Emma spent a couple of weeks in Massachusetts, and Jess was able to get two good natural breedings, with a 20-minute tie each time, on Saturday, December 13 and Monday, December 15. When we picked Emma up the following Saturday, Jess told me she’d lay money on a pregnancy, because Emma had a slight discharge that day, and every time she’s seen that, the bitch has been pregnant. Shortly after Emma came home, we found out that Evie was not pregnant, so I tried very hard not to get my hopes up about Emma. However, I did notice that she wasn’t shrinking back to her pre-season size (vulva or nipples), which she usually does pretty quickly – a week after she’s out of season you’d hardly know she was in. At about three weeks in I was pretty sure her nipples were actually getting bigger, and she was thickening up a little bit – she still has her tuck up, but she looks a little wider from the top. I read in one of my books that one breeder measured girth at the last rib cage – an increase at 40 days meant pregnancy. Well, we had an ultrasound scheduled before 40 days, but I measured Emma’s girth anyway. I had measurements from about a year ago when I had a Holter vest made; at 3 weeks, it was the same as that earlier measurement, 19″. At 4 weeks – on Sunday, January 11 – it was 20″. That could of course simply have meant that she was getting fat. 😉
On Monday, January 12 we took Emma for her ultrasound – Jer made me come along, as he’d taken her the first time (with no puppies) and took Evie to the other vet for her palpation (no puppies); he just didn’t want to go through that alone again! The first thing that showed up was a big black – empty – splotch, and I’ll admit my heart sank just a bit until the vet pointed out that it was her bladder.
Now we start the serious puppy planning – getting our whelping kit together, gathering ingredients and supplements for the last few weeks of pregnancy (a variety of different foods and bitch milk mix for picky eaters, puppy milk replacer, fading puppy and pregnancy homeopathic formulas, frozen plasma, high-concentrate probiotics, etc.), reviewing our books and notes and videos, rearranging the guest room, stockpiling books and Boxer magazines to read while waiting for puppies, wiring the internet into the guest room, etc. Plus I get to start thinking seriously about puppy names – though I’m in a bit of a dilemma there. While I’m calling the due date as February 15, that’s splitting the difference. Nine weeks from her breeding dates are really February 14 and February 16; we don’t have an exact ovulation date (her progesterone was at 1.75 on December 9 and 3.6 on December 11) but a very rough Excel extrapolation puts it at sometime on December 12, which would make her due date February 12-14. (That’s very rough and not especially scientific, mind!)
So the odds seem to favor February 14 – thus the dilemma. I have had a litter theme for Emma’s first litter planned for several years (and in fact it was first planned for a Patsy litter); if the puppies are born on Valentine’s Day, I’m not sure I can ignore that – I think I’ll have to work it into their registered names somehow! Which means I either wait on my original theme, or try to incorporate both – which won’t be all that easy, unfortunately. We’ll see as we go – and of course as Jer tells me, of all the things I could worry about, it’s silly to focus on litter names. Then again, by focusing on the trivial matters, I won’t keep myself up nights worrying about the “what-ifs” – being prepared for an emergency is good; obsessing over the possibility of one is not!
