My Sister's Puppies

So life around here has been really busy lately and interesting. It is partially because of the below 2 doggies. :P You see my sister has been trying to breed them for 2 years and to no avail. They thought about going on vacation but her dog was in heat so they waited to see if she might get pregnant. When she showed no symptoms half-way through they decided to finalize their plans for their trip to SD. So, about a week or two before they were to leave Jasmine (or Jazzy as she goes by) got enormous and we realized that finally the long awaited event would probably take place while my sister was gone!

Here are the parents a couple days before the birth, Jasmine & Kenric aka Jazzy & Rikki.

On Tuesday, February 3rd she had a litter of 10 puppies! Which is relatively unheard of for a Shih Tzu. We kept her at mom & dad's house since it would have disturbed her too much to move her to a strange place to give birth. So Emily and I took turns checking on her. Well, Will and Emily went to Tom's worksite around 2pm that afternoon and then I stopped by to check on her a little after 3:30pm. I walked in and there were puppies everywhere and she was still giving birth! She had a total of 10, 5 girls and 5 boys (isn't that a hoot?!) but the first one didn't make it as she didn't take it's sack off and we couldn't revive him. :( But below if the very tired mommy with her new brood. :)

Since the mommy is named Jasmine, Emily and I gave all the girls flower names and we used G.A. Henty names for the boys to go with their daddy's name, Kenric. We just did it to have fun telling them apart instead of just A, B, C etc. but Mandie says she likes the names. :)

Puppy pile, we have to weigh them every day to make sure they are gaining weight and we are actually giving 3 of them a supplement as well.

Too cute!

Jazzy making sure Caleb is taking good care of her baby. :)

Charis loves holding the puppies. :)

Puppy!

Hmmm

We are, of course, taking lots of pics so I'll probably post more soon. :)