To Comfort You

Seven of the puppies are now officially 24 hours old. Making it through those first few hours is important and given how strong and fat everyone is at the moment I have high hopes. Two puppies have a few more hours to go before they will be a day old but since they are fat and happy too, I have no concerns.
I tried to get some sleep last night which was made difficult by Leeloo's insistence that if a puppy got more than her leg length away from her, I had to wake up to poke it back into the pile. Leeloo just lies there with the other 8 puppies and whines until she sees I am coming to the rescue. She pointedly looks at the puppy and then at me and when I put the puppy where it belongs she relaxes. Leeloo has me trained very well.

I was woken at 3am to a lot of fussing. The puppies were extremely restless and Leeloo would not stop cleaning them, flipping them over, re-arranging them and generally preventing them, and me, from sleeping. I got up, let her outside, cleaned the whelpingg box, made her a meal, and let her in. She ate quickly and then settled back with the puppies but she still wouldn't relax. I was worried she was experiencing eclampsia or something similar so I took her temperature (which was normal), spoke to her calmly and considered a call to the vet. I was loathe to pack everyone up and drive anywhere considering there was freezing rain pelting the window. I noticed she was having minor body shivers so I thought about what comforts Leeloo most when she does not have puppies. I grabbed a small blanket and tossed it over her and the fussing brood. In less than a minute she was fast asleep as were the puppies.

Sometimes the simplest things are the most important - for Leeloo, the binkie is her safe little den.