Winston's Story

After a year of searching for a stud dog for our bitch Ebony, we were thilled to announce in December 2014 that she had been confirmed in whelp to Sonny (Segev Midnite's Son). We planned to keep a bitch for ourselves as our first Mannerpool affixed Whippet.  

We had her scanned at 30 days and there were 3, possibly 4, little embryos visable on the screen. 

5 weeks into her pregnancy Ebony started to show that she was in whelp but was nowhere near as large as other pregnant whippets we had seen.  We put this down to the small litter that was due.

With only 10 days to go, she really hadn't gained much of a belly but her ribs had expanded and there was a lot of movment in her abdomen.

We took it in turns to sleep downstairs with her 5 days before her due date, just in case she was early...

Due date came and went, so off we trotted to the vets, who confirmed there were heartbeats and puppies could be felt.  Ebony had milk and we left a bit more certain that things may progress within the next 48 hours.

48 hours came and went and as an anxious first timer I called the vets every morning to see what could be done...by day 6 I had had enough and whisked her down to the vets and managed to see our head vet, who x-rayed immediately and gave us the news that there was only one live puppy..and he was fading fast with an extreamly low heart rate. We were refered to the nearby Veterinary Hospital and Ebony was given a C-Section within the hour.

We were prepared for the worst and told we may not come home from the hospital with any dogs. Ebony was weak and the puppy weaker still.

The Vets called us at 9pm, Ebony was coming round from the anesthetic very slowly and the puppy was weak but alive so we set off to pick up our first born.  When we arrived we had an anxious wait and were presented with a wobbly Ebony and...A BOY!

Due to Ebony suffering from Single Puppy Syndrome (Uterine Inertia) she didn't produce any milk and we set to hand feeding the little one. Every two hours for the first 48 hours and then when he wanted feeding for the next 2 weeks!

!!!Thrown into the deep end comes to mind!!!

I had the hard task of letting our potential puppy owners know that there were no other puppies and that it would be touch and go with the only male puppy, therefore we would not be promising him to anyone as his future was still very much uncertain.

Many of you followed Winston's progress via our Facebook page, he didnt take to the bottle very well but I had seen a video on getting puppies to suckle on a make up sponge...this worked a treat and within days he was gaining lots of weight and a lovely plump and healthy little puppy.

Over the next few weeks we were aware that the puppy, now named Winston,  had not received any Colostrum and would less immunity to canine diseases than a normal puppy so we had to change our clothes and disinfect the other dogs whenever any of us had been out of the house. 

By two and a half weeks, Ebony was continuing to clean him but he was making her sore in the desperate attempt to suckle so we weaned him slightly early due to the circumstances and he has continued to blossom from there on.

Winston has grown into a confident, happy go lucky puppy. Once he was old enough and had had his first set of vacinations he started to venture into the big wide world.  Winston stayed with us until he was 5 months old. It was paramount to find him the right home so we waited for the right home to find us....and so it did.  Winston is now living the life of riley with Claire, Steve and family at the foot of the rolling South Downs and only a 30 minute drive from us! We met up with them recently for a walk on the beach and were thrilled with how the 'not so little' lad is coming along and wish them all the very best for the future.