Yep, Sky had her babies!

Thankfully she decided that daytime was good and had them on Tuesday afternoon. From the start of the first major contraction until the first pup arrived was about an hour and a half. She wasn’t very big at all and I was praying we didn’t have another large singleton like Glory had.

I was thinking two or three would be a nice sized litter.

The first pup arrived weighing about 8.4 ounces which a good sized Cavapoo. About an hour later she pushed out a whooper weighing 11.3 ounces!! With the size of the second pup and the smallness of mom’s belly I figured those two were it!

And the weird thing was they were both apricot with just a touch of white markings.

With mom being a parti-colored Poodle and dad being parti-factored (meaning he can produced parti-colored pups, I figured we’d get more “flash”!

After the big guy showed up I had to work on him a while. He was having trouble getting a good batch of air into his lungs even with all my suctioning and other tricks. I hollered for hubby to grab the incubator and oxygen concentrator. (My bad, I didn’t have that already set up!). He got that set up quickly as I continued to work on the puppy. His muzzle was actually turning purplish, not good. Finally he seemed to start catching his breath, but I figured some time in the incubator with some oxygen was the best thing for him.

And just as I got him settled into the incubator, I turned around to see how mom was doing and found the teeniest little mite ever! (Well, probably not our smallest puppy, but close to it.) Apparently her big brother sucked all the nutrients out of mom in the womb and didn’t leave this little nugget with much. She was 3.6 ounces! Oh so tiny. But she got all the color I was waiting for, a lovely blenheim.

After drying her off and checking her over, she went into the incubator with “Bruiser”.

You guys, look at that size difference!!

Believe it or not fifteen minutes after the tiny mite, mom produced her fourth and final pup with all the flash I was expecting. He is marked like his dad.

So we have four pups; three apricot and one blenheim, two boys, two girls in four completely different sizes; 8.4, 11.6, 3.6 and 6.8 ounces. Unbelievable.

And since the wee one has almost no chance on her own with her three larger siblings, I’m feeding her every four hours around the clock like she’s an orphan. When I check  she is sleeping and not nursing. I do manually latch her onto mom during the day and hold her there so she is nursing. But since I don’t know if or how much she is nursing, on her own the supplemental feeding is essential. She doesn’t have the strength to push through the others to get to the food and they just bulldoze her out of the way. Hopefully as she gains weight and grows a bit bigger she’ll be able to nurse on her own.

And no, I do not bottle feed when I supplement. I tube feed a puppy that needs supplementing. I have never had much luck with puppies and bottles plus they just burn more calories sucking off a bottle compared to being tube fed. My former boss who was/is a veterinarian showed me how to when we got a litter of orphan kittens into our clinic years ago.

And this little girl has the funniest sideways cowlick on her head that I’ve ever seen!

It’s reminds me of the hairstyles from the 1930’s. Hopefully she has the same resilience as they did.

 If you are on our Cavapoo waiting list and are interested in being added to Sky’s litter list please do not comment on this post but instead email me at pinewoodcavapoos@gmail.com. The list is only for those already on our waiting list (which is currently closed).  Puppy matching day for this litter will be Sunday, October 16th and Puppy delivery day will be Sunday, November 6th.