Just the 1!!

Betty had her puppy in the early hours of Wednesday morning - what's wrong with having pups at a sociable time? She produced a very healthy black boy with no trouble, but she was quite big during this pregnancy so I had guessed at 2 maybe 3 pups. As the morning went on Betty was showing no sign of pushing but was restless and a bit shivery so I thought I should have her checked by a vet. We got to the surgery and the vet had a feel, she thought the same as I did, definitely a lump but not sure if it was a puppy or the uterus contracting, so we took an xray, sure enough there was a mass by her pelvis which looked like a pup, the picture was a bit grainy but you could make out a skull, backbone and legs. It was almost out so the vet decided to see if a combination of squeezing the abdomen and trying to hook it out would work.
Of course Betty's size was against her, the vet could only insert 1 finger so was limited on what she could feel. After a fairly lengthy attempt to move this mass we decided that a Cesarean was our only course of action, so at this point I requested that she would be spayed at the same time (I don't believe in breeding from an animal that has needed surgical intervention to get the babies out). Just to make sure we took another xray and lo and behold the 'puppy' had gone!, we took a third picture and still no pup! We can only conclude that it must have been excrement that we saw on the 1st picture - Bettys diet contains a lot of bone.
So Betty is now home with her very precious baby, and as usual is the most devoted mum. The pictures are not great, black and small are not the easiest combination to photograph(and i'm not sure why Emily found it necessary to wear a cat mask) but hopefully we will get some better shots as he grows.