Well, my life with dogs is nothing but a wild roller coaster ride without a seat belt...

We have 5 beautiful pups here now, two curly girls and three wavy boys, all are black with small white blazes on the chest and a few white toes on some of them. They were born early on Monday May 5. All are doing well and gaining steadily, crawling around the whelping box and, typical of a PWD, making plenty of noise! Today (Thursday May 8) they are up on all fours and barking—hold onto you hats, folks!

Bella went into labor Sunday night (May 4) and I ended up taking her to Pilchuck Emergency in Snohomish at 2:30 Monday morning. Early Monday morning (May 5) Bella had an emergency C-section (we lost 1 pup then). She seemed to be recovering fine, and we took her and the pups home. Unfortunately, she then had intra-abdominal bleeding that sent her back to Pilchuck in shock. She had a transfusion; they opened her up again, but didn't find any major blood leaks, just a lot of blood. Got her closed after her BP crashed, and managed to save her again.

She has been holding stable since Tuesday afternoon, and an ultrasound on Tuesday showed no additional blood accumulating in her abdomen. Her hematocrit was holding at 18 (30 is normal) but was up this morning (Thursday) to 21, indicating that her bone marrow has kicked in production of new red blood cells to replace what she lost. She is apparently perky and protesting—back to her normal self—but she will stay at Pilchuck until her red blood cell values are close to normal. She may be able to come home in a day or two when her RBC count gets high enough, but will not be able to nurse her puppies without risking her life.

So in the meanwhile, the litter has been adopted by a wonderful Malinois named Reese. She had a litter 6 days premature on Friday and lost all but one little preemie girl. Reese and her puppy are here and she is being a wonderful mother to Bella's pups. The little preemie is doing well (I have been feeding her about every 2 hours around the clock) and is almost caught up with Bella’s pups as far as development. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to save her, as a sort of Karmic compensation for all that her mother Reese is doing for our girls and boys. It was a stroke of luck all the way around. Reese’s pieces are certainly a lucky group of little PWDs!

Long story short, I sent India down to Portland with my sister-in-law Martha who was up to help whelp the pups (she has Bella's other daughter Sailor) and we will take Bella down there too as soon as she is stable. Both will stay there until the pups are weaned, since Bella will not be able to take care of the pups. The surrogate mother is extremely protective of her new litter and I know it will be very hard on Bella to hear the pups in the house and not be able to get to them. We hope that after they are weaned Reese the Malinois will be able to go home with her little girl, and Bella will come back and take over the maternal role with her 5 pups.

There is no doubt that breeding is not for the faint of heart… When things go as planned it is a joyous and tiring adventure. When things don’t go right it is a nightmare. Those of you with PWDs know how deep our affection runs, and it is like a member of your human family is in jeopardy, not “just a dog.” I am very lucky to have my Bella safe and sound, have my puppies safe and sound and with a loving surrogate mother who can do more for them than I ever could do with an orphaned litter. Finding a surrogate is not common—I’d almost put it in the miracle category, actually. So all in all, things are going as well as could be hoped for, and I’m feeling like I can relax a tiny bit at this point.

Pups (including little Brownie the Malinois) will get dew claws done and vet check today, but they all look fine at this point. The poor little one that didn’t make it was quite small and in a very cramped and contorted place in the uterus. (We had seen her on the X-ray and were suspicious that she might not be in good shape based on size and position.) Ultrasound before the C-section showed that she was already dead at that point. We are so grateful to have our five healthy pups here now and our Bella on the mend!