Owners rush their dog to the vet due to difficult labor, not knowing the size of the litter would break records
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Shadow’s owners were looking forward to welcoming some newborn puppies into their home. They had no idea just how many their dog would have.
When four-year-old Neopolitan Mastiff Shadow became pregnant, her family was overjoyed.
They had had Shadow since she was a puppy. The idea of having a few more little Shadows was incredibly appealing!
As the weeks went by, Shadow got very big. Of course, the owners had expected this. It’s what happens during pregnancy. But Shadow was bigger than any pregnant dog they had ever seen.
Were her puppies big, or was she carrying lots of puppies, they wondered. They would have to wait to find out.
Then Shadow went into labor.
The family gathered around the dog, telling her that she could do this. Shadow gave birth to three puppies. But the others wouldn’t come out. They realized that something was going wrong with the birth.
The family rushed Shadow to the vet, desperate to save the puppies.
The vet performed a c-section on Shadow. There were 18 more puppies in Shadow’s womb.
The vet extracted all of the puppies. Some of them needed emergency attention. Many of these puppies were soon well. Sadly, three of them did not make it.
In giving birth to 21 puppies, Shadow had officially broken an Australian record.
The surviving puppies soon returned to Shadow’s owners’ home. 12 of the puppies are boys, and six of them are girls.
The owners couldn’t believe that they had so many tiny little dogs to look after.
Luckily, Shadow was already part of a large family. There were enough humans in the home to look after all of the puppies in different shifts.
Over the coming weeks, the puppies got stronger and stronger. Soon, they were eating solids.
Every two hours the family fed six puppies at a time. It could sometimes be hard to keep track of which puppies had and hadn’t been fed. But soon, everyone learned to differentiate the individual animals.
The family will continue to look after the puppies until they are all old enough to go to their own forever homes.
Luckily, the puppies are so adorable that it shouldn’t take long for them to get adopted.
News of Shadow’s birth has made quite an impact all over the world.
A local news report of the birth recently appeared on Facebook. In less than three weeks, it has gained over 531,000 views. It also has more than 5,800 reactions, 1,900 shares and 3,100 comments. People have been saying things like this:
While Shadow has broken the record for giving birth to the most puppies in Australia, she does not hold the world record for giving birth to the most puppies in the world.
According to Guinness World Records, this title belongs to a dog called Tia. Tia gave birth to 24 puppies on November 29th, 2004. Like Shadow, Tia was a Neapolitan Mastiff. However, she was a UK dog. One of Tia’s puppies did not survive the birth and three died during their first week in the world. The rest soon got adopted.
Shadow’s puppies are sure to have happy lives ahead of them!
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