The Puppies are HERE!

Emma was up most of the night, either asking to go out or whining to come in. It was really hard to roll out of bed with less than 4 hours of sleep when one spent the night worrying about the impending delivery. The dogs and Sanna needed to be locked in before leaving this morning at 6:30am as the insulators were coming back. Today was a Braelyn day and she was excellent. This time I stayed at Phil and Anna’s house, Braelyn fell asleep and slept for 3 hours before needing a bottle. Karin was asked to check in on Emma when she reached the farm, she called to say Emma was panting very hard, drank some water then threw it up all over the floor. Rhoda was called to see if she could come watch Braelyn until Anna arrived home, then I headed back to the farm and got there right at noon in plenty of time to watch the first puppy being born, arriving at 12:25pm. Darcy was very curious about this entire process.
Then it was wait and wait and wait. Right at the 2 hour mark, just as we were considering calling the vet, she started labor again and delivered a big fat puppy. Steven Marchal came and offered to give Addyson a horse ride, that sure made HER day and kept her occupied during the long wait. She rode Jenis first and then Cindy. Our next puppy one was only 10 minutes later and the 4th puppy was 8 minutes after that.
Addyson loves sitting and watching with Rhoda and she fell in love with the puppies, giving this one a kiss. We think her parents need to give her one of these. Of course when Darcy accidentally slobbered on her pants, Addyson says very emphatically, “GROSS!” so perhaps not.

The next couple of pictures are a bit graphic, the first shows a normal birth, the second is a picture of a breech birth. On the breech birth, the sack had already ripped and the tail was just wagging away during the delivery.

Emma decided to move into the bedroom closet for the rest of the puppies. She had quite an audience watching as each puppy was born. After the 8th puppy, Diane took all the little kids on a 4 wheeler ride.

While they were waiting for the next puppy to be born Bethany and Aubrey were picking grass for the Friesian mares.

We had one not so good incident, Emma snapped at Steven Davidovics as he was playing with the puppies. This means we must be very careful to always be with her when people come to see the puppies. We were actually shocked Emma would do this as she was so easy going during the whelping, she allowed even Darcy to attend the births. Below is Proud mamma Emma with her 10 puppies. She had 6 boys and 4 girls.

Work couldn't come to a stop just because Emma had her puppies. Kim's mare Bridgett needed to be covered tonight. We are so thankful we had an ultrasound, she did not show at all until Raven actually mounted. The ultrasound showed that she would be ready to breed in 3 or 4 days and it was right!