Perseverance. We waited long enough!

Yesterday, February 24, 2021, Mer, aka Mermaid or Elwha's Siren of the Deep Blue, gave me six puppies.  The first was a girl and weighted almost 7 ounces.  She was the smallest.  The last, and largest, was a girl, 8.9 ounces.  In between were two more girls and two boys.  All are doing well and quickly figured out how the milk bar works.  They are quite mobile and I have to find them in the blankets and dog beds that are in the whelping box to keep them on soft bedding and to keep them warm.  Warm, you say?!!!!  Yes, it is winter in Hawaii and the wind is blowing quite hard today and last night.  Puppies are born wet and that can be cold.  I tented the whelping box/elevated bed and they dried out quite nicely and then they stayed warm all night and today.  I have the windows closed.  Babies do not have the ability to control their temperatures as more mature beings do.  Mom/Mer is keeping them nice and warm giving out warm milk/colostrum and cuddling them.  These babies will all be grizzles even though their mother is a blue.  Dad obviously doesn't have a blue gene to share.  

Some of the people getting a puppy are already making plane reservations to come pick up their babies and have some days of warmth in Hawaii.  Others don't yet know that they are getting one!  I need to start calling people.  Some puppies will fly cargo to get to the mainland and others will fly in the cabin.  

Dad is Duke who recently moved to Federal Way near Seattle.  He has now learned what snow is and also what a TV is.  Roger says that he loves TV, especially when there is a dog involved in whatever is playing.  The first full day Duke was in Washington, he ran away from something that scared him in front of a pet store and was lost for three days.  That was a scary thing, but the "club" of people known as Lost Dogs In King County found him and returned him to Roger.  Thank goodness.  A very nice man saved him from being run over by a car as Duke weaved in and out of cars on a busy arterial.  Never again will Duke wear any kind of a collar besides a Martingale!

I didn't think that I could get a picture on here.  I'll try to get more on here that show the pups, soon.  I cheated and stole this from a text I sent to my daughter last night.  She couldn't come over and see the pups because she loaned her car to my sister whose truck is in the garage.  (I am thinking of getting a truck the next vehicle I have.  I love my Prius and the mileage it gets, but I live in a place where one does NOT want a low to the ground car.  Crazy thing scrapes the ground too often for my liking.  Oh well, it will be awhile still before I can afford a new vehicle.)  

Border Terrier puppies are always born black.  One might well think that these babies are going to be blues, but no.  They will get lighter and lighter in color and end up whatever shade of grizzle they will be at about seven months of age.  Blues don't have a brown head, except for their eyebrows which are a brown line, much like a Rottweiler's. These guys have black at the tips of the brown hairs covering their heads.  

I guess that I have prattled on long enough.  All I really wanted to say was HOORAY!  PUPPIES!

Later, The Curmudgeon