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Meet Gertrude, Our New Puppy
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On February 11, at 8:06 pm, I got to witness something I’d never seen in my 25 short little years on earth - the birth of puppies! My Chow, Gabby, and I had just snuggled in that night for an early sleep. Her breathing was heavy and I knew the puppies would arrive any time now, but I just didn’t think they’d arrive so darn fast! I also thought Gabby would have the kindness to go to her birthing box first.
Kevin had just told me he was headed out to fill up his gast tank, said goodnight, cut the light off and closed the door. As soon as the light was off, I felt Gabby stiffen beside me and yelp slightly.
Uh. Oh.
I turned the bedside lamp on QUICKLY - just in time to see the puppy finish her path out into the world (along with the afterbirth, which Gabby proceeded to eat….but we won’t talk about that part). That was at 8:06 pm. The next pup arrived at 8:46 pm and 3 more made an appearance after that over the next 2 hours. It was all very, very amazing to see the birth of 5 puppies and watch a mother dog at her finest (I’m glad I’m not a dog though! Eww!).
At 11 pm, we transferred the 5 healthy pups and their mother to the little birthing box / hut we had for her in the corner of our bedroom and they went to sleep for the night.
Did I mention they were born ON our bed? Well it was soaked. Thank goodness I had an extra blanket under Gabby at the time, or else our poor country quilt would have caught the worst of the bloody gore. Gabby had cleaned up a ton of it, but it was still wet all the way to the mattress. All the bedding had to be washed immediately and we “Tide-cleaned” our mattress and let towels soak up the rest. Even with all that, I still thought it was an amazing experience.
The puppies have lived in their little hut in our room since that night. They turned 3 weeks old today and have had their eyes open for a week now. A few days ago they also started walking - and now the two oldest ones are running. They’ve even learned to wag their tail and bark. There is nothing more adorable than a 3 week old puppy running to you, wagging their tail! They’re also venturing out of their little hut now, and starting to roam around that part of our bedroom and into the master bath. Today, I went in and found all 5 of them snuggled in a ball together on the bathroom floor. It was much too cute.
Unfortunately, they’ve also started to really pee and poopie in the past few days. Gabby has had the doggy job of cleaning up their potties since birth, but as they’re getting older, she’s doing it less and less (and I’m cleaning more and more). In a few days we’re going to move them permanently into the bathroom to make clean up duty easier.
It’s going to be sad to watch them go! We’re not breeders, so this was one of those misfortunate “accidents” but we love the puppies so much anyway. We’ll be finding 4 of them a great home sometime next month, but one of them we’ve fallen so in love with that we’ve decided to keep her. She was the very first puppy born at 8:06 pm! She has a fuzzy black coat, but has the most beautiful brown markings on her muzzle and legs. If you run your hand along her fur in the opposite direction of the growth, you’ll see the undershading of fur is brown too (while the top fur layer is black). She’s quite gorgeous.
We think she was meant to stay with us all along too :) because she earned a name within 2 hours of being born. I’m not sure how or why, but the name Claudia Gertrude just stuck like glue to her.
So now we have “Gertrude” as part of our family.
Here is a photo of her sleeping that I took on the camera phone last week. She likes to sleep on her back. 
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