6 Adorable Beagle Puppies!

17th May 2007 - These 6 beagle puppies were born through Ceasarian section. Tobie Doo, our 5 year old Beagle weighing only 9 kg before being pregnant was considered a small Beagle to be carrying 6 pups. Thus, this was really a surprise to us! Moreover, this was already her 65th day of pregnancy, and she was already late. (The expected gestation period for dogs is 63 days).

Throughout the night of the 16th, we waited the entire night for Tobie to go into labour. After just a mere whine and squeak at about 10 pm at night, probably signaling the start of the contractions, nothing happened till the next morning. Her water bag broke about 11 am the next day, and after several hours of waiting without any progress, we finally took her in to the vet.

After an hour of surgery, we were delighted when the 6 puppies were presented to us in a box, collectively making high-pitched whines. Amidst fears that Tobie would not recognize her own pups, she surprised us once again when she lovingly let them suckle milk, even though she was still in pain from surgery. She placed her paws as much as she could on them, and pulled them close to her to protect them from the cold. Truly, we never expected Tobie, our mischievous Beagle to be motherly. In our eyes, she has always been our puppy friend.

Throughout the next two weeks, Tobie has been relatively protective over her puppies, although she has never been fierce with us. We were allowed to pick her puppies out, but she always kept a watchful eye. If we held on too long (like over 2 minutes) , she would come over and grab them back with from us. She could hardly carry them in her mouth, but she tried nevertheless.

I still remember the first week when she was hardly out of the puppy pen, a box we made for her, feeding them every few hours. As the newborn beagle puppies hardly whined, we knew that Tobie had done a good job being their mother.

Read my new posts, as I relate the different personalities of this litter of beagle puppies!