A Horrible 48 Hours

For days I was unable to talk to anyone about what happened. I couldn't believe it, and I was in utter shock. Never in a million years did I think I would lose an entire litter of puppies. I stupidly and naively thought that the worst of my problems was going to be all of the puppies I would have running around for 8 weeks and finding homes for all of them. I kept telling everyone I didn't worry about Sadie delivering her puppies because she was a tank. I knew she would spit them all out with no problems.

Wednesday afternoon around 2:00 I came home to check on Sadie because I knew she was due any day. The smart girl had somehow gotten the locked gate on the welping pen open and gotten out. I ushered her back in, noted that she looked pretty ragged, and figured there would be puppies by the time I got home from work.

At 6:00 I was on my way home from a doctor appointment. I was a block away from the house when my husband called to ask how close I was. When I told him I was almost there he told me I could come take care of the mess then. I asked if there was a puppy. Yes, but it wasn't moving. I sped the rest of the way home, rushed into the house, jumped the welping pen wall, and was trying the few puppy CPR techniques I knew. It was no good, the beautiful little boy was gone.

I looked around the room at all of the blood everywhere. It was spattered 3.5 ft up the walls. It was spattered 360 degrees around the room. I immediately got on the phone with the vet and a Border Collie breeder. Surely there should not be so much blood. And was it a bad sign that the first pup was dead?

At 6:59, Sadie delivered another puppy with no effort. The little girl was half the size of her first born brother. She came out moving, and Sadie went right to work taking care of her.

Around 9:00 Sadie started to deliver the 3rd puppy. She was struggling. I called the breeder and she walked me through helping to deliver the puppy. By 9:20 the little girl was out. She wasn't moving. The breeder walked me through CPR. It was no good, the pup was stillborn. She was as big as the first puppy.

The hours passed and no other pups came. I knew Sadie wasn't done. I called the emergency vet and breeder just after midnight to ask if I needed to take Sadie to the vet. They both told me I could wait. That Sadie probably had uterine fatigue from delivering the two larger puppies.

At 4:30 a.m., I called the emergency vet again. No more puppies had been born. They told me I could wait and take her to the vet first thing in the morning.

At 8:30 Sadie was on oxitocin with her runt puppy beside her. They did some xrays and confirmed there were two more puppies. They gave her until noon to deliver them, but by 12:30 she was in the operating room having a c-section.

Around 1:00 the vets office called to tell me the puppies were stillborn.

I cried so hard I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to breathe again. I sobbed because I felt like I had let my dog down. I should have stayed home at 2:00. I should have done CPR longer on the third puppy. I should have taken her to the vet at midnight. I had failed her.

By around 3:00 I was able to pick up Sadie and her one remaining puppy from the vet. I asked the vet what happened, and he thinks the first puppy must have come out cross-wise. The trauma from that puppy detached the main placenta and denied oxygen to the remaining puppies. He didn't know how the runt had survived. It was then I named the little girl, Lucky.

I took them both home, put them in the welping box on the heating pad and took a much needed nap. I hadn't slept the night before.

When I woke up, I realized something was wrong. I couldn't hear Lucky. I rushed into the room, scooped Lucky up and knew she wasn't okay. She was barely whimpering and barely moving. I called the vet and they told me to come pick up a nursing bottle and milk to try to get her strength up. The whole way there I felt like the universe was hating me, thwarting me. It took me forever to get home. I hit every single red light. I got stuck behind people afraid to make left hand turns. When I finally did get home, Lucky was barely alive. I put the bottle in her mouth and she tried to suck, but didn't have the strength. By this time the vet was closed, so I rushed her to the emergency vet.

On the way to the vet, she stopped breathing. I tried administering CPR, but I knew I had lost. I got to the vet, ran inside, and through my tears asked them to help me. She had stopped breathing. In only a matter of minutes they came back and told me she was gone. She had blood in her lungs, which was either an indication of a congenital heart defect or pneumonia. I cried so hard I couldn't move. I had completely failed my dog. I could not bear what was ahead. At 24 hours old, Sadie's only living puppy was gone.

Sadie began looking for her puppy as soon as we got home. She searched the entire house, whimpering as she went. I opened the box with Lucky and set her in the welping pen with Sadie, then went to take a shower. When I came back, Sadie had taken her puppy to another room. Then came the heart wrenching task of forever removing the puppy from her mother.

Neither of us slept that night. Sadie slept next to me on the bed, still covered in blood from her labor. We cried together. Every now and then she would get up to go look for her puppy, but then she would return and whine. The only thing that eased her pain was to pet her. If I stopped petting her, or rested my hand on her, she would whimper until I resumed active petting.

After Lucky died, I couldn't talk to anyone anymore. I didn't want to talk about it. I needed to be left alone. I stopped returning text messages. I quit answering phone calls. I dreaded going to work because I knew everyone would ask about it. I just couldn't handle it. My very first litter had all died, and I had a mourning mom-dog.

The next morning Maggie's temperature had dropped, indicating impending labor. My vet had told me to bring Maggie in the morning her temperature dropped so he could make sure everything looked okay. Since I didn't have the heart to leave Sadie home alone in her grief, I took her with me. The second we pulled up to the vet, Sadie was sure we were going to pick up her puppy, as Lucky had been there with her the day before. She began to whine excitedly and expectantly. It broke my heart all over again. She searched every corner on the way in, looking for her puppy.

That day I put all of Sadie's puppies in a box and dug the deepest, most perfectly square hole I've ever dug, and buried her babies by myself. It was after that, that I was finally able to talk to people.

That night around 1:00 a.m. Sadie started to shake uncontrollably. I rushed her to the emergency vet again, not wanting to take any chances. There they fed her the first thing she had eaten in days (a palatable food meant for sick animals who will eat nothing else), and gave me additional pain medications for her c-section. They claimed her shaking was from pain. However, when I talked to the breeder today, she told me the shaking was from depression. Sadie feels like she has let everyone down. She is upset. She lost all of her babies, and she is grieving.

I've barely been away from her since all of it happened. She lays around and sleeps for the most part. Every now and then she gets up and takes a look around, just in case.

It has been so difficult and heart wrenching. I blame myself. I knew early on this year was not my year. I knew by January 7th when I was 2 weeks late for my period and not pregnant that this year was going to be a real bitch. So far, it has been. I feel like I should have known better than to breed my dogs. I should have known better than to think complications wouldn't happen to us. I should not have sucked my dogs into my bad luck.

You know what I have heard from two vets and the breeder? This kind of thing is really rare. Border Collies are such strong dogs. This sort of thing just doesn't happen to them. Of course it doesn't. Of course it's rare. I am the Queen of Rare. If there is a small chance something bad can happen, it will happen to me. That's just how it is. I know that, and I've accepted it.

Pity party aside, I am doing well with all of this. I took my two days to grieve, mourn, cry, ask the universe why, and be generally upset. But I am infertile, and one thing infertility has given me is resilience. Yes bad things happen, and they are hard, but we have to pick up the pieces and move on. I have to focus on Maggie, who right this minute is in active labor. I have to focus on helping Sadie through her grief.

Lucky - You are missed