What a night

 Just goes to show, you should never take anything to do with animals for granted. This is Dollars 3rd litter and the previous two, although the labours have been fairly drawn out, have gone very smoothly, this one wasn't quite so straight forward. Dollar started early signs of labour early yesterday morning. Things progressed through the day until the early evening, by which time she was panting heavily and was having contractions. She continued through the night with both the panting and contractions gaining intensity but by the time it got to 4:30am she still hadn't started to push. I had to call the vet.
Once at the surgery it was established that Dollar was ready to have the pups so we tried an injection of Ocytocin to try and start the pushing. This would normally take effect in about 10 - 20 mins. Half an hour later we decided that nothing was going to happen so she would need a caesarian section. Whilst the vet went to call the nurse in and prepare for surgery Dollar decided that perhaps she would have a little push. When the vet returned I asked her to check to see if there was any sign of a pup, she did and there was. The 1st pup was safely delivered in the consult room followed fairly quickly by her sister.
At this point I left the surgery with Dollar and pups and another jab, just in case.
By the time we got home there were 3 pups and over the next couple of hours she had a trouble free time delivering 5 more. We have ended up with 4 boys and 4 girls. At the moment it looks like they will all be silvers or blues but they are still wet so I will have another look in a while, probably once I have had some sleep!

 

Now I am just waiting to do it all again on Friday with Audrey :-)