Bear Litter

I cannot thank Gryffindor's owners enough for allowing this breeding.  Gryffindor or 'Griff', is Brianna Page's first lapphund boy. He is a lovely dark, spectacled wolf sable boy that has quite a lot of success in the show ring around South East Queensland after hitting the rings with a bang within the last few years. We feel he couldn't have been more perfect for Kiita's first litter.

On searching for a sire, we were looking for an outcross boy with sound, seamless structure, a great strong and loving, workable temperament, a decent amount of drive, with compatible health in the lines least likely to produce any potential issues. As Kiita is related to many dogs in the country, it was slim pickings, but it so happened that Griff was just the perfect guy for her. 

Gryffindor is a powerful boy with lovely bone, masculine head, lovely correct tail set and carriage, well textured coat and standing proud, soundly and square. He has lovely floating movement and a sweet expression. He is a very loving and human (and ball!) focused boy and quite bombproof around other dogs. He is an absolute gentleman.

Kiita is my sweetest of sweethearts. She meets you with a plea for a belly rub and just adores human attention. She is the most biddable lappie I have met to date, and without much training had a solid recall from a very young age. She enjoys learning a mirage of sports, her favourite being flyball, closely followed by agility and tracking, however she also dabbles (and does very well in) herding, obedience and lure coursing. She is a smaller girl, but strongly built with great proportions & angles, easy and lovely movement and a sweet feminine head and expression. 

Together we felt the two meshed well in every way. We have been really excited about this combination and what they'll produce, hoping for lovely sound, well structured and the sweetest of puppies.

Over the course of a week, we checked Kiita's temperature at least twice a day to check for a drop. Keety finally fully dropped her temperature early Friday morning, the 28th of February 2020, after many false alarms and being a doggy yoyo for the past few days. We then bunkered down our wait to see more direct signs of stage 1.

By 8pm on Friday we had panting, a tight tummy and lots of nesting. We then started contractions at 10.50PM, with a sac presenting at 11.50PM which broke 40 minutes later. She pushed and pushed and we tried a few techniques but resulted in no puppy in the birth canal, so just as we were updating the vet and readying for a possible clinic trip we decided to try the wheelbarrow maneuver (it's just as realistic and funny as it sounds!) one more time as we suspected a misaligned puppy and within 5 minutes out came the first puppy at 1 am,
on the 29th of February, (Leap Day!!) 2020! 

She whelped 6 puppies very swiftly within an hour, not leaving us any time between puppies to catch up. A girl, then a boy, then two girls, then two boys. It was all hands on deck and one puppy after another.

Although we couldn't see a clear 7th on the X-ray I could clearly palpate a puppy and so we still prepared for another. She had a rest while she enjoyed her first six little bears before having some intermittent contractions, and finally after 50 minutes later we had a tiny little boy joined us, very strong and very hungry, our very own little 'tardy' Tardigrade 'water bear'.