After a long day and a half of Lily nesting and preparing for the pups. She gave birth to a male puppy at 1:15 AM Friday Morning (August 22). We were expecting a second pup and became concerned when her labor stopped. When the vet opened and after a phone call, we took her in to be examined. They determined that they needed to go in and do a c-section, but discovered (Before they cut her uterus) that she had begun to reabsorb the other puppy.

Finding out why would have involved cutting the uterus which would have compromised future pregnancies, but the thought it it hadn’t properly developed.

The puppies future home and his owners are anxiously waiting for him to grow up strong and have already named him George.

Everyone has fallen in love — including mommy Lily, who is taking very good care of the little guy. She’s also recovering well from her surgery.

He’s already demonstrating all the traits of a Olde English Bulldogge. His two favorite activities in his second day of life are sleeping and eating.

In the next few days we will be embarking on a brand new experience in our household, Olde English Bulldogge puppies. Well, that’s not exactly true. The puppies are due at any moment, and it isn’t really our first experience with them. The first experience would be when Lily came to our family.

My husband and I both have always been animal lovers, and we grew up with animals – mostly dogs – as constant members of our individual families. So, it was more or less understood we would have pets. Our first home together was in a mobile home park that didn’t allow dogs, so for the first few years we had cats and birds. While expecting our second child, my daughter, we decided it was time to take the big step into our first house, and the day we signed the purchase agreement, my husband came home with a lab puppy. (Ignoring the fact we didn’t take possession for 30 days. ) “What are they going to do, kick us out? We’re leaving anyway.” That was his response to my concerns.

Fourteen years later we lost that dog to old age. Even though we had added other dogs to the family, there was still a loss, a huge one and it was only a matter of time before my husband was considering another member of the family.

He was drawn to English Bulldogs; I was more than a little hesitant. They have a lot of health problems and they drool and snore, were just a couple of my concerns. The husband didn’t give up on his quest though, and while doing some research to calm my fears he discovered the newer Olde English Bulldogge breed. To say newer is a bit of a misnomer, as it is really an attempt to breed the dogs back to the stature they had at the turn of the century: taller, not so large heads. They do not have a many of the health concerns the more common breed has. As long as its snoring didn’t keep me up nights I was okay with it. I told him that as me, the kids, and one of their friends piled in the car to go to a movie. By the time we came home 2 hours later, Lily was a part of the family.
Most of the family welcomed her with open arms and hearts, with the exception of my small terrier mix who thought the world was crashing to an end with this new face to vie for mommy’s love. She spent two weeks under my desk with all the toys, daring any of the other dogs to try and take them from her.
I don’t think we were even aware of how hard and how fast we’d fallen for the little clown until a few months later she became quite ill. A victim of the tainted Diamond Dog food a few years ago, she developed aflatoxin poisoning that began shutting her liver down. It was the first of what has now been a few cases of tainted food and a very scary situation for a week we feared we were going to lose her, and had resigned ourselves to that, the night she began to turn around. (Our vet saw fourteen cases of the poisoning, only two dogs survived. One being Lily.)
We were grateful that she was going to recover, and if you thought she was a spoiled princess before… We were told she would have a long road ahead, may never fully recover from the liver damage. The vet told us to reconsider any thoughts of breeding her in the future. (They didn’t know just how much liver function she would regain.)
Within weeks, however, her liver function was back at 100% (Thankfully. She really hated the special diet.) She was back to normal, being our little clown and even the little terrier and her have become good friends. With no reason not to, we decided to help rebuild this breed when she came into season a year ago. Unfortunately, she didn’t conceive at that time, but she did go through a false pregnancy, which was a totally odd thing to watch.
This year, however, with a different male and the help of artificial insemination, Lily did conceive, and for what the ultrasound and the x-ray have told us will be having two puppies maybe in the next few hours… definitely within the next few days. Freedom is the proud papa, and am anxious to see if either of the pups will have his green eyes, or blue eyes that run in both blood lines. It’s almost as bad as when I was expecting my babies.
Over the next two months, I plan to share picture and stories as we go through the birthing and raising of the pups.