PUPPIES!

Emy spent yesterday evening presenting nine... yep, NINE... beautiful babies to the world. The first appeared at 5:50 PM and the last at 10. Three are boys and the others are, as luck would have it, not. (Yes, I know. GENERALLY there are 2-3 males per female, but not this time. Actually, it was almost even with Boon's first litter too, with the lead going to the boys by just one. Since the sire determines the sex, maybe Boon is going to have about fifty/fifty.) Two of the pups (one of each) appear to be black while the rest are "wheaten red." Which means they are dark mahogany color right now but WILL lighten up to some shade of blond. They're really quite pretty!

After a rather long night, mom and puppies are all doing well. Of course, last night was the coldest of the year; after a winter when we had only a couple nights below freezing, this spring has already seen lower temps! Didn't have snow at my level, but at slightly higher ones, they had 1-3 inches. So it was pretty noisy around here since I have the heat off and Emy just could not get herself curled around that many pups at one time. Early this morning, I finally... duh!... put half the litter on a hot water bottle in a dresser drawer while she got the rest of them tucked up nice and close to her belly. Peace reigns! We're rotating every 1-1/2 to 2 hours and everyone's happy. Em has figured out that she'll get the others back, in trade, and they are safe out of her sight. But she really gives the ones returning from the drawer the once over!


More than anything, puppies have to be warm. Which is reasonable since they're coming from an environment that is 100 degrees!

So, now that everyone knows the good news, I'm going to take a nap.
Photos later.