COMSTOCK PUPPIES - 2002
This page (and subsequent pages as required) is devoted almost exclusively to Calli's litter of 10 puppies-from delivery (June 8, 2002) through placement in their new homes and beyond as the new families supply me with updates and photos. We had planned to keep a single male pup but, with the loss of our adult male Keeper, we decided to keep two male pups. Hopefully the pictures on these pages will show how English Mastiffs mature and interact with each other during puppyhood and beyond.
SPECIAL NOTE: All of our pups have been placed in loving homes.
The various growth stages of our pups can be seen on the following links:
Birth to three weeks. Three to six weeks. Six to eight weeks. Eight to ten weeks. Ten to thirteen weeks. Thirteen to seventeen weeks. Seventeen weeks to 22+ weeks (5 months). Five months to almost 6 months. Six months to 7 1/2 months. Seven plus months to almost 9 months. Nine months to almost 11 months. Eleven months to 13 1/2 months. Thirteen and1/2 months to 18 months. Eighteen months to 22 months. Twenty-two months to 28 months. Twenty-eight months to the present. If you would like to see our adult dogs and learn more about the current breeding please visit our main page COMSTOCK MASTIFFS - 2002.
After more months of waiting our little princess finally came in season. On Thursday April 11, 2002 our bitch, Am/Int. Champion Castle Creeks Comstock Calli was bred, via surgical implantation, to Champion Caledonia's Second Promise or Mulder as he is called. Mulder is a strikingly handsome brindle male owned by Kellye Brenner of Tennessee. The breeding was supposed to occur on Wednesday but FedEx badly damaged the package before it left Tenn. We had another sample collected and shipped (heavily insured) the next day. Needless to say Caroline was a nervous wreck!
We are very excited about this breeding. Mulder has produced some beautiful puppies and Calli finished 2001 ranked 4th nationally for Mastiff Best of Opposite Sex points. They should produce some beautiful, healthy babies.
On May 14 Caroline took Calli to the vet for an ultrasound. The vet saw five pups. There may be more but Calli wasn't very cooperative. She didn't like laying on her back on the cold floor while the vet poked her tummy with a cold probe. The expected delivery date is June 11, 2002.
Saturday afternoon June 8, 2002 Calli delivered, via C-Section, 10 beautiful, healthy pups all weighing over a pound each. There were 5 males and five females. Of the males four are brindles and one is a fawn. In the case of the females it looks like 2 fawn, 1 apricot and 2 (most likely) brindles. Colors are sometimes a little hard to determine this early. The opening picture above shows all 10 pups nursing or laying near Calli after nursing. She can't actually handle all 10 pups at once. Not enough spigots on one side.
Saturday started peacefully enough with Calli resting on her quilt in the Family room. She wasn't expected to deliver until Tues. June 11 or maybe a day earlier. Except that when Caroline measured her temperature early that morning it had dropped below 100 F. When she measured it again mid-morning the temp was still below 100F. This is a sign that the pups may be on their way and could come that Saturday night or Sunday when our Vet's office is closed. A call to our vet resulted in our taking Calli in at 2 PM that day for a C-Section.
The C-Section actually occurred about 3:15 PM with all the pups being taken in about a 10 minute or less period of time. For that period of time I believe we virtually closed down the vet's office. We had all 3 vets plus 4 vet techs plus my wife processing the pups. I say processing because I don't know exactly what everybody was doing. My job was to take pictures and to record information about the pups such as order of birth, markings, etc. Things happened so fast that not much got recorded. Just pictures taken. You will note that their no actual pictures of the C-Section itself. The camera-man is a bit squimish in that regard and my wife didn't want to have to interrupt the C-Section to revive a fainted husband. (Or would she have just waited until the puppies were secure? I guess I'll never know the answer to that.)
We left the vet's office about 4:30 PM with all 10 pups in their carry box (containing 2 hot-water bottles).
After we got home Caroline weighed each puppy and put a colored yarn around their necks so that we could tell them apart. Calli then nursed the pups. A procedure which occurs about every 2 1/2 to 3 hours around the clock and takes about an hour to complete as there are more pups than mother's nipples. As my wife said about 4 AM Sunday morning as we were sitting on the floor in a stupor "Breeding is not for sissies!"
When the pups are not nursing we keep them in a separate box so that mom doesn't roll on them. Not expecting 10 pups it became apparent that the box we had wasn't going to be big enough. We control the temperature in the box by means of a heating pad and a heat lamp. Somehow one of the pups always finds the thermometer and lies on it or, worse yet, pees on it which tends to effect the accuracy of the measurement.
The pups also keep warm by piling up on each other which makes for some cute pictures. Of course without sound on this page you can't hear the pup on the bottom squealing.
Caroline supplements mother's milk with goat's milk & vitamins a couple of times a day. Some pups adjust to the bottle better than others. Caroline sits in the whelping box supplementing one dog while some nurse and others await their turn in the holding pen.
One thing about pups is that is always an opportunity for some cute picture. Here are a few. Guess which pup we refer to as Fat Albert.
And here are a few more. The two on the right are of four of the boys. I don't remember where the other one was at this time. Probably still nursing.
Caroline does a weigh-in of each pup twice a day to make sure that they are gaining weight. We use a postal scale and a shoe box. It doesn't take long before the shoe box won't hold a pup. After the morning weigh-in each pup gets a butt wash. I'm not sure that Red is enjoying his "wash". Maybe the water is too cold?
Callie has been making good progress in bonding to her pups. One of the downsides of C-Sections is that it takes a few days for the mother dog to realize that these little things sucking on her nipples are actually her pups. Last night at her 2 AM nursing session she actually started to help clean butts. She also wanted to sniff each pup as it was put on and taken off of her. At todays nursings she was even more active in licking her pups. Perhaps a little too forcefully in some cases. She has been a really good mother.
Well the pups have aged one week. (Caroline and I have aged about a year.) They have grown a bit and now barely all fit in the extra large blue container I bought on day two when it became apparent that the pups were too crowded in the original large plastic container we used to bring them home from the vet. We decided to move them into the whelping box so that they should have plenty of room for the next week or two. Calli will now sleep on the floor outside the whelping box.
A whelping box and assorted auxilliary containers for a mastiff are, of course, somewhat larger than for a pom or min-pin so it is important that they be designed and placed to blend in as unobtrusively as possible as we have obviously accomplished.
At this stage in their growth puppies are either eating or sleeping and I've included a photo or two of each activity. I tried to get an angle that shows their heads. It would appear from the lineup in the photo on the far right that the fawn pup intends to be different in more ways than just color. It will be another week to 10 days before their eyes open and they really start to move around.
Compare the picture at the left with the similar picture above taken at one week of age. The pups appear to have grown a bit in just 3 days.
This afternoon, between feedings, when the pups are usually sound asleep I heard some rustling in the whelping box. I glanced in the box and saw both Black and Red attempting to walk. They each managed to walk a few steps before collapsing on their nose. They kept trying so I grabbed my camera to record this historic moment. The pups only managed to stay up a short time and, due to the short delay in my digital camera's action, most of my pix were of them on their nose. I did manage to get a couple of shots that show them upright on all fours. I suspect in the next day or two they will all be walking. Once they learn how to climb out of their whelping box Caroline and I will really be busy. Note that their ears are hanging down now and they look more like Mastiff puppies instead of gophers.
Early this morning (and by early I mean 4:00 AM) the pups had pretty well soiled their whelping box bedding. Needing something for the pups to sleep on after their feeding we went for the best - a Martha Stewart quilt. After all, nothing but the best for our pups. Actually these quilts, doubled over, make excellent beds for the adult dogs and they are washable. On sale the quilts cost less than $20 at Kmart (we bought several).
Mother dog Calli started to develop a touch of mastitis (nipple infection) a few days ago so , to be extra safe, we stopped nursing Calli and switched to bottle feeding the pups. Calli was a bit bummed at first but we don't know whether it was because she couldn't nurse or because she couldn't sleep in the whelping box. She finally decided that if she couldn't have "mother dog" status she would revert to "House Princess" status and sleep on her favorite bed.
Yarn Color Sex Birth Wt. (lb-oz) Coat Color Turquoise Male 1 - 6 Brindle Red Male 1 - 4 1/2 Brindle Green Male 1 - 6 3/4 Brindle Black Male 1 - 4 3/4 Fawn Blue Male 1 - 0 3/4 Brindle White Female 1 - 5 3/4 Brindle Purple Female 1 - 2 3/4 Apricot Yellow Female 1 - 4 Fawn Pink Female 1 - 4 Fawn Lt. Blue Female 1 - 3 Brindle
Another photo of the pups filling their blue holding box on day 15. Compare with the previous photos at one week and 10 days but notice there are only 5 pups instead of ten. They are really growing.
We are bottle feeding now. This is Turquoise enjoying his meal.
These pups have sharp little claws which tend to tear up your arms when holding them for bottle feeding (see previous photo). Caroline gives them a nail clipping every few days. Trust me - this is no easy task.
One of the true joys of puppies is the cuddling period just after feeding. (Before feeding it is all you can do to just hold on to them long enough to get the bottle in their mouths.) The delightful smell of "puppy breath" is not easily described but adds to the contentment of holding a puppy close.
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