Kina Kabambe Rhodesian Ridgebacks

"THE FOREST LITTER"

 Born:  09/28/23

                                       CH Amber Trace The Born King - “Silas"

(Owned by Julia Toole)

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GCHB KKR Captain's Hula Lou - “Hula”

(Owned by June Greenwood and Angelina Horne)

Wednesday 
 
This is what miserable looks like.  ONLY WORSE!   dripping milk, anxious, restless, can’t sit, can’t stand, just flop.  Temperature 100 and dropping.  So OVER this!!
 
Thursday  - BIRTH DAY - September 23, 2023
 
Temperature 98.  Go time!  3 days early!   C-section at 8:00 am.  BIRTHDAY!!  Sept. 28.  12 puppies!  All born alive.  Hula doing well.  All going home today.  Human anxiety goes WAY down!!
 
Friday
 
First day at home.  Puppies oblivious.  Silas clueless.  Hula attentive.  Loves her humans to sit in the whelping box to play with her puppies and get ear rubs!  4 human children over the moon!!
 
8 females, 4 males.  3 are ridgeless females and 1 off set crown.  No cleft palates, no bump tails, no excessive white.  All eating well and feisty!  Wide array of colors from dark red to dark gold with wide variety of black masks.  
 
Saturday
 
Dew claws off.  OUCH!  Hula and puppy check up!!
 
We have 12 living puppies and a living mother!!  All is well, all is good, all relieved!!
1 week old
 
The puppies pretty much do nothing except eat and sleep and some whining!  They doubled in size since birth and will continue to do so each week until they are about 4 weeks old!
 
Hula is doing great.  She has 10 faucets and plenty of milk!!   See food conversion above!  Her tongue lashing baths are ferocious and frequent which the puppies are not fond of.  See whining above.  We are happy that Hula has taken the cleaning of the puppies to heart with such vigor!  We certainly are not very enthusiastic about the job!  Note to self:  do not let Hula lick your face!!
 
Their eyes and ears are all tightly closed yet so they can not see or hear, but those baths above and their sense of smell work wonders for them.
 
The dew claw removal went…… well it happened!  Nobody enjoys dew claw removal especially the puppies!!  Hula, Grandmas, vets all hate it too, but a necessary evil for a very active breed.
 
Developing High Achievers/ Early Neurological stimulation exercises, developed by Carmen Battaglia, have begun.  We start on day three and go through day 16.  The program is 5 easy, quick exercises once a day that the puppies actually like except the upside down one!!  Read more about it here:   http://breedingbetterdogs.com/pdfFiles/articles/early_neurological_stimulation_en.pdf
 
As always, the litter theme is great fun to arrive at especially now when children are involved again.   Silas in Aramaic/Greek/Latin means ‘of the forest’ and ‘prayed for’.   So it seemed appropriate to have a Forest theme!!  See below!!!

3 Weeks Old

“Go into the forest and get very quiet. Just listen."  

Sometimes the Forest puppies ARE very quiet, sleeping away the day, and then they are ….. most definitely NOT!! They still do lots of whining and complaining about who gets the best faucet, but they have also begun to ’trill’ as I call it.  It is a rather pathetic attempt at growling, barking, and whining all at the same time.  It is really cute, but only lasts a few days and then they ARE barking and growling as part of learning to play!  

They have been GI Joe crawling for a few days now. They still tip over a lot and face plant, but they are low to the ground so a litter mate usually cushions their fall!!  Wrestling and chewing on each other’s nose, toes and tails are a great way to spend the 1/2 hour at a time that they are awake.  Then the Forests relapse into "that quiet place between heaven and earth."

Their little ears, which have been pinned flat up against their heads, have flipped down and lay like hound dog ears should.   They are beginning to hear now, but they seem to have no idea where sound is coming from….. especially their own!!!

They have eyes that opened into squinty, cloudy blue slits that allow them to see light.  Their vision gets better every day and slowly the color of their eyes will turn from blue to shades of amber or chocolate brown whichever color best matches their coat color.

The ridges have gotten very fuzzy and hard to really see this week - which is normal.  By next week the fuzz will go away so you can easily see them again. No hope for those 3 Ridgeless girls though!  We prefer to call them Zimbabwe Flatbacks vs Rhodesian Ridgebacks so they don’t feel left out!!

Belly buttons and dew claw removals have healed very nicely and no dermoid sinus has been detected so far!! There are lots of big hurdles every week ahead of them as they begin to turn into their own unique little selves.

Hula required her weekly toenail trim so the 192 (4 per paw x 4 paws per pup x 12 pups!  Yikes!!) nasty little daggers are dulled down.  Her wicked tongue lashing baths continue, but Forests are making head way on escaping the tongue on occasion!

I think this week is the end of "the quiet Forest where silence has come to lick it’s wounds.”  or Hula!!

Click to enlarge photo.