What, no more food?

Day 47

More food please?

I'm attaching a photo of "Little Mama" who is enjoying all of the extra food and special attention. She says she could eat like this ALL THE TIME and be perfectly happy. I told her not to count on it. She gets filet mignon flavored canned food with all of her meals, and extra snacks in between meals, pretty much food anytime she wants it. She needs to keep her glucose level and she needs to keep bringing in calories because the babies are still developing.

We're on Day #47 out of approximately 59-63, so we're getting down to the finish line. Tonight my husband Derek is putting together the whelping box in the "whelping suite" (aka our former master bedroom) so we'll let Rini get used to that and little does she know she'll be spending a lot of time in there =) We'll set up the spare computer and webcam in there, to do a test and make sure everything is set up properly.

Right now we can easily feel the puppies, and according to the whelping calendar we should be able to feel them move by the 16th! If we can capture movement on video we'll post a video of the puppies kicking. With whippets, because they carry so little body fat, you can often SEE them moving under the mother's skin.

When we have one week to go we'll schedule a last prenatal visit with our vet and get her x-rayed to see approximately how many pups we are to expect. X-rays are more reliable than ultrasounds for counting the
number of babies. I'll post a photo of the x-ray for you all to see. It's neat in a geeky, scientific kind of way. =)

Mom (Sharyn Hutchens) is arriving on the 29th to help with final preparations and to be here for the birth and first few days. It's definitely a big relief for my mind to know I have someone with much more experience than I do helping with the litter! It will also really help with those first few sleepless nights to have three people on duty.