A sausage dog gave birth to ten pups born as small as mice and the supersized litter is now being cared for by their proud owner – who delivered the babies herself.
Stacey Whiteley, 41, got the shock of her life when she learnt her pregnant pooch Cheesecake was giving birth to a supersized litter.
Vets tod her she might be having six or seven then a scan showed eight but TEN arrived – making the family the size of a football team.
Due to their small size, dachshunds are usually known to produce about three to four puppies per litter.
Stacey had to hand-deliver the litter in the middle of the night saying “they were flying out like peas!”.
Mum-of-two Stacey is now caring for the ten new pups alongside her three other dogs.
It is full time job which includes getting up three times a night to bottle-feed the babies.
The stunning photos show the two-week old pups, which were born the size of mice and are now the size of guinea pigs, settling into their new home.
Stacey, who lives in Lincoln, said: “I was expecting a litter of six or seven, then the scan showed eight or nine – but when my dog Cheesecake was in labour, a tenth pup popped out!
“This was the first and only time I will breed and I’m not doing it for the money, but I wanted to experience breeding.
“For the next eight weeks I’ll be hand-rearing them – I have to feed them from bottles three times a night, sleep in the same room to be near the puppies, and weigh each one twice a day.
“Eventually they will all go to loving homes – but at the moment my life is puppies 24/7!”
Stacey had decided to breed her own dog, a standard Daschund named Cheesecake, so she could experience raising a litter from birth.
She had used a dapple Daschund stud dog in the hope of increasing the numbers of standard Daschunds in the breed.
Originally she had been told there would be six or seven pups so she wasn’t expecting the mother dog and puppies to amount to a family the size of a football team.
Stacey planned to have a breeding mentor come to the house to assist with the birth, but Cheesecake caught her off guard on the evening of September 8.
Despite Cheesecake showing no signs of labour beforehand, Stacey was forced to deliver them by herself throughout the night – in a six-hour puppy mission – while on video call to her breeding mentor.
Stacey, who works as a planner for a water supply company, said: “I went to bed and woke up to the sound of a puppy so I jumped up to help deliver them.
“I had to do it all by myself – it was very frantic with six being born in the first hour.
“They were flying out like peas!
“I had to identify and weigh them all – I just had to keep remembering what my breeding mentor had told me and get on with it despite my panic.”
She had been warned to expect a litter of eight, or a maximum of nine pups – but got the shock of her life when number ten popped out after she thought Cheesecake had finished.
Cheesecake and her puppies – five boys and five girls – added up to a whole football team, with each pup weighing between 200g and 230g.
Friends, family and followers have adorably nicknamed the family ‘Cheesecake and her Babybels’ – and Stacey plans to name each pup after a different cheese to follow the theme.
Stacey is now two weeks into an eight-week hand-rearing process before eventually uniting the pups with new owners.
She is currently assisting exhausted mum Cheesecake by bottle-feeding the tiny puppies on rotation – because Cheesecake has more babies than nipples.
She gets up three times a night for feeds and even shares a bedroom with the dogs so she can keep a close eye on them.
She also has to weigh them twice a day and can’t leave them alone in the house – meaning she has to work from home full-time and get friends over to babysit so she can pop out to do the weekly shopping.
She is also going through a vigorous vetting process to whittle down potential new owners and ensure each puppy goes to a happy, safe and loving home.
Stacey explained: “They’re tiny and squeaky and it’s a lot of work but it’s worth it.
“I wasn’t expecting to do it all myself but when it came to the birth, I knew what to do instinctively because I am a mum myself.
“To see the pups being born and their little heads popping out of mum was an amazing experience.
“They’re so adorable – I’ve been taking so many pictures I’ve had to buy an additional memory card so I can store them all!”
