Skye's Diary
Skye's Diary
Hello, my name is Skye, I have just had a litter of puppies and thought I would write a diary describing them for all those people out there that know me and for any
two legged humans that are interested in being one of my puppies' keepers. By the way I am dictating this to my human, it's quite hard work - if he spells any words wrong please don't blame me.
I suppose the story begins when we went down to Rook Lane one Sunday in January, I thought it was to go for a walk on the moors or maybe to go to Plymouth where my human does lots of noisy, dusty stuff.
Instead we went to see a guy called Tully who I've had puppies with before. I won't go into the details of what went on there - the indignity of it !
Anyway I soon started to get larger and have a lot less energy. Its amazing how much hard work it is growing eight puppies, and hungry !
I used to think I got hungry before I was pregnant but there is no way that merely doubling a poor girl's food is enough, you can tell that
those books aren't written by people giving birth to eight puppies themselves.
After about eight and a half weeks I wasn't feeling so good and my human was going to go out for a few hours but luckily he decided to take my temperature
(and I won't go into the details of how they do
that!). Apparently my temperature goes down two degrees just before I give birth and he wanted to know what it was normally. When he saw that it was already 2 degrees lower than it ought to be he got
a little concerned and phoned the vet. The vet wasn't too concerned about me panting and nesting (I had great fun when I found the stash of newspapers
stored for when my puppies are a growing up), that was normal for a girl getting ready to give birth in a few days, but when he heard about the temperature drop he told me to come straight in.
It's lucky I did because when Kiera saw me she thought I looked a little undernourished (I kept telling my humans I needed more food -
they explained that if they gave me more then the puppies would get too big
inside me - I would have been happy to take the chance). She took an X-ray and it showed that I had a genuine breach (one of the puppies was coming out backwards with its back feet first) and I needed
a caesarian (whatever that might be).
The humans were all talking about 'premature' birth - I can tell you it wasn't a moment too soon.
I woke up a bit later feeling really bad. My mouth was really dry, my tummy was sore and I felt really wobbly. When we got back home I was told to sleep in a box in the kitchen and they got these funny
little squealing things out of this cardboard box that had come back from the vets with us and put them in the box with me.
They were smelly and covered with gunk so I started to clean them and they burrowed down
to my tummy and started sucking on my teats. It was really weird - I suddenly remembered what my other litter of puppies had been like - it felt really good to have them drinking my milk and my humans
were all there telling me what I good girl I was and how I made brilliant mum.
The next day was very different from my usual routine. Not only do I get tons of food and loads of welpi (instead of boring old water) but I have eight wonderful puppies to care for, they sleep a lot but also need lots of milk and cleaning. It's exhausting and I have only been for a short walk onto the front lawn .
29th March: We went back to see the vet again today for a check up, the puppies came in a basket
because they're too big to all fit in the box now.
Kiera wasn't there so we saw Tony, who worked so hard to
make sure that my last puppy survived when they were born. I felt quite hurt when he said I looked like a cow, it's not fair -
I need somewhere to keep all this milk for my puppies! He said that I have a bit of a sore spot on one of my stitches so I need the wound to be rinsed with warm salty water a couple of times a day.
The puppies don't like the taste of that so I have to clean myself before they dine.
2nd April: They're still growing and their eyes are starting to open. One of the more amusing things today was watching my human try to worm them all. He uses a syringe and tries to get them to swallow this yucky pink stuff. They spit loads of it out and he ends up wearing most of it.
3rd April: Had my first visitors that want to look after one my puppies when they get older, Orchid and Tulip have both found new homes.
9th April: I have just worked out why I get locked out and my puppies make loads of noise a couple of times a day. They get fed real food! All the time that I spend giving them milk and now I find out that they get rice pudding for breakfast and lean mince for dinner. I just get some scrapings and I can tell you they don't leave me much. It really is a dog's life. To really rub it in, now they have started to reduce the food I get, apparently I need to slow down the amount of milk I produce. I'm going to totally waste away at this rate.
10th April: Lots more phone calls and emails to answer today. Some people want my puppies so badly that they are reserving them by sending a cheque without even coming to see them. I think that only two need to find homes now. Much as I love all my puppies I'm glad to know that they are going to people that really want them. I just need to have a word with all my lady humans and remind them that having teenagers can be difficult - do we really want to keep one of them ?
15th April: I think that Lily has found a wonderful home, we had a family come to see my kids today and not only did Georgia bring a great toy for the muppets to play with but also bought me a couple of packets of treats. They really know the way to a girl's heart. They are going to call her Islay which is a gorgeous name when pronounced correctly.
16th April: They are four weeks old today and had their first day out in the wide world, the puppies dined out on the lawn. They really enjoyed it but I thought it was a bit unfair that I was kept inside. It's not as if I would nick any of their food, I'm a responsible mum, I just need to check that their food is okay and the only way to do that is to eat just a little bit. They also had their second dose of wormer, instead of squirting it in their mouths they tried mixing it in the rice pudding. This way works much better - it ends up in the little guys' tummies as opposed to all over the big guys' clothes.
18th April: Another milestone in the muppets' lives, they had their first meal of Eukanuba puppy food today. Only the best for my puppies. It is soaked in water for a while and they really love it. They are now old enough to go to the toilet by themselves which means that my humans spend a lot of time mopping and cleaning the floor. Now they can appreciate how hard I've been working, I deserve a bit of a break now. This evening when we went for a walk I found one of my old sticks and played fetch for a while. I am only getting fed three times a day now so when I saw that they had left the puppy food soaking where I could reach it I thought it was best to have a quick taste to check it was alright. I don't know what all the fuss was about, it's not as if I scoffed the whole lot, I did leave three bowls...
