I got about three to four hours of sleep on Tuesday night because Joy decided to have a puppy party in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Her first litter she had been bred to Clancy and as suspected we got some beautiful red/apricot pups with that match.

I decided to team her with Sundae this time. Since Sundae is a parti colored Poodle and Joy is parti-factored (she had one solid-colored parent and one “parti” aka blenheim parent) which means she can have parti colored puppies if she is bred to a parti. I was hoping to see if she would possibly have reds with more white on them too. So I was very excited when the puppies started arriving to see “what” we had!

I was guessing by her size that she had five to six puppies “baking in the oven”.

When the first one arrived around one-thirty I was happy to see a little red body emerge. He was a great weight at 7.8 ounces. (7ish ounces is a good weight for Cavapoos, 8-9 ounces I consider a good-sized puppy. I’ve had them as small as around 4 ounces and even a bit under. Those little ones scare me!)

The next puppy arrived about half an hour later. It was a blenheim with lots of spots! And a tad bit bigger weighing in at eight ounces.

Then twenty minutes later number three arrived, another blenheim with some a really unique color pattern and even bigger than the first two at 8.8 ounces!

Joy was being a great mom tending to her puppies. I felt her abdomen and could identify that there was definitely another puppy still to be born. She rested for a while and then it was evident that the contractions had started again. This one was taking a little longer.

She pushed. And pushed. And pushed.

I was right there sitting by the crate door watching, waiting to see if I needed to assist her or the puppy in any way. It was obvious as I watched that she was giving birth to a monster! I’ve never seen a mama dog’s poor body do what that girl’s body did. (I have some video footage which I may or may not post).

And then, it was born! A huge puppy. I didn’t know how big it really was until it was dried off and I set it on the scale.

11.5 ounces!!!! 😮

I looked and looked at the scale. That can’t be right. My Cavapoo puppies usually average seven to seven and a half ounces. But it was true. Joy gave birth (on her own, unassisted!) to the biggest Cavapoo puppy we’ve ever had!!

It was a whopper. Then my brain starts thinking; Whopper, Big Mac. Is this my litter name theme? But something else came to mind.

So let me introduce Joy’s litter of merry men  (sorry for all of you anxiously waiting on girls) but I love boys!

 Not five or six puppies, but these four are the weight of that number of normal-sized pups!