Good morning, good morning the little dogs say. They come running to the front of the ex pen to greet me. They are getting more coordinated, too so they actually can run. They follow Bruce all around the ex pen when he goes down to do last call for the big dogs, too.
The nicknaming has started hard as I tried to avoid it. BabyBlue is now Carolina Blue Devil (thanks Matt and Erin for putting that idea in my head). I was trying to pretend that Limey wasn’t really a nickname but I’ve given up. It’s just a façade of not getting attached anyway. I doubt nicknames will make me need more than one extra box of fudgesicles when they leave. Pink! is aka Pinky and my little pop star girl (I don’t know anything about the singer other than I’ve heard her name.) Purple and Green alternate being called Bela as one of them might be named Bela. They are GreenBela and PurpleBela and BelaBoo (they both get called that one.) Royal is also Little Prince or T , and Limey is still Limey and Big Boy. Who knows how many nicknames they’ll go through since I talk to them so much.
I actually do make sure that I leave them alone in a room some, sometimes with the big dogs and sometimes without. I haven’t been quite brave enough to leave them alone more than seconds outside. Sammie or Jill usually stand guard anyway. I seriously doubt the coyotes would come down to the house; through the fence; and on the deck of the wheelchair ramp (if I call it that enough it will eventually become that – plus it’s easier than old deck and new deck since the old deck is now part of a room in progress) and through the ex pen to get to the puppies but I’m still not taking chances. Same with snakes or any other manner of creatures. Between me and Jill and Sammie, they aren’t getting our puppies.
PurpleBela and CarolinaBlue carried the monkey paw around a lot today even though it’s bigger than they are. And some of them were dragging around the float line training toy outside. I took pictures but I don’t know which dogs did it. Both brown girls and I think 2 of the black boys. We can’t use Bruce’s old standby as accurately with these puppies. (When he tells me the dogs or the puppies did something or are somewhere and I ask which one, he answers ”the black one”)
The brownBelas have been wrestling with each other a lot today. They are not even matched size wise but that doesn’t stop them. All of the puppies have been playing hard. Testing their strength and teething on each other, I suppose. Bruce will have to get the tunnel next time he’s at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
Pink sits up like she is begging when she is wanting to be pick up. Last night when I was putting the puppies in the “nighttime” ex pen area –she cam over and sat and then put her front feet up for her turn. They all enjoy being carried and the boys will put their front feet up when I start picking them up but this is the first time I’ve been close enough to see this behavior.
I held a weight watchers meeting today. It’s getting more difficult to keep them on the scale. They either try to go on about their business or they sneak a foot or two off and I have a moment of panic that they have lost weight. But here are the most reliable results I could get (when I get the same reading twice, I go with it.)
Royal is 6 lbs; Pink! is 5lbs as is PurpleBela; CarolinaBlue is 6.2lbs; GreenBela is 5.8lbs; and Limey is 6.4 lbs. We have 34 lbs of PWD puppiness.
We spent more time outside today since I got the ez ups out and up. They played in and out of the pool, took a few naps and supervised me trying to dig a ditch. They encouraged me to take lots of breaks so I wouldn’t get too tried. I have most of the drainage ditch dug but we still have to dig out where it will tie into the foundation drain. The ground is too hard to do it carefully and I don’t have enough vision to swing the mattock reliably close to the house. If Bruce has time to fix the little tiller, I might be able to do it that way. I still have to dig out for the edging to hold the river rocks inside the designated area. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, we are putting in a section of river rock to replace the one covered up by the wheelchair ramp deck. It’s easier on the grass when they pee in the rock area than on our grass. No wonder it’s so easy to hurt the grass, it’s a wonder any can grow in that clay. We don’t flatter ourselves that it is a lawn, we count clover, weeds, etc as long as it’s green. Now we can just say we are doing it for the ecological diversity. Anyway, I think I may let the puppies play in the ditch before we put the pipe in and cover it all back up. Wonder how many of them will try to dig in the dirt? They are still kind of young for that (I hope) but you never know.
They were nice and quiet while I was on the phone for my training club meeting. Well behaved puppies already ;-) I think they may have been tired from their big day.
We’ve had a big day so it’s one more romp with the puppies and then nighty, nighty, nighty time for us.
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