It's a dog's life for Jackie Irvine but she's loving every minute of it, playing mum to a litter of puppies whose mother died eight days after giving birth.Jackie bottle feeds the tiny three-week-old Yorkshire Terrier pups six times a day, acting as their surrogate mother, after seven-year-old Amber died.She said: "When Amber died it was such a shock – even when I picked her up I didn't think she was dead because she was still hot and her eyes were open."
But when you are left with five little faces looking up at you, you just have to take over."I was feeding them through a syringe but I got a bottle from the vet with a teet on it and we feed them with that now."It's quite humorous to see them because as they get bigger, they want more.
"They feed six times a day, I am up through the night feeding them and if I go out it's not for more than an hour-and-a-half."Jacie said she will probably keep one of the pups – which have been named Lucky, Fudge, Madonna, Robert the Bruce and Lulu – and give the others away once they are six- or seven-weeks-old.
Lucky was given her name because she was the first puppy to be born and was cold and lifeless, but she and her husband Bill managed to revive her.
Toodles for now!~
