Raya’s First Litter of Puppies are Due June 19th!
Well, here we are! We’re within 2 weeks of our beloved little Ray of Sunshine delivering her first litter of puppies! We’re returning her to her breeder, Fox Creek Farm Goldendoodles & Bernedoodles in West Virginia on June 17th, and she’s due to deliver on June 19th. We’re so excited for her and for future owners of her pups. We think she’s excited too, if not a little confused. Tell me this isn’t a pregnancy glow right here, taken at a vet’s office while waiting to get her ultrasound done. She was sooo excited and happy TO BE AT A VET’S OFFICE!
Raya at the vet’s office on May 24th, all excited for her ultrasound!
The Signs Were Obvious
We knew well before her ultrasound that she had to be pregnant, because of how drastically her behavior changed almost overnight. She went from being a super energetic, playful, and active little girl, to a far more docile lap dog that has just wanted to chill, cuddle, sleep, and lay around and look cute all the time! After the past year and a half of trying to keep up with her going supersonic everywhere, we’ve been perfectly okay with this! A week into her presumed pregnancy, it’s almost like a switch was flipped and she knew that she was expecting, and to take it a bit easier. She also suddenly became an order of magnitude more clingy to me. She needs to be next to me at all times now, which is why I joke that she’s my pregnant girlfriend! It’s amazing how tuned in dog’s instincts are.
So Raya hasn’t been nearly as active as of late, and only cares for a tiny fraction of the physical activity and playtime she had before. She and Puffles have largely cooled it on their daily play time and zoomies with each other as well. “Buffles” was beefy and built almost like a gym bro from all of their play time and wrestling, but has actually gotten a bit “chomby” now. We think he knows too, as he seemingly scolds her not to run and to take it easy (“hey you’re pregnant take it easy!!!!”), and has been a little extra protective of her.
We also learned that pregnant dogs can have morning sickness and nausea just like a pregnant woman, so for a week or two it was tough to keep her fed but we figured it out. My wife made her a bunch of fresh cooked plain burger, pork, and some chicken mixed in with her regular food, and she managed to keep that down for the most part! In these last two weeks of her pregnancy, she’s eating about double what she normally would and wolfing down everything in sight. She’s definitely eating for more!
The biggest shocker of all has been that apparently a dog’s pregnancy pheromones can affect their humans as well, because both my wife and I have been cleaning up a storm. I’ve purged my home office of a ton of stuff, and my wife has been busy all around the house and in our bedroom, which has never been cleaner despite us not “expecting”. It’s Raya! And her puppies aren’t coming home with us! Crazy stuff, but finally de-cluttering the house a bit has been nice!
Baby’s First Ultrasound of Her Babies
Here’s some freeze frames of videos of her ultrasound, taken on May 24th. In one of the videos you can see a little heart beating, which is so cute. Other than that I have no idea what I’m looking at! The vet that did her ultrasound gave us a “confirmed” number and thought there might be more, but I’m not going to say how many baby puppies are in there. Nobody actually knows because it can be difficult to spot them all, but there’s for sure more than one. The only way to know for sure prior to delivery is to do x-ray cross-sections, but Fox Creek Farms doesn’t do that (and the radiation exposure probably isn’t good for the puppies either).
I would say that Raya has generally been enjoying her pregnancy, other than the week or so where she didn’t have much appetite and was nauseous. She’s been getting lots of extra love and attention from all of us, special meals from my wife, lots of extra cuddle time, long naps, and gets to sleep up in our bed with us most nights now too. She’s just so cute in everything she does, whether she’s going supersonic in the yard or around our house, or just laying around growing babies!
We sure are going to miss her for the six weeks she’ll be gone, but are super excited to see her become a mommy, and for her puppies to bring so much love to some lucky families out there. You’re going to get some truly amazing dogs!
ICYMI, click or tap this photo to get to the maternity shoot I did of Raya.
MALES STILL AVAILABLE IN HER FIRST LITTER!
Pretty Girls Are Trouble
As of June 5th on the Fox Creek Farm Available Puppies page, they’re still accepting 1-2 more applications for her first litter, but only for males and not females. It’s the same for the Harper & Bear, another petite litter a few days ahead of Raya & Hank. Apparently, a lot more people want female petite goldendoodles than males.
Raya & Hank litter status as of June 5th
ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?!?! :)
STOP.
Think about what you’re doing.
Ask anybody in my family and we’ll tell you, pretty girls are trouble! The moment I saw Raya it was over for me. Raya is so unbelievably cute, and she knows she’s so gosh darn cute and could just about get away with murder in our eyes! She literally could kill something, and we’d be like “omg baby that’s soooo cute!" as I grab my shovel from the garage and start digging a hole to bury the body in. She’s so irresistible and a total daddy killer. She owns me and everybody knows it, and trust me it wouldn’t be the same for a male!
How do you resist this?
So you want a petite princess goldendoodle, do ya? Do you really want something with that much power over you in your own house, and that’s perpetually going to look like a completely adorable baby princess puppy forever? It’s too late for me, but it’s not too late for you! Trust me, a “petite prince” male goldendoodle is going to be a fantastic dog also. Petites can hit above their weight for sure! It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog! :)
Maybe what I’m trying to say is that as much as we all love and adore Raya, her cuteness is already completely overwhelming to all of our brain circuitry. This is not predictive programming (or maybe it is), but if one day one of the puppies from Raya’s litters just happened to “land in my pocket” as I was bringing Raya home from West Virginia, it would have to be a male. We’ve barely survived one of these cute girls, and would absolutely not survive having two sweet petite princess baby girl goldendoodles in our house. I think I would just fall over and die from cuteness overload.
Puffles in May 2024
Just beware of what you’re getting yourselves into!
Males are great. They’re your buddy. They’re your friend. They’re still going to be plenty energetic and cute (or handsome?), but won’t turn into diva monsters that could get away with murder, because you’re so helpless when everything they do is so cute.
Just ask our friends. All are overwhelmed by Raya’s cuteness, but our mini-male Puffles is the one they’d want to take home. He’s calm. He’s chill. He’s super well behaved. He loves to cuddle. And he’s not going to go out and murder something because he knows he could get away with it. Just as much love, but far less trouble. LOL. :)
It’s Hopeless EITHER WAY!!
I know this can work in the other direction as well, so not sure if I just helped more female or male puppies find homes. Either way, you will fall hopelessly in love with these dogs. Truly, God put them on this earth to give humans a small taste of what true love is supposed to be and feel like!
It’s surely going to be an exciting few weeks and months for Raya, and for all of us! I’ll share photos of her and her puppies on the blog once I have some passed to me and permission to share, but good photos probably won’t be until July. As I recall, it takes them a week or so just to open their eyes and develop a little after they’re born, and are typically not even an ounce in weight at birth! The go home date for the puppies in her first litter is mid-August.
Raya will be entirely in the caring and professional hands of Fox Creek Farm in West Virginia through the entire process (and no visitation by us, so that she can stay focused on her pups) so we’ll be out of the picture.
STAY TUNED!!!!!!!