The Hairy Mob: Happy 4th Birthday x 17!!

To say it was slightly manic here on this day 4 years ago is a bit of an understatement as 2 of my girls decided that they would have their pups on the same day and actually at the same time!! Ena (Netis June Bug) had her first one at 9am and Lacey (Netis Brezza) had her first at 9.15 - this went on with them having their pups at virtually the same time as each other and it was so funny with Jimmy shouting to me 'its a girl/boy' and 5 minutes later I was shouting back at him :o) Anyway we ended up with Ena having 9 and Lacey having 8 - 17 pups in total!! Happily they were all strong lively babies.
I should say that I don't normally have 2 litters at the same time as a rule but this happened under exceptional circumstances starting with Lacey deciding that she would really like to have a one night stand with my young boy (11 months) Cenzo and the poor boy didn't know what had hit him. Lacey was only on the 4th day of her season and the vet said that it would be quite unlikely that the mating would take but I decided to have the misalliance jabs done just to be on the safe side. Although it wasn't a bad mating on paper, Lacey had already had her 3 litters and was due to be speyed after her season and Cenzo hadn't had his hip X-rays yet.
I took Ena a week later for the planned mating of the year and didn't really think about it again until several weeks later when Lacey looked more and more like she was in whelp - another visit to the vet for an examination and I was told that they couldn't feel anything and was probably just 'fat'. Well to cut a long story short it turned out that against all odds she was actually in whelp.
After getting over the initial shock of having 17 pups we decided that the only thing to do was enjoy the experience however it unfolded . As it happened is was crazy - hard work - none stop - but above all - fantastic fun with loads of laughs along the way. We had what felt like hoards of people coming round to visit their 'little darlings' and luckily the weather was glorious (unlike this year) so it was a bit like having a garden party every day :o)
The 'accidental' litter produced 1 UK Show Champion and 1 US Champion and Grand Champion which I was very proud about and 2 of the girls have gone on to have some beautiful babies of their own, one of which is my lovely Angel (Netis Cesena) so all in all a very positive outcome.
The only downside of the whole affair was that my Great Dane, Luna decided when the pups were about 4 days old that it was all too noisy for her and promptly vacated the house and took up residence in the grooming room only coming back in long enough to eat her dinner - she wouldn't even come in at night to sleep so I had to go out to her and cover her up with lots of comfy blankets :o) As soon as the pups were gone she moved back 'home' and slotted straight back into her old routine - what a character she was - we still miss her every day.