Jairkingsly Labradors

Before Poppy gave birth to the puppies we decided to take sometime off work to stay with her to make sure she and her puppies were ok. We had no reason to worry, she was turning into the best mum ever. We spent hours just sitting and watching the new family, everyday they changed, just small things but watching them was mesmerising. Their eyes were still closed by the little squeaky noise they made to each other was adorable 💕. Poppy rarely left them, only to eat or go outside. We were still feeding her a nutrient dense diet, including cooked chicken, 3 times a day as she was feeding 5 puppies the extra calories were important. There was just one thing that worried us and that was Tilly, the girls had always had a good bond but now there were puppies in the mix we didn’t know how Poppy would react to Tilly. We decided to keep them apart as much as possible with Tilly going to work @goodwinplastics, but for time to time their paths crossed. I suppose due to her hormones Poppy was a little unpredictable, most of the time there was no reaction, but every now and then there would be a spat! Watching the puppies navigating around each other an trying to find mum was something I could watch for hours, after each feed Poppy would look around for them even knowing of one was missing. She would settle herself and stay with them while they slept, even is some of the positions she found herself in did not look at all comfortable! Most of the time eating her meals in the whelping box, she never left them. The one question we always asked ourselves was how she new what to do, instincts of course, but it was not like she could read a book!

For those first two weeks we stayed with all the dogs, working in shifts if needed. Being first time breeder we didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

The next job we had was to register the puppies with the kennel club,the puppies parents were both pedigree and registered. Here is where we had a slight problem or two! Firstly we had to give them kennel names, these are unique and an exclusive breeder signatures which proceeds the pedigree dogs registered name, this is a different name to the pet name given by the new owners, therefore, in our case the name began with Jairkingsley and then a further one or two names, for example one of the puppies was name Jairkingsley Briar Rose. We spent quite a lot of time thinking of names, the breeder we used suggested starting at the beginning of the alphabet. A list of names was created but before could register them we needed to be certain of the sex of the pups, when the are first born it is not easy to tell, it takes approximately three weeks to bu sure! We had hears stories of people purchasing a dogs an not realising it wasn’t the dog or bitch they thought they had.