Lilly is in the last week and she seems to be looking forward to shedding some of the burden. She know we are there for her and relies on us heavily where she can.
This morning she went out to hunt rabbits in a spot on the other side of our vegetable garden. The rabbits are looking forward to the free food and our plants are growing well. We're looking forward to seeing our hounds protecting the garden. Lilly went out at five in the morning and came back in around seven. It's a perfect early Summer day for all of us but it is time to get ready for puppies.
We've done this before. A chain of events we've improved steadily over the years. We put down a moving blanket pad on our heated floor and cover it with a new blue tarp that the whelping pen holds down flat. We will bring one of the kiddie pools we use for whelping down from the attic and santitize it, but don't actually put it into the pen until we're only a day out. We've already brought out the stacks of towels and boxes of equiptment to check for completeness. We'll be ready but the night of whelping is always a surprize.
From this point forward we'll go outside when Lilly does to try and keep her from finding a private spot where she can make a whelping den of her own. The girls usually pick some sheltered place under the blackberries or our steel shipping container, but we also have many trailers here which might make suitable spots. None of these places is easy to get into and the urge to find a private den increases every day. But we're careful. In the last few days we'll leash her whe we go outside.
Poor Lilly looks like she's smuggling a basketball. Almost dragging the floor and not happy to climb stairs. But smiling all the same.
