Our little jungle family just grew

This is Prada. She's one of the many jungle dogs I've adopted since living here in the Philippines. She's a great dog, very obedient and smart. Out of all of the dogs we have, she's the only one who will come to us just for affection, even if we don't have any food. We love her.

Last night, she was acting strange-- walking back and forth and panting hard. She'd try and get comfortable in one spot, but would move a minute later to another spot. She was even trying to dig, but our floor is made of tile, so she wasn't getting very far.

Then I told J: “She's probably going to have her puppies soon, that's why she's acting like a weirdo.” I said that thinking we would probably have another couple days until she popped. We let her walk around some more, let her do her weirdo thing. Then we went to bed, not thinking much else of it.

This morning when I woke up, she was outside and had made herself a little area behind our trashcans, and she was still panting really hard. I went to the bathroom, came back and she was still in the same place, still panting hard.

I sat down at my computer and was checking my e-mail when all of a sudden I heard a little squeak. I got back up and I saw that she had two puppies! They were so small and had black and white fur. I didn't want to bother her, so I didn't go outside. I just watched her. The puppies were eating and Prada seemed fine. So I went to wake up J because I was so excited. He got up and checked it out and we watched her for a bit, making sure she was ok and that the other dogs weren't bothering her.

We left her alone for a couple of hours, but it was time for me to feed our other dogs Lala and Fendi. So Jason and I tried to devise a plan where we could feed all of them without one bothering the other, but as soon as we opened the back door, Prada came right in, leaving her two new-born pups. We tried coaxing her back out, but it didn't work. She found a little spot in a corner behind a table and stayed there, so we left her alone and fed the other dogs.

We had a large cardboard box, so we put it on its side and put a small rug in it. We got the two puppies and put them in it. We left the box outside, hoping it would lure Prada back out, but it didn't work. She would not budge from behind the table.

A few minutes passed and J went to check on Prada and witnessed her give birth to another puppy! This time it had all-white fur. So we now knew why she didn't want to come out of her little spot. She stayed there for a while, feeding the newest puppy, but outside in the box the other two puppies were crying. So we took the box and put it close to Prada by the table.

After a while, she finally went in the box with all her puppies. We were able to feed her and give her water. I was kind of expecting her to freak out on us because I've heard that's what mothers do when others come too close to their puppies, but not Prada. She's been so good.

THEN, just a couple of hours ago, Prada came out of her box and went outside (probably to handle her business), so I went to go take a picture of all the puppies and found she had ANOTHER puppy! This time it had all-black fur.

So we have 4 new puppies on our hands. I've yet to name them. It was a hard day for Prada, but she was good through it all. Her puppies are all so cute and so tiny! And it's so precious watching her clean her puppies and seeing them feed off of her. Man, if only human babies were that small when they're born!" Haha...

We'll see which of her puppies survive. Right now they all seem healthy and nursing just fine. We're doing what we can do for Prada, giving her space {with the occasional picture taking, of course}, food and water .

What an eventful day for this momma & her new pups.

As of right now, my jungle puppy commune just grew by 4. And we think it's going to grow more sometime soon because LaLa is pregnant, too!

{To read more about our dogs, you can click here & here.}