Lily has her puppies!

 Lily's pups!

Lily had a huge litter on 4/19/18.  She had 11 this time !  The dad is Boomer (AKC English) so these guys are now 3/4 English and 1/4 Valley Bulldog.  Going to set prices at 1,700-1,800.  They have absolutely short noses and several have a nice 'rope' over their little nose already!  Beautiful colors, from light fawn brindle with white all the way to an almost black spotted puppy.  6 males and 5 females.  She is doing so good, eating great and puppies have almost doubled in size.  Today their eyes are open and I just cut their toenails for the first time.  Another week and I will introduce some soft food to see how interested they are.  Such a big litter that I feel I need to take the burden off mom so I will try them with food a bit earlier.  I'm driving to visit my dad in the hospital today and will not be easily reached but leave a message or email : bulldogs@intstar.net   kristina!

Hello again!

First off I saw a neat online "how to care for your Bulldog puppy" on Wiki...so cute and nice illustrations of people caring for bulldogs.  Check it out here.  
Puppies moved into the kitchen this week and already I am mesmerized by how quickly they learn the routine of everything.  They already started sneaking food out of Lily's bowl so I started feeding them too.  I had bought some Eukanuba and was feeding Lily that (vs. Taste of the Wild) and I wasn't too impressed with the quality of puppy stool feeding Eukanuba at first but it became better after a few days.  That's a lovely topic, quality of stool...well in my little world that's a big deal!  Especially when there are 10 tiny stools to take care of.  

photo day

Today I took pictures of all the babies...it was a lot of squirming and repositioning but it went well.  I set up a couple of lights pointing to a nice set of rugs on my bed and positioned each puppy to get several shots of them --one at least of each side and then a top picture.  Those will be used to send to clients and to advertise them.  I sent pictures to those that have already shown interest or were waiting on a puppy.  

 The carpet made for a dark back round that you could see the puppy better...male and female tags were just to help me because taking pictures of 10 gets to be a little confusing especially after they were downloaded!  After I took the pup's picture I would cut it's toenails (it was time anyway) and that way I could tell if I had got a picture of each one.  

Then I took the pictures I love:  natural pictures of just puppies being puppies!

It's been a long time!

Hello!  

It's been awhile since I last blogged about my dogs and their "happenings...."  I really didn't have any puppies since the last time I was on here other than "Bailey", a single pup born in a litter

from Gingerbread.  She was a bottle fed from our dairy goat from about week 2 until weaning.

 
 Without the large litter to nurse her, Gingerbread became frantic when her milk came in about day 3 after whelping...refused to eat, paced the floor and looked everywhere for more puppies.  Soon she just refused to come lay down with Bailey for more that a few minutes and we were forced to intervene.  She took to the bottle easily and even would suck a pacifier a little!  I made a crazy Doggo Meme from a picture of her:

She turned out just fine and we had a great home lined up for her.

 
I had another wonderful thing happen in the last year:  Grandson Elgin was born!!!

What started off as a super scary delivery and a long NICU stay ended with a Blessed little happy boy!!!

Elgin at about 4 months

Current ELGIN...beautiful!

So you can see it's been a busy time.  Amelia, Elgin's sister is still my LOVIE...she is dog crazy of course....

 Amelia and Spice....

Dogs are all doing good, Spice is still going strong at almost 11.

Snailie is still goofy and now grown up: 

And if you remember Beetle, a sister from Snailie...she is almost grown too.

She is a silly looking little bully.  

On Sunday night/Monday (Aug. 24/25) morning Lily had her 3rd litter.  10 healthy spotted puppies!

She started about 10:30 with the first one and had the last pup at 5:35 am.  It was a LONG night.

It's now Friday afternoon, Sept. 1st and she and litter are great.  I've been able to stay with them all week and it has really been great to be here 24 hours with them.  Of course it is tiring at night getting up all hours to check on them and sleeping lightly so that I hear each squeak but it's worth it to have them doing so well.  I will keep you posted!

Vet Visit

Took the gang to the vet this afternoon.  Every puppy was looked over and examined then they all got a shot of JUST Parvo Vaccine.  My vet really thinks they should only "see" the Parvo as a first shot and then get a Combo-type shot as the second and subsequent vaccines.  They also got a fecal exam done and no parasites or worms were found. Took a couple of pictures of Dr. Henry examining, vaccinating and giving his general look-over...he never minds me taking pictures ...you can see he's trying not to smile the whole time!!  Good sport...

He didn't find anything problematic with any of the puppies.  All hearts sounded great, eyes clear, no deformities and he said he just loved seeing nice healthy pups!  

what a bright, big world!

The puppies went outside today for the first time!  I waited until the sun was warm and shadows long (and I had some help) to take them out and let them play for the first time.  I took about 50 pictures ...mostly because all the big dogs were in the way and I kept getting someone's legs or tail in the picture with the puppies, they were so excited to see puppies out playing they just couldn't help but mingle with them.  Snailie was the funniest with them, rolling over and letting the gang maul her by the porch.