Puppies, Puppies, Puppies!

Puppies!

Have you ever wanted to sit on the floor and be covered in puppies? I have! I had wanted that all of my life. So three years ago we decided that Betta, our gorgeous female great dane, should have puppies.

Sounds so spectacular on the surface, doesn’t it?! She’ll have puppies, JD will make a whelping bed (whatever that is) we’ll have a ball! It will be fun!!

Did you know great danes typically have 10-12 puppies in a litter? Just guess how many pee pads we went through in 4-5 ½ months, awwww come on guess. We went through….3 boxes every 4 days at the beginning and more as time went on, feeding those puppies three times a day, cleaning up after them constantly and washing soft blankets for them over and over. Do you have any earthly idea how much they pee and poop 10 puppies make? Forget daily try hourly? So much fun. (Tee hee).

They were born Christmas Eve 2019, all but one, then an hour past midnight, here comes my Irma, named for JD’s Gramma because they all insisted on being born on his Gramma’s bed and well you guessed it, her name was Irma. All 10 were just perfect. God’s tiny little angels! Precious, soft, babies. Mewling and looking for their Momma’s teat. Their eyes were still closed so JD and I were the barrier one on each side so no one rolled off the bed. We were thrilled! Betta was exhausted and they were starved. Every hour or so, they were awake again so we took turns being awake. First, we moved everyone to the whelping bed so we could stop worrying about them falling off Gramma Irma’s bed.

Betta was not happy about that. She paced and jumped in and out of the wooden whelping bed JD had made (which was very cool) but Betta being 118lb’s and almost as tall as my waist could easily jump in and out, over and over, so until they were safely moved to the whelping bed, she did! There was a soft blow -up mattress with a fluffy cushioned top then layer, after layer of blankets then pee pads on top of that then more blankets tucked in all

along the edge and sides. I climbed in and sat there to help Betta keep them wrangled during those first few nights. JD constantly cleaned, washed and dried, picked up and cleaned and fed Betta. Let her out to potty. It was a regular three-ring circus.

from Costco initially–

We bought six boxes of pee pads

They started eating “real food” at three-ish weeks

Puppy Kibble 50lb bags two cups per batch

10 cans of baby formula, six scoops per batch

10 gallons of distilled water

Broasted chickens, the yummy ones at Costco YUM!

Each feeding consisted of:

2 scoops of puppy kibble, one scoop of cut up chicken, cut up small, six little scoops of formula, two cups of distilled water, after a couple of weeks we added blueberries. Puppy vitamins out of a dropper. Then into the fancy blender! After their eyes opened, we fed them 3 times a day and they were still nursing. We called them “plumpies,” they were round and adorable and I wanted to keep them all. They walked in the food, walked all over each other, they made all kinds of cute noises, made a mess of everything and we loved every single minute of it. In two weeks they weighed 6lbs, in four weeks they weighed 20lbs, in 8 weeks they weighed 45 – 55lbs! 12 weeks they weighed 65-75lbs!! There is nothing like a Great Dane, that’s why they are called a Great Breed!!

It was amazing, exhausting, like you would think, the time of our life. Did I say exhausting!!! I cried every single time one left, some we sold, a few we gave away still I cried-I think Betta did too. If we had lived where we do now, we would have kept more of those precious babies! Now we have almost two acres, we could have had so much fun chasing them all over the place what a hoot that would have been……..I digress.

I still have dreams about them. I still hear them with their tiny cries in the night and wake up and realize it’s just my imagination. Do we think about having another litter, yes of course we do. So far we’ve managed to talk each other out of it but….. It’s been three years and we are three years older too. Irma is still technically a puppy, 150lbs of Puppy!! With puppy stuff going on and puppy things she does, chasing butterflies, trying to chomp bees/birds/anything that flies, drones oops!, No Irma don’t eat the bees, No Irma don’t jump like a crazy girl at your Momma Betta! No Irma don’t step on your Momma Betta’s head. She outweighs her Momma by about 20 pounds, Your Momma doesn’t like it when you sniff her bottom!

Would I do it all over again!? Well, of course, I would. All of those precious tiny puppies. How could I say no? I couldn’t!

That’s why, until now, we have managed to talk each other out of it. It would take both of us. It is work. They grow up or rather get big VERY FAST! They are all legs and tongues and kisses and happy babies!!! Oh yes, I would do it again in a heartbeat!

And the Costco list went on:

100+ gallons of laundry detergent

25 gallons of Downey fabric softener

Spray and Wash Spot cleaner (haha)

Swiffer Wet

Swiffer Dry

They grew very fast!!!

Did I mention that, yes of course I did.

Costco run every other day to buy more supplies.

Yes, we would do it again!

Puppies, Love Comes in All Sizes!!