Princess Sparkle...

[Zande]

@jengosmonkey Once the pups are up on their feet and able to stagger around (mostly backwards to start with, Greg) Sparkle will be more than happy for Logan to take them on and teach them life skills. Three weeks or so - Then she will be fine.

[elbrant]

Yay!!! If I didn't live 4 thousand+ miles away, I'd want to come over and play with the little ones (with Princess Sparkle's permission, of course)!
I like the little birthing pod, too. Did you create that, or purchase it? Kinda looks like you could turn it into a puppy pool afterwards...

[JENGOSMonkey]

@elbrant said in Princess Sparkle...:

Yay!!! If I didn't live 4 thousand+ miles away, I'd want to come over and play with the little ones (with Princess Sparkle's permission, of course)!

EXACTLY! I call puppies Micro Dogs. Can't wait till they'll stumbling around and crawling all over me. GROW DAMNIT! :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I like the little birthing pod, too. Did you create that, or purchase it? Kinda looks like you could turn it into a puppy pool afterwards...

So , that is THE coolest whelping box I have ever seen curtesy of and on loan from my breeder. I hate to sound like a commercial, but she really does know her s***. It's plastic so it's super simple to keep clean; really light weight making it easy to reposition; breaks down, so it's easy to transport and store. Go to www.thewhelpingbox.com.

I was going to make one myself, but she offered this up as a loan. This is way better than anything I could have built. Oh, I could have built something really nice, but it would have weighed a ton compared to this one.

[JENGOSMonkey]

@zande said in Princess Sparkle...:

@jengosmonkey Marvin worked for Douglas Aircraft before he went to the Cape and subsequently to Washington DC with NASA. The overalls were genuine ! And he donned them for each whelping. Marvin was the senior midwife although if it got too far into the wee small hours, he'd retire and leave me to do it and then sleep in the kitchen on the floor. Our bitches always looked to him at whelping time !

I think I would have really liked Marvin. He's sounds like a man of eclectic interests, self-confident and secure. Yeah... I would have liked him a lot. I slept on a cot next to the whelping box last night so I could keep a tired eye on everything. Sparkle and I worked in shifts throughout the night. :thumbs_up:

[tanza]

@jengosmonkey - I have to laugh at your "grow" comment.... trust me when they are 5/6 weeks instead of have 6 you will think they have multiplied to 66! Of course you will have no trouble sighting the one boy being the only Tri. Congrats on an easy birth, as Sally said earlier, Basenjis are for the majority easy whelpers... they know what to do! Quiet puppies are happy puppies.. having full bellies! They don't do much until their eyes open in about 2wks. For my litters the boys were the last to open eyes.

[JENGOSMonkey]

@tanza said in Princess Sparkle...:

@jengosmonkey - I have to laugh at your "grow" comment.... trust me when they are 5/6 weeks instead of have 6 you will think they have multiplied to 66! Of course you will have no trouble sighting the one boy being the only Tri. Congrats on an easy birth, as Sally said earlier, Basenjis are for the majority easy whelpers... they know what to do! Quiet puppies are happy puppies.. having full bellies! They don't do much until their eyes open in about 2wks. For my litters the boys were the last to open eyes.

Ya know... she was fantastic! She made the whole experience MUCH easier than I ever imagined it would be... No screaming at all, a mid day birth instead of the middle of the night, she never fought me for a puppy while I got it cleaned up and weighed. She's got great parental instincts from what I can tell. One female that was a bit smaller than the others, but she already looks bigger this morning. We've been making sure she gets her turn at the tap room. I'll weigh them all at about 2:00ish (24 hours later). Hopefully everyone is gaining weight.

I have to tell ya... this is one of the coolest things I've gotten to experience! :oncoming_fist: :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes: :thumbs_up:

[Zande]

@jengosmonkey puppies should about double their birth weight in the first week. Then you'll know you are getting it right.

There shouldn't be mess with a Basenji birthing. Mom will eat the placenta faster than you can count them and she will clean herself and the pups

[JENGOSMonkey]

Turns out this little girl is actually a boy. D'oh!

[Kembe]

Love ❤️ his markings! What a sweet photo of momma and son!🥰 👍

[Zande]

A split head ! I love split heads, they seem to have so much character. But it is unlikely to stay that way. The white will narrow and the color merge quite soon. It always does. Mku was a split head at birth but that soon filled in.
Any more like that ?

[Zande]

@jengosmonkey You would have had something in common with Marvin, Greg - he was American ! Albeit married to a Brit and lived in UK for the last 39 of his 91 years. He went back once - to judge the BCOA National.

Got his first Basenji - Am/Can Ch Bettina's Dark Diamond (tri) from Bettina Belmont Ward in 1956. Basenjis were the big love of his life, along with flying, gliding (he was a licenced pilot in both) and ice skating !

He would approve that I have Mku and Kito even though no longer breeding myself.

[JENGOSMonkey]

We've been busy! Princess Sparkle has turned out to be a fantastic momma in my opinion. She's happy to spend long amounts of time with her little creations. We've started taking her for a few walks every day to keep her exercised, but she's always happy to hop back into the whelping box after we've cleaned her feet. She's feeding her pile o puppies very well. Very well indeed...

Just dawned on me that a well fed fat lil’ Basenji puppy looks an awful lot like a Tardigrade. 🤣

[elbrant]

:rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Thanks for the pics! I've never seen wee little ones, they're beautiful!

[JKent]

@jengosmonkey the milk bar looks very well stocked!

[JENGOSMonkey]

@elbrant said in Princess Sparkle...:

:rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing: :rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:
Thanks for the pics! I've never seen wee little ones, they're beautiful!

It's been decades since I've seen any this young. My first time as the Monkey On The Ground In Charge. A few observations...

When they're born, they are small, floppy and pretty quiet. Everything is pink... feet, belly, nose, lips... all pink. Little eyes are slammed shut and their ears are like shirt pocket flaps... neatly closed.

They grow a bit faster than I'd imagined or even how fast I thought it was happening. When I compare pictures at birth till now... they're a bunch bigger already! It's also funny seeing their little puppy bellies before and after they feed. Ever seen a hot air balloon laying on the ground, then they fill it up and you're thinking "Wow! That got bigger than I thought it would." Puppy bellies... They inflate A LOT!

It the few days they've had those bellies on the ground, I can see their little legs getting stronger every day. Some are beginning to lift their bellies off the ground and I saw one scratch an ear with a hind foot yesterday! That was REALLY cool! Just happened to be peaking on them at the right time, I guess. The residual umbilical cords have fallen off now and their ears are no longer neatly closed little pocket flaps. They're beginning to fold open. The other cool thing is that their noses are beginning to look like someone sprinkled pepper on them. Little black spots are appearing as they begin transforming from pink to black. I imagine the lips and eyelids will do the same soon too.

Really fun to watch the changes and it's only been 5 days!

@jkent said in Princess Sparkle...:

@jengosmonkey the milk bar looks very well stocked!

Right! I call it the "Tap Room" featuring some of the finest craft milk to come out of a California craft dairy in decades. Fortified with THE highest quality antibodies available anywhere and produced using proprietary methods known only to our brew master, Princess Sparkle.

[Kembe]

So Exciting and so cool! I love hearing about their development! Precious mama and babies!🥰

[JENGOSMonkey]

Here's a pic of the nose changing...

[Kembe]

@JENGOSMonkey -Greg, you must be so proud and “just out of you mind” with happiness with Sparkle , Logan, and the new pups! Bet you never would have dreamed this 1 year ago. Magical things do happen! ✨ Congratulations to the proud grandpa! 👍❤️🐾

[JENGOSMonkey]

@kembe Beyond proud! Nose freckles...

[tanza]

@jengosmonkey - Yup that little red spot is starting to be filled in by the white disappearing.... and you have till about the 1st of the year and you should start to see "peepers"...