New Arrivals

Delta hasn't joined the party yet...

Grandma Stoker helping clean a puppy

Maquah and Ecko's puppies arrived last night.  Ecko's due date was officially Monday, but the puppies were within the window for safe arrival.  Delivery was very efficient with the first puppy born at 6:05 PM on Friday evening and the last pup arriving at 8:37 PM.  We'll double check our notes (umbilical cords sometimes look surprisingly like boy parts during the rush of delivering a puppy) but we believe we have 4 females and 3 males, all black with some white markings and all wavy (we think).

Instead of just calling the pups by the colors of their neck tags for the next 9 or so weeks, we like to give them temporary names.  This litter is named after rockets in honor of the 50th anniversary of John Glen orbiting the earth.

Here are the names/color codes in birth order:
Atlas (male) Blue
Scout (female) Pink
Titan (male) Green
Loki (female) Red
Redstone (male) Orange
Juno (female) Purple
Delta (female) Yellow

The first few days are important ones for the puppies, as that is the time they are the most fragile and most likely to "fail to thrive".  It is not uncommon to lose a puppy this way.  We have been very fortunate over the years to only lose one puppy this way, so hopefully our record will hold with this litter and all the little ones will grow strong.  We will monitor the pups weights frequently in the upcoming days to make sure they are all gaining weight.

Hope that is coherent - slightly sleep deprived...