Patience is a Virtue...

...I could use more of.

Rumor is fine, temp is normal, appetite is great, sleeping and going for walks and looks for all the world like nothing is amiss.

So no panic is allowed. More patience is required.

To keep myself from going nuts-o I made a graph of her temperature over the last week:


The blue line is a.m., the red line is mid-afternoon, and the green line is evening. (Thanks to Elissa for helping me set this up.) As you can see, the red line shows a semi-significant drop from yesterday... which was higher than Thursday, so could easily be completely meaningless. Ru's temp is generally below 100 anyway, so IF there's going to be a big drop before labor starts, it will be in the low-to-mid 98's. Not even close to that at this time.

She does really want me to be with her, however, so I've spent today doing things on the computer (the whelping box and computer both being in the study). She carefully supervised my making changes to the club website (premiums needing posting, photos needed updating), and pretty much lost interest by the time I started ripping CD's to put on my iPod.

I went through our collection and pulled all the female soloist CDs that I didn't already have on the iPod; copied and downloaded: Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Sarah McLaughlin, Tina Turner, etc.... (yes, of course the CD's are in alphabetical order. how else would one possibly arrange them??) Then I did all the soundtracks: Big Chill, Forrest Gump, Evita, Phantom, Le Miz, etc.. I already did all the Operas (Don G, Figaro, Fideleo, etc.) and most of the classical (I am a huge fan of violin concerti), so what's next will be male solo artists, followed by bands.

Then I'll have to go buy more CD's to rip, because I'll go insane if I don't have something to do and Rumor gets up to follow me every time I leave the chair. Which is very flattering but sweetie you'll just have to trust me on this, I'm not that fascinating. Really. It's a miracle I got in the shower without her going in, too.

Our daily walk/trot around the pasture was business-as-usual, too. Chase a bird here, dig a little hole there, sniff this and trot over to that... The problem of course is the mud, and Ru has quite had it with me washing the mudballs out of her feet before she's allowed back in the house. She's very happy to be a ranch dog (and see if she can snarf down horse-poop when I'm not looking) and doesn't understand my obsession with keeping cooties out the whelping box.

I called my friend Laurel, who's been breeding greyhounds for about 45 years, and asked when I should start to panic. She said, in essence, that as long as Ru is: eating, drinking, sleeping, peeing, pooping, and playing + not running a fever + I can feel puppies moving (the little darlings are doing the Macarena today) = don't panic. Monday would be 63 days since the last breeding, so Monday would probably be the day to get concerned. Or not, if all-the-above is still normal.

So, for my birthday, I'd like an extra dose of patience. Seems like I'm going to need it.

2100 update: Hm, maybe that is a real temp drop (green line). Sweet dreams!