June 4 Pupdate

6 pretty little 4 week old puppies say good morning, good morning! Hurry, hurry – come over here and see us! I have to finish greeting the big dogs before I can get over to them though. I know they look forward to seeing me because they don’t look to me for food yet and I don’t bring them the toys first thing either. It’s nice to be so loved ;-)

I took them out onto the ex pen on the deck while it was still cook and shady this morning. I got Jill to help me try leading them from their inside area to the outside area. They weren’t all watching her (some were on the other side of the pen) so it did take 2 trips and I did have to carry most of them the last little way (especially since Jill wasn’t going in the ex pens.) When it was time to bring them back in, I carried the first 2 and then tried the leading way. I don’t know how Jill and SammieDoodle communicated between the 2 of them but they each ‘guarded’ a set of puppies while I did the shuttling of puppies. Guess Jill has found another way to let SammieDoodle help. Reminds me of the very large families where the older siblings help raise the younger ones ;-)

I put unprinted newspaper in their area today and didn’t cover it all up. The puppies navigated it pretty well and were quite happy to rearrange it. I put in a few small pieces to see their reactions and they found those pretty quickly. Those pieces were carried around like the greatest of prizes. Only Limey pulled on a large piece hard enough to rip off the piece not held down by another puppy. She didn’t seem at all surprised, just gamboled around with her prize. (I started to say trot but what they do now isn’t generally trotting in the strictest sense of the word.)

They had semi solid food today at lunch. Ground beef soaked in goat milk warmish. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? Add to that the fact that I give it to them off of my fingers add you have a real treat. Well, I started giving to them from my fingers. Green girl just came over and stuck her head in the bowl and started eating. They boys quickly caught on to that as well. Pink and Purple girls ate from my fingers like the cooperative puppies they should be ;-) I had to keep feeling them to make sure nobody got too much. I can’t be certain they wouldn’t overeat.

The puppies have visitors scheduled this weekend. We have a lot of things on our To Do list and if they finish those, we’ll find more. Wonder if I could convince (dog) Cindi to speed on the way to the CERFs/evaluations so they could meet a policeman in uniform ;-) The UPS guy is here so often that I don’t think it will be a problem for them to meet delivery people.

We got a nice box of toys from “Grandma Jane” for the BooBabies in the mail today. At least some of them will go home with the puppies. If we start playing with them now, there may not be anything left by the time they are ready to leave.

Pink has been obsessed with the buckets (Jill’s dry food and water ) hanging on the side of the pen today. She’s played under them, batted them, etc. Limey is now trying really hard to get into the food bucket (I moved the water bucket so Jill didn’t have to go in to get a drink.) He had his head in the bowl but I don’t think he got any of the food. I am going to have to change it to the puppy food just in case – I don’t want anyone to choke.

I’m already thinking about their first haircuts. Maybe I can convince Bruce to start doing their little lion butts before too long. Maybe not but a girl can dream. ;-) Speaking of dreaming, the puppies have had an active dream life today. Squeaking and twitchy and some rolling around. Wonder what’s in their little heads while they do that? Maybe if I go nighty, nighty, nighty they’ll tell me (or at least I’ll get some rest.)