1:30 p.m: Orange Boy's condition is steadily improving and he's now nursing from mom again and he took the bottle for the first time in almost a week this morning. I'm optimistic that we'll pull through this latest crisis.

 

11:30 p.m:  I am truly cursed.  There can be no other explanation for all that's happening with these puppies.  This morning I left to go to work and everyone was doing great. I came home for lunch and everyone was still doing great. I came home from work and things appeared normal so I made another trip to Walmart to get a new scale and some more puppy supplies.  Upon my return, I noticed Orange Boy, now the smallest of the litter at 12 oz, was having a hard time getting to his feet and staying up right. Now, I've been keeping a very close eye on Orange Boy and tube feeding him because he won't take the bottle, but he's been pretty vigorous with his nursing so I thought we were just dealing with a size issue. So, another frantic call to the vet, another hurried trip down dark, rainy country roads and 30 minutes later we're at the vet's office again with another fading puppy.  His temperature was a little below normal at 97.7 and he's been having a difficult time passing stool, but otherwise his symptoms were exactly the same as Blue Boy's. He was dehydrated, so the vet pumped 20 cc's of IV fluids into him and told me to give him 3 droppers of pedialyte ever hour all night. I'm optimistic that he'll pull through this since as soon as I put him in the whelping box he made a bee line for one of Bobbi's nipples, but he wasn't strong enough to keep it. He's downstairs screaming now, so I'll scoop him up and keep him on my chest for warmth and comfort, but it looks like I'll pulling an all-nighter nursing this one back to health now.

 

12:12 p.m:  With much sorrow and sad regret I had to help Blue Boy go to The Bridge this morning.  He started crying late last night and could find no peace despite all the efforts I made to help him pull through. He cried through the night and this morning I took him to the vet and helped him find peace.  I talked to the vet afterward and he said that a lot of times when their temperatures drop below 93 it damages the internal organs and kills the enzymes needed to sustain life.  I guess he was just too sweet for this world and he was needed elsewhere.

 

4:45 p.m: I do believe Murphy's Law is in play -- whatever can go wrong has, and Week 2 of this labor of love started off with yet another crisis, a power outage.  Now, I've lived in this house for about 4 years and I think in all that time we've only had two power outages of any length. Well, this morning around 9 a.m. the house went dark and that means no microwave to warm water or snuggle discs, no stove, no heat lamp, no heat -- you get the picture. Once again, puppies lives were in peril.  Luckily, I did still have hot water in the faucet (the one thing in my house that's gas) and I had recently warmed up the saline water bottles I'd gotten from the vet and the puppies love to lay on.  So, I filled the rubber water bladder with hot water from the faucet,  and tossed it and the warm saline bags into the incubator box and plopped all ten puppies back into the incubator to weather out the outage.  Power was restored around 11:45 or so. Puppies survived, but I think I got a few more gray hairs in the process.

 

Blue Boy is still status quo. I'm still tube feeding him and this morning I went ahead and gave him some lactated ringers sub cutaneously just in case there's some dehydration going on.  I can't say that it helped, but it didn't hurt either. He does seem a little stronger, but still not able to nurse on his own. I'll give him some more a little later.  Everyone else is doing great, though I wish they'd gain a little more weight. This week we should start to see the eyes opening -- how exciting!  I can't wait. I know they can smell me, or at least the puppy formula on me, because everytime I lean into the whelping box they come running -- errr-- scootching as fast as they can and start nursing my arm.  And trust me, they can SCOOTCH pretty darn fast.

 

That's it for now. I need to find someone to come sit with puppies so I can make a run to the store. I'm almost out of goats milk for making formula!!!