Della's Birthing Day

Della and I slept in her room Wednesday night. Her temperature had dropped and it seemed that her time was coming soon. It took her a while to settle down, mostly because we were separated from Clay and the rest of the pack, but she finally did and we both had a good night's sleep. Thursday morning she went out and ate as normal, but she barfed it up when we got back upstairs. She came into the office and settled down in the big Dane crate while I was on the computer, the way we normally start the day, still before 6:00 a.m. I thought I heard what sounded like a kitten crying, but thought it must have been from a television, the computer, or just a random squeaky noise. When I got up from the computer, however, I noticed that Della was no longer alone in the crate, she had a puppy with her that she was busily cleaning up.

We got the other dogs out of the room and eventually got Della out of the crate, mostly because I grabbed the pup and she was going to go where it was going. We got her settled into the whelping tub, a very large children's wading pool, that was full of blankets and absorbent pads. It was almost an hour before the next pup arrived. It was obvious from the beginning that Della knew what she was doing and that she was good at it and conscientious about the responsibility of motherhood. She was wonderful. She did it all and we let her do it all, but she was also wonderful about allowing both of us to be near and to "help" as we thought we needed to. She's been fine with us handling her pups, picking them up to be weighed, moving them around for nursing, and for counting them to make sure no one was getting squashed.

The puppies continued to arrive at irregular intervals over the next 11 hours or so. We waited over two hours for the 12th and final pup to be born and I at least was getting rather worried. Throughout it all, Della was the epitome of motherhood. Even when it was all done, she didn't want to get up and go outside, even though it had been over 12 hours since she had eaten, drank anything, or peed.

I loved this girl before and now I can add admiration and respect to the list of things I feel for her. I know dogs have done this ever since dogs existed, but I also know that some do it better than others. Della rocked and rolled it.

There were five black pups, four merles, and
three harlequins (cow dogs like Della).

Nursing four while giving birth to the fifth.

She's cleaning up the first of the harlequin pups
with one of the merles right by her face.

Check out the tiny feet and tail under Della's
head and she's cleaning up a newborn.

I love this. She's got both her front and back legs outstretched, with a river of puppies
contained between them. 

We had to put the puppies in a box and put a leash on her
and still had to pull her to get her up and outside.

She really needed to go but she didn't want to leave the pups.
I assured her that Clay could watch them for a couple minutes
and that's as long as we were gone.

Clay quickly cleaned the pool while we were
outside and put down fresh paper and pads.
We threw away the blankets.

She didn't want to eat at first, but she ate some
canned food and a little later polished off the
dry food as well.

It's hard to tell where Della ends and the
puppies begin.