Surprise delivery

When it was time to go to bed Tuesday night, I hauled the plastic crate into the bedroom (learned my lesson after whelping Bridget's last litter).  Juliette was restless, but finally settled down.  I am a light sleeper and typically wake up in the early morning hours.  I woke up at 3 AM and Juliette was restless.  I figured she probably needed to go outside, which she gladly did.  When she came back in, she was doing some panting that was suspicious for Stage I labor.  I became nervous and got up to bring out the whelping supplies, and assumed I would be staying home from work today.  When I came back into the bedroom, I heard mewing, and looked into the crate to see Juliette busily cleaning a little yellow puppy between her front legs looking quite pleased with herself.  Yikes!  So of course I called whelper helper extraordinaire Nancy, who had fortunately decided to leave her cell phone ring tone on based on my email the previous evening indicating that Juliette was progressing.  Nancy lives about 15 min away from me.  I stayed with Juliette until Nancy arrived, and then Nancy went out to the storage shed to bring in the whelping pool.  We quickly got the whelping suite set up and we moved Juliette and her pup out into the living room.  Best guess is that Juliette's water broke when she went out to toilet - the crate was dry. 

Once we got Juliette settled and the pup nursing to stimulate oxytocin release, Juliette kicked into high gear.  She whelped a total of 11 pups in 4 1/2 hours, with the last pup being born at 7:55 am.  The pups are small (11 to 14.6 oz), but all are vigorous, and Juliette has lots of milk.  We have 4 boys, 7 girls; 5 yellows, and 6 blacks.  The black pups are obviously Jammer pups.  The yellows are all light and typical of Lab-Golden crosses, but we may have a Golden hiding out in a short coat (coats don't grow out until 2-3 weeks).  Juliette is much more relaxed with this litter and is once again being an exceptional mama.  The initial challenge is going to be to minimize the chance of any of these small pups getting trapped behind or under Juliette and getting suffocated - fortunately Juliette is an experienced dam, but she has never had to deal with so many pups.  I will be sticking close to home for the next 5 days, and the pups are in my bedroom so I will be able quickly attend to a crying pup during the night.