


And two more equals 5

One more to go! Mum resting with babies as she waits for the last one! Note how contented and relaxed Mummy is with all the children giving her so much attention!

 

We can feel one more in there!

Momma in labour

I planned a nice long gap between litters. But my kids accidentally let the girlie out to visit our frisky male....so here we are again with another litter. Mummy is very pleased with herself and is doing so well as we worriedly cluck over her.

Momma is looking up at us, so full of trust. Doesn't she look good for a labouring Mummy!!

Golden Boys

Puppies, puppies everywhere! I vote Shih Tzu best breed!

As we have two litters we have two out of our three bathrooms filed with puppies. Bokkie, one of the mothers has just figured out that she can open the sliding door to my ensuite so her litter has been moved to the downstairs bathroom as we were worried that they would accidentally find the top of the stairs if my bedroom door open was left open. But I do so miss puppies licking my toes in the middle of the night if I happened to get up, and gleefully greeting me at first waking in the morning.

I even miss the little chuckle we used to have when they cried for us after their good night cuddle, it was getting to the point where they could cry for 15 minutes much to their mothers concern. Of course if you walked in there was they would stop crying immediately! My kids thought it most cruel that I do not cuddle them for longer....ahhh the bliss of childhood where time is not an issue. Shih Tzu as the most marvelously people orientated breed and yet they are generally not overly demanding, and certainly as happy to quietly be alongside you but not 'in your face' as other breeds that I have had.  I vote Shih Tzu best breed!
 
One thing for sure that we have figured out is that if you add up the hours of love, time and attention these puppies are taking you are paid way, way below the minimum wage! And you are most certainly not paid overtime for the night shift of which we have had plenty! Largely due to Sally Caramel (Skatjies litter) being so small, and so we woke around the clock taking turns to make sure she got a good Mommy drink every couple of hours, at one stage Jonathan and I were doing it hourly and then every second hour. Fortunately he was on TAFE holidays! But it was worth it to see her now as pushy as the rest, making sure she gets in there and gets her own tucker and not letting anyone push her out now she is older! She is so gentle and sweet, and she is a firm family favourite....but then again every single is a favourite as who can have favourites amongst such a gorgeous bunch of delicious little things?

Needless to say if we are keeping up with our strict hygiene regiment, and enjoying and loving the pups, and keeping up with out normal hectic pace of life, then we are left with very little time for blogging etc. I have been working on developing my web site, so that you can see our puppies in more clear details. and so that there is information about Shih Tzus and caring for them too. SO take a look and see https://sites.google.com/site/joyzowntzus/home

 These are some of Bokkies Litter! More to come soon

Skatjie's 1st litter:

Skatjie in labour - what a good mother! Emma took all the labour photos and Erica assisted me with deliveries.

Skatjie was interested in her babies straight away, even when she was about to pop another baby, she was still worrying about the ones that had already been born.

Sadly we lost a pup yesterday, due to probable congenital issues - I will spare you the sad details. There really is very little a vet can do for a pup this young, except cry with you! As I explained to the kids... imagine how tiny their little lungs, intestines or hearts are at this age - there is no way a vet could do heart surgery to fix a heart problem. Besides figuring out exactly what the problem is, is so hard! Oh, the the dramas of breeding dogs, I had forgotten how hard this side of it can be on us as a family. (When I reminded Doug of the little Bichon puppy that had weeks of trauma in New Zealand he was quite traumatised at the mere mention of it - poor guy!)

But anyhow there are positives - we have six beautiful little pups in the litter to still enjoy! I took the pups and mum all back to the vet again today for a double check up, just in case. Yes I know - I am totally paranoid. But would so far rather be safe than sorry! Every one got a clean bill of health, even our skinniest, who is real tiny!(That is 3 vet visits in 4 days, two expensive out of hours visits!)

Emma's photo of Skatjie in labour, she had 5 breech births! And managed on her own - well done what an achievement lady!

 Interestingly, this litter - Skajties, has been so totally different from biginning to end to Bokkies litter. You never now how you bitch will do until they actually have a litter. Both are good mums but Bokkie is exceptionally good. The best whelping dam I have ever had (I have had 6 all together) I would never have guessed how they would fare as breeders. Bokkies to look at is skinny and tiny but oh, so calm and actually has a good well proportioned hip width to her advantage. Enough breeder's musings

All Skatjies pups have names names now! I will get their names up with photos in due course.

Here are all six of them feeding contentedly tonight.

These two are the royals... Prince William and Princess Kate. They are the biggest and strongest and always get the best milk, pushing others off to get the best spot - unless we supervise feeding times; this makes this litter quite hard work for us to manage.

Just look at this little darling, Sally Caramel! The smallest dear!

Skatjie has puppies:

After a night of panting and faithful human watchers taking shifts through the night, eventually the pushing began early in the AM, leaving a very tired Mummy dog and leaving us humans exhausted. Out popped a herd of 7 baby cows....just joking, puppies. But seriously they are all black and white or brown and white and so look just like a herd of cows...just too gorgeous. My favourite has a brown spot in the white path  going through its forehead.More later and photographs later too.

The Tails of the Flopsy Puppies:

Illustration and book can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Rabbit-Flopsy-Bunnies-Potter/dp/0723259941

Do you know the Beatrix Potter story.... The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies, who all fell asleep in the rubbish heap due to the soporific affects of eating too many lettuces (which had shot into flower and were thrown away because overgrown) The baby rabbits had been scrounging for food with their Dad, Benjamin Bunny because there was not enough food to go around. And once soundly asleep they were discovered by Mr Mac Gregor as he emptied grass onto them and they thought their mother was tucking them into bed in their dreams. a fly settling on one tiny little ear, made the ear twitch and they were discovered; crafty Mac Gregor gently put them into a bag to take home to his wife for dinner; he counted  - "One, two three, four, four five, six little rabbits." Mr Mac Gregor left the bag while he put away his machinery and the baby bunnies mother walked right past the bag not knowing her dears were inside. Fortunately Mrs Thomasina Tittle mouse saw what had happened and helped the distraught parents rescue the babies, and replace the gorgeous babies with rotten vegetables. they then gleefully followed Mr Mac Gregor home at a safe distance and took great delight when Mrs Mac Gregor threw rotten vegetable at Mr Mac Gregor.

And so here is the tale of the tails of our Flopsy Puppies:

The Tale of the Tails of the Six Little Puppies!

Well we often spend time just looking and looking, stroking and kissing our little puppies and we just cannot help ourselves but to count like Mr Mac Gregor in our very best lilting English accents..."one, two, three, four, five, six little puppies." (no not rabbits, we think they are even cuter than rabbits!) And so tonight we just had to take a photo of the tails of the six little Flopsy Puppies: :-) All photographs from left to right....Dogmatix, Boykjie, Checkers, Thunder, Tosh and Dark Chocolate. Yes, in order of their birth - we had great fun getting the puppies to sleep while keeping them in the right order. Mum, (no not me- the dogie Mum, Bokkie) had gone outside (for a run and a toilet break) and so we had to persuade the puppies not to look for Mum. We kept counting "One, two, three, four, five, six 'leeetle' puppies" as we got them in order, stroking their backs and soothing them back to sleep. We only managed to get two photographs of many with their tails all perfectly showing, they love to sleep with them tucked under nice and cosy. Once we had one little pup actually manage to wag her tail at the excitement of arriving and finding place at the competitive Milky Bar. I wonder how many of you can remember going to a Milky Bar in your youth, before the likes of Maccas took over? 

Photograph taken from http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/golden-gate-milk-bar

And no I am not that old my Milk Bar was called the Purple Cow in Sea Point Cape town South Africa, and it was much, much more modern than that. Sadly I have just googled and it seems not to be there any more. I digress....

Aahhh..... the pups are so sweet, we love them so much!

And what a great way for you to see the differences in sizes, colours and markings too!

Bokkie: Litter 1, Day 11: Getting bigger, eyes still closed

Dogmatix (below): Boy, our little heavy weight champion! Really he is just the right size for a Tzu, but the biggest in the litter. What gorgeously perfect markings he has:

Boykjie (below): boy. Black mask, with solid gold, our lightest puppy and the most even solid gold- just too lovely!

 Checkers (below) girl: She has very unusual marking, a lovely face and what looks like a saddle on the back of her back with white checker pieces on the saddle. Very cute!

 Thunder (below) boy: is another solid gold with tiny bits of black and beautiful black mask on the face. He has my favourite markings in that he has a tiny white spot on his forehead and a tiny white spot on the tip on his tail.

The tiny tip of Thunder's Tail!

 

 Tosh ( below) girl:  our sugar, sugar dumpling; plump pudding pops, our little greedy guts! She is such a pretty colour, gold under black, her mother, Bokkie, came to us like this. Her face is very black, oh so sweet - don't you love this squishy pup?

 

And below, last but not least our littlest girl but a real feisty fighter who could find her mother's milk a mile away.....Dark Chocolate - the darkest in the litter, just beautiful! She is very similar to Tosh, just a bit darker and not as plump. And funily enough her face is not quite as dark as tosh's face, even though the rest of her body is.