black slime, green slime

Oh, I'm sorry - did you think this blog was all about puppy whiskers and waggy tails?  You must be new around here.

Just to make it worth your while clicking on the link, here is the family this morning - just a quick phone pic.

See how she is rucking up the bed out of the way.

And so to the slime.

The day after the puppies are born is the slimy day.  The green slime discharge is still coming from mama at this point.  Luckily, supplementation with raspberry leaf during pregnancy enormously decreases the amount of green slime produced.  When Emmi's mum, Keksi, had her first 2 cream puppies, they were stained green for the first several days of their life.  Ew.

And as for the black slime, well that's even worse, if you can imagine it.  As the puppies are born, mama generally eats all the stuff that comes with the puppy - the bag, the umbilical cord and the placenta.  The placenta is chock full of nutrients and blood, so it's good food for a new mama dog.  However, like ice cream, too much of a good thing is usually not such a good thing.  Too many placentas generally = the most foul black, tarry diarrhea.

(Bet you never thought you would have ice cream compared to placenta and black slime.  Have I put you off your porridge yet?)

I usually try to stop bitches from devouring all the placentas, if I can.  Believe me, I learned my lesson with Neka's 9 puppies and the resulting scary diarhhea.  However, Emmi was so on the ball that I didn't so much as see a placenta, let alone get the opportunity to rescue it from her greedy chops.

Yet, today, not even 48 hours after giving birth, I'm delighted to report that normal poos have resumed.  Halle-flipping-lujah for raspberry leaf, I say.

And as a reward for getting through the black & green slime, here are some 2-day-old puppies jostling for a good spot on mum's milk bar.




I don't know how they're supposed to get a good grip with their little paws on newspaper or - even worse - bare plastic.  But Emmi is quite certain she no longer wants them to be sweating it out on the vet bed and she keeps shoving it away.  It does create puppy chaos occasionally when one finds himself caught up in the vetbed, far far away from Emmi's belly. This bunch will end up with strong back legs.