Lily, our singleton
After an exciting pregnancy from Diting, our little Lily was born on November 9th, 2021 with 318g via a caesarean section. Exciting because we knew after the first ultrasound that it was just one puppy. Luckily we had a very competent team on our side with our local veterinary clinic, above all Mrs. Dr. Gianella, who always tried to make every visit to the vet as pleasant as possible for the mom-to-be.
The last week of pregnancy was very nerve-wracking for us, an X-ray showed us a fairly large puppy and we all knew that it shouldn't grow much more to enable a natural birth. Of course, every breeder wants an uncomplicated birth at home in the whelping box, but sometimes things don't turn out as you would like. Especially in this last week, two longtime breeders, Merete Rivier and Alison Darley, gave me a lot of emotional support and helped us to make the right decision.
On the night of November 9th we decided to have a cesarean section. Diting was on day 65 of pregnancy and showed no signs of an upcoming delivery. This is not uncommon in singleton pregnancies , as often insufficient hormones are produced that trigger the birth process. We made an appointment for the same afternoon and handed Diting over to our vet. And less than an hour later we were sitting with Diting, who was just waking up and marveling at our first Shar Pei puppy.
As soon as Diting was back home and really awake, she immediately turned into a great dog mom. She took such loving care of Lily from day one, much better than we could ever have imagined. But she couldn't replace littermates, and Lily didn't have anyone to cuddle or keep each other warm. For the first four days we took care of Lily 24 hours a day, keeping her warm with our body heat and giving Diting space to rest enough after the c-section. We had active support from a fun assortment of animal warmies, i.e. small cuddly toys that are filled with millet and lavender and that you can warm up wonderfully in the oven.
After those early days, when Diting was primarily supposed to recover, it all sorted itself out pretty quickly. Mother Nature then made sure that everything went as it should. Lily and Diting spent most of the day in the whelping box in our puppy room, always with the warmies littermates of course.
These warmies were intended not only to serve as a source of warmth, but also to simulate "get in the way" puppies on Lily's journey to Diting's teats. One has no less work with a singleton than with a larger litter, on the contrary, much more. Because you have to simulate a lot of things that happen naturally in a larger litter.
We also wanted to give her the best possible start in life with targeted early education. So we started the Bio Sensor Program, also known as Early Neurological Stimulation (ENS), the day after birth. This program consists of 5 daily exercises, which, however, only last 3 seconds each. The aim of this program is that the puppies' nervous system has to react early on to very light controlled stress through the exercises, which should have an overall positive effect on their later stress tolerance. Studies have shown that dogs who were trained early on the program had better overall heart rate counts, stronger adrenal glands, greater resistance to infections and increased tolerance to stress.
On Lily's ninth day of life she started to open her eyes. A magical time, because everything changed now. A puppy that looks so helpless with its eyes closed becomes a real dog.
From that point on, things got really exciting for Lily and all of us, because Lily was now becoming more and more active and exploring her surroundings. At first only her whelping box, but after two days that was no longer enough for her and she explored the protected area around it. During the day for the next 4 weeks she spent her time in the dining area of our living room, which we had partitioned off and turned into a puppy play area. She received a lot of visits from our friends and neighbors, went on the first small excursions and has been curiously exploring the world ever since.
She is now 13 weeks old and has developed into a real personality. She loves her parents PanHu and Diting and most of all she loves our Maya. Like her parents, she is a toy junky, very active and has a real mischievous nature. She eats everything we put in her bowl without hesitation, even if it's just a piece of cucumber. So far I have been able to take her with me everywhere without any problems and she walks bravely and briskly through every new situation.
However, she doesn't like two things at all. Wind blowing too hard and strange dogs barking.
Since she was 11 weeks old, we have been taking her to the puppy class at our dog school. The other puppies there don't interest her that much, she has discovered her passion for the training equipment there, such as bridges, see-saws and above all the wobble board.
We are very excited to see how she develops and are very happy to be a part of it.
