June 21 Pupdate

Jill is absolutely amazing. I knew she was a great dam but she still surprises me. Today, she was bound and determined to share her chicken quarter with the puppies. She snuck it into the ex pen and let them have it. After they played with it and acted like little piranhas (all 6 puppies were on the chicken, pulling and yanking, etc) I picked it up an held it for her to eat. She tried to “bury” a piece of it in their ex pen but I had her eat it. The next thing I knew she was back in their room and they had a piece of chicken. She has monitored their every minute with it. She usually just goes in to clean up or nurse but she has spent an hour in there just watching them and mediating disputes. Every puppy has gotten a turn and while none of them actually ate much of it, they are definitely figuring out how it’s done. Cary was the last puppy still working on it and when he went to sleep, too (the others sacked out earlier) she ate it and came out of the pen.

We had a big storm this evening so I couldn’t take the puppies out. There were really high winds and a fair amount of thunder and lightning before it finally rained and rained. Green Bela still absolutely insisted on being taken out to poop though. I’m not sure how long she would wait while voicing her urgent need to have some attention but since I am encouraging her behavior, I’m not going to try to find out.

They had their evening meal with almost no goat milk added into the mixture and scarfed it down. Since they and their mother think they are ready for chicken, I went even thicker with dinner. Breakfast will still have a fair amount of milk in the oatmeal mixture. Just like big dogs, they now have a water bucket hanging in their ex pen. I don’t put much in it because sometimes it gets pretty banged around during play – either with it or each other and it is just collateral damage. They are working on sitting for meals but it’s a little hit of miss waiting for all 6 to do that at once and me to catch it. I work on it individually some too so we can be more successful.

I need to bring their grooming table back in so we practice standing on it a little every day, too.

I finally got all of the videos from the water loaded onto YouTube and Amy posted pictures she took this weekend, too. So you have something to do since the blog is rather short today ;-)