You all might be wondering about Gracie since she was our next pregnant “lady” and due about mid-April.

**The post continues birthing details so if you don’t want to read about the “yuck” of whelping you might want to scroll on by.**

She got her beauty treatment and we waited and waited, taking her temperature morning and evening each day. Day after day. But I had bred her four times, skipping a day in between so we did have a long stretch of time that would be within the normal delivery time-frame.

Finally on Monday morning her temperature was down in the range we like to see pre-whelping. So I had hoped something would happen that day. She continued to get more restless, nesting a bit, but nothing major was happening.

Nighttime came and still no puppies. But she was getting closer and more restless. I could finally tell she was having contractions but no puppies appeared.

Finally I got personal and checked to see if any puppies were on the way. I could feel one way up high, but all I felt was a tail. That’s not great.

I took her outside to potty and walk around hoping that would help move things along.

About thirty minutes had passed so I checked her again. The puppy did not feel like it had moved at all.

And she was having contractions. I was afraid we had a stuck pup.

So as much as I hated to, I gave the vet a call…at 1:50 am. Man, I hate waking them up. And the vet on call ended up being the one with a baby of her own. Oh dear!

I explained the situation and she agreed to meet me at the clinic. By the time I got the truck and dog loaded and headed out it would be nearly 3:00 before we would arrive.

I went out to warm up the truck, make sure I had a crate, extra blankets etc. Hubby heard or saw the lights on and got up to check what was happening. And in my scurrying around in and out of the living room, I chanced to hear Gracie loudly licking.

I stopped to check and confirmed what I suspected, she had delivered the pup. It wasn’t even big like I thought it might be since it had seemed stuck. And unfortunately it was stillborn. There was no resuscitating the sweet thing. I felt sorry for Gracie. She tried to clean it, but I took it out before anything nasty happened. I won’t go into details to explain that last sentence. Let’s just say sometimes nature does what it needs to do with stillborns.

I did quickly call my vet back and said “go back to bed” explaining the puppy had finally arrived.

I palpated Gracie’s abdomen and could feel that she was not empty of puppies yet. She had never gotten that big so I didn’t think she had a huge litter coming.

I was exhausted at this point and laid down on the couch next to her crate knowing that I would likely wake up if I heard her moving or licking something. I woke up around 4:00 and checked to find that she had delivered a bigger, vigorous puppy. She had already cleaned it up. I checked it out, put it back with mom and went back to sleep.

And that was it.

Gracie only had two pups and the first was stillborn. So she is mothering a singleton, male puppy, red with a big white blaze and white chest. He’s going to be a gorgeous dog. In fact, had he been the other gender, I might have been tempted to keep it here.

Proud papa is likely Bonus. I say “likely” because we tried something different for Gracie’s last litter and aimed for a dual-sired litter with Clancy and also Bonus (yes, it’s possible to have puppies from two different males in one litter). I was hoping to get a variety of colors for this last shebang! And Clancy has never put this much white on Gracie puppies and why I believe it is Bonus’ pup! She is retiring after this little fellow is weaned and she has been spayed and recovered from her spay surgery.

Puppy matching day will be a bit different. Normally it would be the Sunday around five weeks but that would either be Raven’s delivery day, or Sally’s delivery day/Memorial weekend (which I am most likely changing to June 5th because of the holiday and my nephew’s graduation).

So since it will be a quick match with only one pup, I will take name’s of those on our Cavapoo waiting list that are interested in this guy up until noon on Friday, May 20th and then match him later that day. His potential puppy delivery day would be June 19th which is Father’s Day but we could bump it up to the week before and send him home on June 12th if that works better for his family.

Whoever gets him will be one lucky family. Being a singleton he will be very “pre-spoiled”.

❤️