3/8/08

Rhea gave birth to 10 beautiful puppies on Monday February 11. She had 6 boys and 4 girls. We know that Rhea is a pure bred border collie, and we think that dad must have been a lab. The pups are now 4 weeks old and growing like weeds. They are starting to play and make all sorts of cute noises! They wag their tails when they see people and at this point are fearless.

To see a photo gallery of the puppies, click here.

To video of the puppies, click here.

2/3/08

Friday, I took Rhea in to the clinic with me for a heartworm test and a general look over before the weekend. The in house heartworm tests, not only test for heartworms, but 2 tick borne diseases as well. Lyme and Ehrlichiosis. Rhea tested positive for exposure to Ehrlicia. At the moment she is showing no signs of problems and probably does not have an active case. Treatment is simple, but cannot begin until after the puppies arrive as the antibiotics used are not safe for them. She will have no lasting effects from exposure to Ehrlicia, and Dr. Ross does not think it will affect the puppies either.

Saturday morning Rhea gave me a little scare with a temperature that was lower than her normal. Dogs always have a drop in temperature before labor, and as I had to work, I wasn’t sure if she would continue to drop or not, so into the clinic she went. By noon her temp was back up and the waiting continues. I take her temperature twice a day.

Tomorrow, we will be about 3 days till puppies so she is going for an x-ray to get a head count. I will post with the official number later in the week.

1/31/08

Rhea was found as a stray in south eastern Kentucky. She was picked up by animal control and brought to the local shelter. Obviously pregnant, and close to term, shelter workers contacted all the border collie rescues they could. The shelter was very full and for every dog that they brought in, one had to leave. She had until Wednesday, if she wasn’t out of the shelter by they she would have to be euthanized.

I saw the e-mail with her pictures late Friday night. Saturday afternoon I called and made arrangements to pick her up Monday evening. I spent the weekend getting my house ready for a mom expecting puppies. I had no idea how far along she was, for all I knew she would start whelping in the car on the way home.

Before leaving work on Monday, I made arrangements for one of the doctors (I work at a vet clinic) to meet me on our way back home to check her out. I really needed to know when to expect puppies. X-rays showed 4 for sure, but she was full of poop, so there are probably more. You can tell by how dense the puppies bones are compared to the moms bones how far along the puppies are. I was given a guess of 7-10 days.

The next day I had our Repro doctor take a look at the x-ray of the night before. Dr. Ross thinks she is more around 10 days, which I was thankful for. This makes the ETA for the puppies Thursday, Feb 7th.

Rhea has been with me for almost a week now. She is the most loving dog I have ever met. She LOVES people. If I have her out somewhere and she sees a person down the street, she goes into a full body wiggle, which is hard to do as big as she is! I have a hard time convincing her that not everyone wants so say hello to her, and that we should keep walking.

Rhea is working on her house training. She has a child’s sandbox, in the shape of a turtle, as a whelping box. At first, she thought that was a great place to go potty, and while I liked how much easier it was to clean up, I was a little worried about her going potty in her whelping box.

After a few days, I moved her up from the basement to the kitchen. I hadn’t heard any coughing, so I was comfortable having her around the rest of the dogs. When she needs to go out, she paws at her pen and we go outside to potty. She is doing really well, and has not had any accidents in her pen since I moved her upstairs.

Rhea gets along with the other dogs OK. I think she is a little more cautious about the other dogs because she is pregnant. At first she was very leery, and made sure that none of the other dogs got too close to her. As time goes on and she spends more time with the other dogs she is more relaxed and even allows the other dogs to smell her.