September 15, 2012 Pupdate

          The puppies are a day old and settling in nicely.  Technically, they weren’t due until today but they weren’t waiting.  They can maneuver all over the whelping pool and each other but they were all climbing pretty well yesterday.  The boy with the blue collar (at the time known as puppy #2) almost crawled off the table before the vet tech put him in the incubator. I had them in a box with a fleece pad to carry them out of the vet’s office and while we were getting the rest of our stuff ready, they were climbing up and over the pad (several inches high but not high enough for them to get out of the box.)

               We now have our spreadsheet of puppy information so we can start having fun with numbers.  I haven’t weighed SammieDoodlebug again but she is obviously MUCH lighter.  And it’s no wonder since she had 116.5 ounces of puppy.  For those of you not inclined to compute it for yourself that’s slightly over 7 1/4 lbs. of infinite cuteness. I can’t get this post written because I am constantly being mesmerized by puppies.

               Since Bruce is headed off to the USGA State Team matches tomorrow morning (bad timing that), Dog Cindi is staying with me so I can occasionally sleep.  SammieDoodlebug is very careful about not stepping or lying on puppies but I still don’t like to leave them unattended for at least the first week.  These puppies LOVE to crawl under between her front legs, under her armpit and cuddle into her back under the ‘pig rail’.  Doodlebug doesn’t mind but I’m not thrilled with that arrangement so I am often reaching under and pulling them back out.

               We’ve had a little bit of collar color glitch, I can’t really tell much about the grey so I am going to change that one.  We temporarily put a sort of tie dye rainbow color on that puppy but I couldn’t tell it from the other colors and it came off so that puppy is streaking right now.  It occurred to me to take a sharpie marker to the colors I don’t like/can’t see so I am planning to change the white one to pink to replace the rickrack and do something better/brighter with the grey.  With 10 though, I run out of things that I can distinguish in a box of puppies.  Other than that, I do like the Pupcollars.  They are a great idea, just not the best colors to me.  (That is not a paid endorsement, I doubt they care what I think but I may eventually tell them anyway.)

               The puppies are very busy growing and are already adept at vocalizing their emotions.  So far, we haven’t had the baby alligator in distress noise much but we’ve had a little bit of displeasure when we took them out to take weigh them and take pictures.  When the puppies are unhappy, we have to contend with Doodlebug and Jill.  Mostly though, they are noisy eaters (and sometimes sleepers.)  They sing and talk while they eat and, occasionally, I hear them smacking as they nurse.

               They need their toenails cut but they needed that when they were born.  I should have done them yesterday while Doodlebug was still a little out of it from the anesthesia because I am pretty sure she isn’t going to stand for it now.  I’m going to have fun with her on Day 3 when we start ENS.  She’s not threatening but she tries to hide them so I can’t take them and if they squall while we are holding them, she’s right there.

               She’s rotating so they have to move around so they’ll get stronger and is eating well, albeit in her pool (she is eating out of the bowl some instead of only from a spoon or my hand now.)  It’s funny that Little Miss “I don’t eat meals without meat” (remember that Tamara?) is now gobbling down yogurt, and cottage cheese to the point that I had to dip her steak in the yogurt to get her to eat it today.  I guess she does know what she needs.  She certainly seems to know what those puppies need!

 

               I’m going to lie down on the bed beside the box until Cindi’s shift so nighty, nighty, nighty for now.