Xena had her first litter of puppies when she was almost 2 years old. For her first litter we were only expecting around 6 puppies, but to our surprise, she had 10! It was a little overwhelming at first, but they were such a joy. She had them in the middle of the night in our kitchen where she sleeps. We were both right there to make sure everything went ok, and it did. She did a teriffic job, and let us hold them right away.

Now this picture is a little deceving. This puppy looks like he is putting his paw on the other one in a loving fashion. However, he is about the wack the other pup in the head as if to say,
"Hey, lets play!"

Here are a few snapshots of Xena and her puppies. Xena was so happy to have puppies to play with, and so were we! Every day after work we would let them out in the yard to play. We could waste a whole evening just watching and playing with them. When the puppies would get too loud when playing, Xena would go over and break them up (she would usually take away whatever they were playing with and play with it herself!) After a while if they would start playing too loud they would see Xena walking over to break them up, so they would stop and pretend like they weren't doing anything. They were a lot of fun!