Here she is earlier in the evening, when she went voluntarily into her birthing/whelping box. After that, she would have nothing but to deliver the balance of her puppies -- on our bed. One cannot argue with a determined pregnant mother.

Because of the suddenness of this little guy's appearance we didn't get any pictures of the birthing process. Tizzy knew exactly what to do, she licked and licked and bit open the clear membrane birth sac, ate the placenta (this is normal), then bit through the umbilical cord. Then she licked the puppy until it was dry and trying to nurse-- which it did, successfully.

Nursing the puppy calmed Tizzy down and nearly 2 hours passed as we waited and wondered what would happen next?

The birth of the second puppy was immediately preceded by this swelling in Tizzy's nether regions.

Within moments out popped number 2 -- the only puppy to be born feet first, or hind end and first.

From the first appearance to complete delivery of the second puppy was only a matter of minutes. Again, Tizzy began the process of freeing the puppy from the birth sac. Ann helped with a couple of the puppies when it seemed to be taking a long time. The sac is surprisingly strong and resilient, as it must be to keep the puppies from clawing through it with their sharp little claws.

Aside from a little help breaking the sack, Tizzy was completely efficient at cleaning off her puppies. She licked and licked them until they began wiggling and looking for breakfast.

Then, she would clean herself off and resume the process of continually licking the other puppy -- relaxing only when they were both nursing.

So, here is puppy number one...

and number two. . .

A moment to relax... but nothing like the two hours waiting for puppy number two. Now they came between 45 and 75 minutes apart.

Puppy number three came so fast we almost missed photographing it, perhaps because it was so small, it came out so easily. This third puppy would turn out to be the runt of the letter, weighing only 1 1/2 ounces, compared to the 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 of the others. Our initial concern at the small size gradually diminished when it seemed to hold its own against its larger siblings, when it came to finding one of mother's breasts.

Here she is, tiny number three...

Following relatively quickly came number four, back to normal size.

By now it was 7 a.m. and Evelyn got her first glimpse of the puppies. When she left for school there were four, and she came home to 6 -- what a surprise!

At this point things slowed down a bit and Ann and I assumed birthing had come to an end. As we attempted to resettle Tizzy and the pups in the whelping bed, number five came so fast we missed it too.

And of course we no sooner moved the show down to the whelping bed when out popped number six. For some reason, we were expecting a maximum of four puppies -- well, because two to four is the normal litter for Toy Fox Terriers, I suppose...

Tizzy had a bit of a problem severing the umbilical cord, resulting in some minor bleeding. She kept licking the afflicted area until it stopped. Later in the morning, however, our local veterinarian put in a tiny stitch.

A well deserved rest for mother and puppies...

So - here they are, in their birth order. One through six.