DEC 26. CICI...9 PUPS.   

 We saw little if any contraction and all of a sudden we had a puppy on the sofa wonderfully active strong puppy no problems whatsoever and cece took one look at it and left I think she thought she broke in the house break a rule and moved her bowels on the couch she had no interest in that pup whatsoever nor did she have any interest in us trying to catch her because I think she thought she was in trouble and we got nowhere we finally got it to holtsville long enough for the pup to get a few mouthfuls it was a good strong popping nurse well so it had its colostrum and then she got up and she wandered around then she began to exhibit more of the normal labor pains I'm tearing up any of the fluffies or sheets or anything including mattresses then we just followed her around and just waiting for something to happen well that's what happened for what nine more times she she never really produced these pups with any severe contractions they just kind of fell out it's very strange it's very strange keeping track of it all Haley did a wonderful job um I don't know what else I can tell you except that it's been a very weird night and we just had one more so I think our count is up to 9 with one DOA the pumps all look good are acting well we have a couple that are slow nurses if I had to worry about anything or worry about the fact that I don't think I think they're a day or two early and I don't think her milk is totally in you have to really go out of your way to see the little white bubbles on the side of their mouths when they nurse so I think with nine puppies I I told everybody to get the nursing bottles out and we may have to start with the goats milk we have loads of goats milk so don't worry about that we're all set

 

we had some wonderful comments and observations about Hayley taking care of them and she's done fine I stayed with her for a while and then I left went back to bed with the instruction that if anything happened Karen could come running and get me up it actually shake me because I might not hear if anybody would just yelling for me and that seemed to work fine Karen was delighted to have see the whole operation and Sarah did the basics that still needed to be done I do have to tell you that I had 51 emails from one person complaining about everything I don't know what she was like on the chat room but these were all individual emails that I got telling us everything that she thought we had done wrong... I get a kick out of that... last night we were sitting around remembering all the complaints that we've had over the years many of them just honest complaints of people just didn't know any better—

 

It shocks me -----along with you CP’s ------ how much  you have learned in the course of the last 8-- 10 years about farming in general and animals particularly--the first night the cameras were live I got a phone call waking me up at 2:00 o'clock with a great shocking news that there was a bird in the barn you will now know how ridiculous that is but at the time it sounded like a large problem to the person who was calling we've graduated from that.  but there have been times one woman explaining to us the reason we had  a stillborn  puppy was due to the fact that we were using cell phones in the room with her.  Last night I took a call from a a very upset woman who wanted us to stop chasing that dog around and let her lie down and have the puppies-- What she didn't realize was we were following along behind she say because puppies were literally just dropping out of the back of her so we followed around with marsh claws to catch whatever happened I've never seen puppies produced with so little effort the part of the mother the last one I was sitting right behind her having just had a shower and I did not expect it she didn't do it thing and that last puppy came sliding out which I then checked it quickly and then handed it to Haley who by now is an expert very nearly.

 

Most of you do an amazing job of keeping each other educated and stop any unnecessary phone calls there have been phone calls which have been absolutely critical taxi getting her foot stuck in the hay bag was certainly one of them but if the barn is on fire by all means give me a call and that does involve puppies in kennel 10 chewing on small plastic toys ---there shouldn't be any small plastic chorizo in kettle 10 we do seriously appreciate all the extra eyes that you folks give us and I really appreciate the fact that you can talk it all over and decide whether it really is something worth calling me about because I do need to have my sleep too I'm happy to get up at 2:00 o'clock in the morning if I need to but it's always wonderful to hear you guys discussing whether it's necessary or not we do have someone here 24 hours a day who can go down to the barn and try and undo any problem or do and if they need extra help they can wake up matt along the way

 

however here we go at the start of the new year almost I'm still looking for somebody to help lift and carry hammer nail under my direction if necessary and the other thing I'm looking for is I am told it's Karen Maitland who who made those very funny puppies speak cartoons because I'm gonna try and have a column in the Ipswich news and see how that goes and I would like to be able to include some of the very funny bubble speak cartoons that I'm told she was is the one who has done them and I thought there were two people doing this so anybody else who does them just start sending them to me and we'll see what happens next the other thing would be to tell me how on earth you get those bubbles big things to appear I'VE  got enough trouble trying to type straight but maybe it's time I learned to do that I don't know