1/09/2005 -
We had a litter of three pups born 12/28/03, one of which was Jelly, who had a cleft palate. I swear I will never
put myself through so much emotional stress again!!! Jelly now a year old, is one weird Bully. I tell
her she "ain't right" and I'm sure she isn't. But the Vets are amazed that she is still alive, doing
well and full of energy. She likes to hide then jump out growling and barking to scare the "devil" out the rest of us.
It's a game and she surely couldn't bite if she wanted, because her tongue is too long.
"Our gang" ignores her and you can almost hear them echo, "She ain't right". lol lol
Jelly Roll and her Sisters
Jelly Roll has her own bed, blanket, and hot water bottle but she'd rather sleep with her sisters, Cinnamon Roll and Pumpkin Roll!
In fact, she started crawling out of her basket looking for them in the middle of the night and yelling for them.
I held her for a while and put her with her sisters and she fell asleep.
Usually Pumpkin uses Jelly for a pillow but in this picture Jelly is in her favorite position -- between her big sisters.
Saturday morning when I went to the vets to get well puppy check ups on Baby Ruth and Carmello, I got some milk replacer which Jelly Roll just loves! So every second or third feeding, I use the milk replacer instead of Juliet's.
Jelly Roll's sisters are four or five times bigger than she is but Jelly doesn't seem to mind. Sometimes they fall asleep on her and she hollers if she can't crawl out from under them. When it's feeding time, the big sisters shove little Jelly Roll out of the way but I watch out for her and help her find a place at the dinner table...
Her sisters are beautiful, wrinkly bulldog puppies! Someday Jelly Roll will be as big and have as many wrinkles as they do... hopefully.
Until then we are watching her grow and play with her sisters and do kissy kiss...
Saturday evening 8:00 - January 24, 2004 - by Bob Jelly Roll is gaining weight and has stopped 'hollering' for food(?) It may have been colic or a gas bubble because since I've changed the feeding routine, she's more calm. Now, after she's finished her milk, I put her on my tummy and pet her until she burps. She's a lot more active than her sisters and can crawl out of the kiddy pool whereas Cinnamon and Punkin' can't. I fed her her first solid food this afternoon: Purina mush. She ate a couple of bites and decided she wanted her milk instead. I'm hoping that as soon as she can eat mush that she will gain weight. The roof of her mouth is fine in the front part but looks like an inverted 'V' toward the back. In order to sucessfully suck, the tongue has to be able to make a 'seal' as it moves toward the throat. Jelly Roll can't suck well because of the deformity. As she grows, it feels like the deformity is flattening out. And as soon as she can eat solid food, she should be out of the woods.
Tuesday evening 8:00 - January 27, 2004 - by Bob Jelly Roll can climb out of the kiddy pool and this afternoon she wandered into the other room with the "BIG" bullies. They all tried to tell her to go back to her room but they made so much noise, she lost her way. I had to rescue her. She's eating soaked Purina puppy chow. I feed her one softened pellet at a time. Her sisters are eating a little puppy chow also. I'm still feeding her every 4 hours. 20 minutes for puppy chow and 20 minutes nursing Juliet and 10 minutes with the 'bottle'.
Thursday evening 11:00 - January 29, 2004 - by Bob Jelly Roll seems to be progressing. She is eating mushed puppy chow without too much help from me. Her sisters, Pumpkin and Cinnamon, are eating their share, too. Juliet, the mother, is not staying with her babies long at all now even though Judy clipped their toe nails. She did sit for photographs:
Sunday morning 9:30 - February 8, 2004 - by Bob Jelly Roll is gaining weight! This last week has been worrisome. Her health has kept me watching her night and day medicating and feeding her so we've lost a lot of sleep. Several times her nose was dripping green stuff -- not a good sign... At the beginning of last week, I thought that she could handle eating mushed puppy chow by herself. Unfortunately, she gobbled it down too fast and this caused food to come out through her nose. I stopped giving her solid food and started tube feeding with milk replacer. Since inhaling liquid or solid into the lungs can cause pneumonia, I started her on Clavamox, an antibiotic. She also got an antihistamine to dry up her bronchial tubes and nose. After a day of tube feeding I changed back to solid food but this time I fed her one softened pellet at a time with a 5 to 10 second interval between bites. This helped a lot and Jelly has been gaining weight, too. Her digestive system is accommodating the Purina Puppy Chow very well. The constant handling has spoiled her so that when she wakes up, she hollers like a cat. If we don't hear her at first, her mother, grandmother, aunts and uncles (all) start to bark to alert us that she's awake. Jelly Belly is about the same size as Peanut was at the same age -- 6 weeks. Here are a couple of pictures taken this morning:
Thursday morning 3:30 - February 12, 2004 - by Bob Jelly Roll is eating regularly every three hours. No tube feeding for over a week. The routine is that I take her from her clear tupperware "bedroom" and cuddle with her. The I feed her half a mushy purina puppy chow pellet in the palm of my hand at a time until she has eaten from ten to twenty pellets. Then I carry her around to warm up her 'Snuggle Safe' disks to keep her warm while she sleeps. It's clean up time including her bed and her nose and then back to sleep. I rub her back until she gets sleepy and crawls up on her teddy bear. Here is a picture taken this morning:
Saturday morning 4:30 - February 14, 2004 - by Bob The midnight feeding did not go that well -- Jelly ate two or three bites and stopped. So I warmed up some milk replacer and tube fed her. The four o'clock feeding went exceptionally well so I'll keep her on mush to put on some weight... She's back to yelling for attention: either "I need my Snuggle Safe warmed up" or "I'm hungry!" Pictures from this morning's four o'clock feeding:
 Jelly Roll is doing quite well eating and gaining weight. She still has to work at swallowing food but it's not coming out her nose as it has been. The feeding schedule is now every four hours instead of three but she hollers if we're late! This morning, she spent ten minutes in the kiddie pool while her living quarters were being cleaned. She LOVED it -- "I'm such a big girl!" She tried to engage Lisa Marie in conversation which was very difficult since Lisa Marie is about five hundered times Jelly's size! But, it was fun to watch Jelly trying to get Lisa's attention. I pulled myself upright about an hour ago with the promise that I could take a nice long nap in the afternoon... idle promise!! Jelly was crying so my feet hit the floor moving fast. Right now she is snuggled in tight with Bob in the bed and I'm wide awake. Jelly Belly has gotten too big for her box as shown above. She can now stand on tippy-toe and pull at the blanket on top. Afraid she would be able to get over the side in the middle of the night and hurt herself falling, we transferred her to a small crate with a heating pad at one end. She's not out of the woods by a long shot but she's definitely doing better!! 
 
Jelly Belly is doing much better....
She is eating by herself!!!! We're holding our breath hopeful that she won't have a setback.
Words can't describe the time, emotions and love which have gone into helping her in her
struggle to survive. Bob is wonderful. I don't know another person who would have given
her such intensive, gentle, loving, care for these 9 long weeks. Her struggle is not over
but she has taken a giant step forward.
The mis-formed palate causes Jelly's barks for attention to sound like bird squawks...
It's probably a good thing that we didn't bring the parrot home otherwise we'd be
answering the wrong distress call some of the time. Jelly's feeding schedule is down to
one meal in the middle of the night. If she's feeling good and her nose is clear, she
will eat by herself otherwise her daddy hand feeds her. If the food is just the right
consistency (not hard -- not mush) and just the right size (half a Purina Puppy Chow
Pellet) Jell will eat an entire dish (approximately 30 pellets or 60 half pellets) by
herself and not have difficulties with food coming out her nose.
I forgot -- just the right temperature (not too cold and not too hot -- ten seconds in the microwave).
Spoiled Rotten! She wants to be held all of the time. It doesn't matter if you need to update her page or not -- she MUST be held!
Typing one handed is a challenge. Jelly has more nose congestion lately -- I think that she's eating too fast.
Also, if she gets too much food to swallow, her breathing is stopped so we have to watch her closely or hand feed her.
Last week we stopped to get gas and I noticed the car next to us, VW Beetle, had 2 pugs and an English Bulldog in it. Of course I was fascinated since I won't place my "babies" in homes were there are pugs because I have always thought the pugs would make the Bully hyper. We waited for the owners to return and had a lengthy conversation in regard to mixing the two breeds. There are 3 classifications of pugs, and theirs are in the Bulldog Pug class which weighs 20-25 pound. They were not hyper but the couple told us their brother had the smaller size and it was hyper. Now for the most important part of our encounter.... their Bully had a cleft lip and palate when it was born and had to be tube fed, just like Jelly. Much of what we described to them about Jelly was exactly as their Bully had been. They were fortunate in that his palate closed by itself so there was no need for an operation. Oh how we pray Jelly's fate will be the same. Jelly has found her tongue!!!! Heretofore she has not used it, but now she's licking at her food, licking the air, etc. Nan had given Bob some suggestions on how to get her using it and thus improve upon the swallowing process and it worked! Jelly Roll slept through the night Thursday and ate her breakfast by herself this morning. Her meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) have been quite large for her and she has had a minimum of problems: nothing got stuck in her throat; nothing expelled from her nose; and she sneezed 2 or 3 times after lunch! This was a very good day! I got the kiddy pool out for her to exercise... Then since she's developing into quite a bulldog, I figured that it was time to 'leash train' her. She just looked at me and said, "Get serious!"
Go Jelly Belly!!! Go Jelly Belly!!! Go Jelly Belly!!!
Click here to download the movie "Jelly Belly - Fun in the Pool!" 
Miss Jelly Belly wants to say, "Good Morning". Can you tell her size? That's my hand which is very small, I wear a size 4 wedding ring.
One of Jelly's fans, Marcy (and her puppy, Amber), sent some presents! An Easter Bunny and a Caterpillar just in time for Spring! Jelly was feeling her oats this morning so I let her play with her new toys. She thought the bunny's ears were cute and wanted to wear them herself!
 Wednesday - 03/31/04 - 9:00 -- by Bob Jelly Roll is looking like a 'real' bulldog! She still sneezes when she gets food in her nasal passage and 'gags' when she can't swallow a bite of puppy food but she IS gaining weight and I may take her into the vet today when I get dewclaws removed on the new puppies...
Jelly is now 4 months old and weighs 5 lbs. She's about the size of an average 6 week old puppy. When Dr Jerry examined her today, he shook his head in disbelief that she has made it this far since she has a very large opening in the roof of her mouth. I can't tell you the number of nights we've been awake with her, not knowing if she would make it until sunrise. Compared to how she has been, she's doing great, but at any time food or mucus could easily go into her lungs and kill her. This risk will continue without an operation, but the operation is HIGH risk. (Dr Jerry has only done this surgery once before and it was so long ago he's forgotten the outcome.) Bob and I have a horribly tough decision to make and every time I think about it or hold her in my arms, I cry, then she nibbles my nose and it makes me giggle ....
All Three Sisters
 Pumpkin Roll & Cinnamon Roll 
Cinnamon Roll Pictures Taken 01/10/04 
Pumpkin Roll - New Owners: "Russ & Tina" New Name: Dakota Pictures Taken 01/10/04 
King Bizkit - 
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Now that she has found her tongue she won't put it up!! She is, oh so very cute.
Along with her tongue, she is finding her personality, before she was just a
"baby", but now she's growing older by the hour. It's like she's on fast forward.
This afternoon instead of howling at me to pick her up, she actually barked to get
my attention, too cute. As you can tell from these pictures she's also gaining weight.
She's still "at high risk", but we are feeling so much better about her ability
to survive.
Jelly Roll sleeps in her own bedroom just above Happy.
Happy and Smart Cookie are due to whelp any day now so when I check on Happy and Smart Cookie during the night,
Jelly opens her eyes and says, "Not again! How can a puppy get any sleep around here???"
