Birth

Having been a biological sciences major, there really isn't much that grosses me out. Except maybe eyeballs. And fat off of meat. But bodily functions and blood and guts - I am completely okay with.

For weeks I had been looking forward to the puppies coming. This was the mom's first litter and I was going to be able to watch the birth! I wanted to see what it is like, since I may do this in the future. We got the text late one night - she was in labor.

The next morning, we got to watch 3 of the 6 puppies being born. And it was an experience. She was a great first time mom, setting to clean the puppies off and chew the ambilical cord off right away [that thing is made of some thick stuff]. Her teeth would get so close the the puppies that you thought for sure she would accidently gnaw off one of the tiny legs in the process. However, she knew what to do. She would lick up all the blood and fluid and even the placenta [I did gag at one point watching her eat it up. Still makes me gag a little]. It was completley amazing to think that a few hours earlier, she had no idea that little puppies would appear from her behind and now she was carefully taking care of them.

Those little puppies can sure make some noise though. One was loud enough, but as more and more came the crying and whining got to be pretty obnoxious. Finally, the puppies latched on to their mom for sustainance and the noise was gone.

I took some videos of our experience. In this first one, the mom is cleaning up her two puppies. Then I pan down so you can see the blood still oozing from her behind.

In this one, the mom moves her little pup back to the warmth of her body. You can't really tell, but she picks them up in her mouth very gently, considering she has very sharp teeth.

And here is the actual birth of one of the puppies.

And here she is doing her phenomenal clean-up job on the just-born pup. The licking also stimulates the puppy to breath and move.