The "C" Litter
Awakening to the World - July 2009
At approximately 10 days old, the pups started to open their eyes - just the tiniest tiniest bit at first, blinking and scrunching their lids shut against the dim light of the whelping room - and then a little more with each day, taking in the world bit by bit. Dim shadows began to resolve themselves into shapes, to go along with the familiar scents. Looking into those bleary little eyes, one can see a whole world shining back out, slowly opening itself up to interaction with the world at large.
Likewise their ears came open around the same time, which was when I switched the nursery soundtrack from Farasha's favorite music to Mozart , to stimulate the pups' intellectual development. They certainly sing along sometimes, exercising their lung power in long, loud wails while waiting to be fed.
All have grown steadily and gained weight, have had their nails clipped several times already (and have been very good about it), and are now at 2 1/2 weeks starting to take note of each other and make the first uncoordinated moves into playtime.
Growth Chart
| Name | Birth Weight | 1 Week | 2 Weeks |
|---|
| Cerastis | 1 lb 4 oz | 2 lb 1.5 oz | 3 lb 0 oz |
| Centauri | 1 lb 3 oz | 2 lb 1.5 oz | 2 lb 15.5 oz |
| Cleopatra | 1 lb 2 oz | 1 lb 14.5 oz | 2 lb 12.5 oz |
| Chimera | 1 lb 5 oz | 2 lb 5 oz | 3 lb 1.5 oz |
| Charon | 1 lb 2 oz | 1 lb 15 oz | 2 lb 14 oz |
Cleopatra - eyes barely open, 10 days old.
|
Cleopatra exercising her voice!
|
Learning to climb.
The brindle boys:
Cerastis (front) and Centauri (back)
|
Chimera and Charon.
|
Background and Birth - June 2009
I had not planned on breeding Farasha a third time. She is 7 years old this year, and reproductive duties were to be taken over by her daughter Assyra. But the opportunity presented itself one more time, so once again we made the journey to Ocerico Sloughis, this time to meet the big brindle male CH Fantasy's Argos de Moreau (aka Paulo). He was new to the game, but what he lacked in experience he made up for in eagerness. Farasha, by then a veteran, scolded him when he was awkward and told him to get down to business. Finally they came together very well.
Toward the end of her pregnancy Farasha became huge - so huge, in fact, that I told her she was supposed to be eating for 10, and speculation on the Sloughi mailing list ranged from 6 to 9 puppies, as to how many she would have.
Farasha pregnant with the C litter, the day before whelping.
In the end, she fooled us all: there were 5, and what a mix of colors! More on those colors later; there was a big surprise in the lot. When Farasha seemed to have a bit of a hard time in labor at first, I once again resorted to the homeopathic remedy caulophyllum , which helped her out nicely. She timed the birth to a more reasonable hour this time: the first puppy arrived just after 1 in the morning on June 24th, and the last came just over an hour and a half later. For myself, decidedly not a morning person, that was so much nicer than the previous early-morning litters! Though Farasha had kept me up most of the previous night by constantly needing to go outside (the puppies were dancing on her bladder), so the following day she and I both did a lot of catching up on our rest.
All puppies were healthy and vigorous from the start: 3 males and 2 females, ranging in size from quite large to fairly small. I've learned to stop worrying at the umbilical cord the way all the books say you're "supposed to" (clamp off, cut, tie with dental floss, dab with disinfectant), because anything I try to do, Farasha will immediately undo. That dental floss always came right back off. She does the job much better herself anyway, chewing through the cord and thereby pinching off the blood vessels, then licking it clean.
It seems that the third time's the charm for Farasha, as she really seems to be enjoying and taking delight in this litter, even more so than the ones before. She no longer steps on them inadvertently in the whelping box, as she did back with the poor A's (though our vet told me that, while it's common for a mother dog to step on a pup, and the pup will squeak, he'd never seen one actually injured that way).
These pups came with a ready-made list of names, since I was expecting a large litter - so my job then became winnowing the right names out of the list, and matching them to the right pups. While Sloughis are traditionally given Arabic names, there aren't really any "C"-words in Arabic (at least according to the very useful book Namely Arab Horses and Hounds ) - though one could look under "S" and "K" and simply modify the spelling. Not finding anything under those headers that really appealed to me, though, I drew as before upon mythological, historical, and personal sources.
I started out tying a yarn collar on each puppy after birth, but they are so variable that only the first two brindle males are hard to tell apart at a glance. So everyone else's yarn collars came back off, with the first two boys retaining their blue and purple ones, respectively.
"C" Litter - Birth Info, June 24, 2009
| Birth Order | Birth Time | Sex | Color | Birth Weight | Name |
|---|
| 1 | 1:03 AM | Male | brindle w/black mask | 1 lb 4 oz | Cerastis
(blue collar) |
| 2 | 1:35 AM | Male | brindle w/black mask | 1 lb 3 oz | Centauri
(purple collar) |
| 3 | 1:58 AM | Female | sand w/black mask | 1 lb 2 oz | Cleopatra |
| 4 | 2:31 AM | Female | brindle w/black mask | 1 lb 5 oz | Chimera |
| 5 | 2:39 AM | Male | black mantle | 1 lb 2 oz | Charon |
Some Pics
The newborn litter.
Nursing, Day One.
Farasha curled around the pups.
Back to Plumed Serpent Sloughis home
|