That one time when Luna forgot she had delivered a puppy in the backyard during her morning potty break… then remembered 10 minutes later and totally freaked out…
For those of you who do not know Luna, she is our silver F1 labradoodle and she is the sweetest, gentlest soul I know. That said, she MAY not be the brightest little light bulb. Luna is one of those dogs who always seems happy but usually also just a little confused. At the time of this story, she was also extremely pregnant with a litter of F1b labradoodle puppies. This meant she was constantly begging to go outside to pee. Fair enough.. her belly was huge and there was not much room for a full bladder with her 12 little doodle babies riding around in there. On this particular morning, she woke me up early and needed to go outside. I let her, along with Siren, Eve, Ellie, Sparkles and Rocco, out for their morning potty break and wandered back to the kitchen to make coffee. It was winter and there was snow on the ground so it was only about 10 minutes before the dogs were ready to come back inside, I let them in, went back to my coffee and making breakfast, not paying too much attention to them while they milled around the kitchen hopping for some dropped food. About 10 minutes later Luna is franticly pawing at the back door and yapping at me, I just figured her tiny smooshed bladder was full again so I opened the back door to let the dogs back out. They thunder past me and as I am closing the door I hear it.. the cry of a newborn puppy. It sounds like it is coming from the backyard! Obviously, I rush outside as well ( in my pajamas with no shoes) and find my 5 girls all circled up around a brand new baby, still with its sac and placenta attached, keeping Rocco safely away with some snarls and snaps. I scoop this tiny new doodle pup up, all wet and chilly, and stuff it in my shirt ( fastest way to warm up a cold pup at that point) and rush back inside. I am freaking out, Luna is freaking out, Siren thinks this is all amazing and just wants me to give the puppy to her, Ellie and Sparkles are off to eat their breakfast and Rocco can’t seem to understand what all the fuss is about. After getting her all dried off and warm, I decided the puppy was perfectly healthy, got Luna settled in a whelping box and tried to go back to my regular morning routine. Luna, however, had other plans. Every time I left her in her whelping box and left the room, she would rush upstairs to find me. Eventually I moved all of the other dogs to crates in the garage and brought her and her one puppy to the kitchen with me so I could continue working and she would be able to be near me. She insisted that I sit on the floor with her for her entire delivery, which lasted 10 hours since she had 12 pups to deliver. Each time I even thought about moving more than a couple of feet from her she would run down to the basement and hop up on the couch, leaving the pups she had already delivered in the kitchen with me. She really thought she was going to have her puppies on the sectional downstairs. Ast one point I was on the phone with my mom and she suggested I just put a tarp on the couch and let her have them where she wanted.. EWWW.. no puppies needed to be birthed on my sectional. Even if I didn’t care that it would need to be thrown out afterward It would not have been safe for her to have her pups there. SOOO, i continued to sit on the kitchen floor with her until all 12 were born and she had settled into her usual mom routine. She and the pups stayed in the kitchen for the first couple of days until she was comfortable moving to a less high traffic area of the house. Luna is still the only dog to deliver a pup outside and definitely the only dog to forget she had delivered a pup.
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