She did not give us any warning, and in fact she was lying on her bed with all the other Vizsla's when the first one appeared.
This first puppy, a boy, came backwards it was not too difficult to ease him out.
We moved "Meg" into her bed in the kitchen and she continued her endeavours, and easily produced several more puppies. Then we waited nearly two hours for the next one to arrive, the reason for this long delay was that this puppy was stillborn.(In many years of breeding this is the first still born puppy that I have ever seen)
After this, the puppies came quite quickly and naturally, sadly, we had another long wait until another still born arrived.
Lucia and I sustained ourselves with endless cups of coffee, we had a struggle to keep the puppies warm, so when Meg was busy producing babies we were drying them for her, she could not complete the drying before another one popped out.Well, after a long and worrying night finally at 6am the last puppy arrived .Our courageous lady had produced thirteen puppies, the eleven that survived were 5 girls and 6 boys, no wonder they came early, she could not contain that many any longer.
As each puppy arrived, we recorded the time that it was born and its weight, unbelievably they were all of normal size and a good weight, most of them weighed nearly 400 grams which is heavier than her previous litter of puppies!
All the babies are thriving and gaining weight rapidly, we offered them supplementary milk, but they did not seem to want it at present. She is a wonderful mum, she looks very well, she is content, and she is very proud of her offspring.
Now it is time to mention the humans in this saga, Lucia has not been to bed for two nights, she helped me with the births, then last night she sat beside their bed maintaining a vigil to make sure that they were all drinking properly. She has refused to go to bed during the daytime, as I write this she is mowing the lawns!
I can admit that I am totally exhausted even though I did manage to sleep last night, it must be something to do with my age!