“Just when we thought it was all over, out would pop another one,” the owner said

A 2-year-old Irish setter gave birth to a record-breaking 17 puppies in England.

After mating with a miniature black poodle a few months earlier, a dog named Marigold gave birth to her first puppy around 11 a.m. on Jan. 2. But according to her owner, Miranda Pellecchia, the puppies “just kept coming” until she and the dog were left with an astonishing total of 17 puppies following 13 hours of labor.

“We knew she was going to have a big litter, but we were amazed when they just kept coming,” Pellecchia, 42, told The Times. “Just when we thought it was all over, out would pop another one.”

“It’s been exhausting for Marigold, and she’s been having 12 tins of dog food a day to keep up her energy and supply the milk needed,” she continued. “What with the feeding, because they needed extra formula milk, weighing, and general care and attention, I’ve not been getting much sleep.”

Joking that she “thought it would never stop,” Pellecchia, who works as a mediator in special educational needs and lives near Canterbury, went on to tell the BBC that the last puppy wasn’t born until around midnight.

“Even when the 17th was born, we wondered if that really would be the last,” she said. “It was exhausting for us, so I dread to think how poor Marigold felt.”

But following Marigold’s 13-hour labor, Pellecchia said that the dog has “recovered well from her ordeal.” Initially, the dog “wouldn’t go to sleep properly for days” after the birth because she was “too busy tending to the newborns.”

“I’d stay up with her too, making sure all was okay. And it was, with even the runt of the litter thriving,” she added. “I reckon things are just set to return to the level of chaos we normally have around here.”

Prior to Marigold’s litter, the largest documented Irish doodle litter involved 16 puppies born to a dog named Amelia in Hampshire in 2019, per The Times.