Born on April 10th, 2010, we began the wonderful adventure of raising 13 Golden Retriever puppies. This is their story!
Bella is our beautiful golden reddish female and she is 4 years old.
The dad is a beautiful light golden named Bodie who is 3 years old! 
They made adorable puppies which are mixed in colors. Some are already darker reddish like their mom, some are very light colored like their dad, and some are a great mixture of both.
She had 8 girls and 5 boys.
We put colored string collars around their necks so that we could tell them apart because there were so many of them. Since each one has their own little personality, my kids have named them all according to their color or their story describing their personality.
This is Jasmine!
This is Chester!
This is Dopey!
This is Brody!
This is Lucky!
This is Violet!
This is Rosie!
This is Daisy!
This is Lady!
This is Mack!
This is Maggie!
This is Tiana!
This is Tinkerbell!
It was April 9th, 2010, and we had been waiting all week long for Bella, our beautiful Golden Retriever, to have her puppies. Poor thing was huge and uncomfortable!!
We watched and waited until finally at 11:45pm Friday night, April 9th, she quietly went into the welping pen and had her first puppy! Brandon and Dave heard some noises from her, as we were all getting ready for bed, and sure enough one tiny, adorable little puppy had been born and quickly cleaned up by her. Amazing that she knew what to do so easily being her first time - instinct is amazing! We were so excited that we didn't even realize that we were probably going to be up all night with her. All the kids gathered around and we began helping her with the process of delivering each pup. We didn't know what expect as she began delivering her second, but watching each step was facinating: her contractions, seeing the heads coming out, watching Bella break the sac open, chew the umbilical cord, and eating the placenta within minutes was incredible! She is a great mom!
By 5:00am she had delivered 9 beautiful, healthy puppies. She actually had delivered 10 but unfortunetally one little boy didn't make it. He was breech and the sac had broken so we think he asperated too much fluid and we couldn't revive him. Two and a half hours later, at 7:30, she delivered two more puppies; the first one was breech and the sac was broken again. He was totally limp and not breathing. We worked and worked to get him breathing and after many minutes, he gasped for air and started moving. He is beautiful and perfectly healthy, and we named him Lucky! Now we had 11 puppies and we thought she was done. Two hours later Bella started contractions again and next thing we knew another pup was born. Now we had 12 beautifully healthy pups! AGAIN, two hours later, to our amazement she started having contractions and then she had number 14! Little Rosie, the darkest in color, was born. Bella had 14 puppies total on Brittany's 14th birthday and we named Rosie in honor of Brittany's middle name, Rose!! Shocked and amazed we had 13 perfect, adorable Golden Retrievers pups! What an amazing and exhillerating experiece!
Here they are just hours old!
A few days old with a little bit of hair and we could begin to see the different variations in color!
My kids had their favorites even at one week old!
Two weeks after they were born, Brooke had her 11th birthday and for her birthday the pups opened their eyes. It was a great present for her!
Their first feeding of solid food at 3 weeks old! It was hilarious watching them make a complete mess of themselves!
Loving the yummy dog food!
So adorable at 4 weeks old!
Energetic,playful, running around like crazy at 5 weeks!
Bella trying to feed all of her big children!
Bella loves her babies!!
We are so thankful that all of our adorable puppies are so healthy and growing wonderfully! We hope that you enjoyed their story. We would like to give a special thank you to ES Photograpy for all of her amazing photographs each week. Visit her site at http://www.esphoto.org/.
