October 1, 2012 Pupdate

               Happy October, I guess.  Today we started introducing “stuff in the pen”.  The stuff will vary and at this point, they won’t really play with any of it, but it will be something to crawl over/around in addition to the siblings.  We started with a lambswool slipper insole and Movie (one of the courting presents Triton gave to SammieDoodlebug.)  Some of them have cuddled up with them but obviously don’t think they are the siblings.

               We held a weight watchers meeting last night.  We have 21.4 pounds of puppies.  TJ and Dyson are the smallest these days so last night I arranged a picnic for them.  I mixed up some formula and gave a few of them a little supplementation from a bottle.  TJ isn’t as into that as Dyson but they were sleeping when it was ready.  It’s hard to tell how much any of them are drinking from the bottle so I have to kind of rely on how much I put in (not more than a feeding for the smallest puppy so I don’t overfeed anyone) and how much is still there when I switch puppies.  Next time I do it, I’m going to go by weight of the bottle instead of measuring the liquid numerous times.

               Dyson’s immediate response to just about anything is sucking so he took the bottle better than TJ.  I let TJ have alone time with the MamaBug while Dyson had the bottle, then I put him with them while I gave some to Turtle and Behemoth.  I wasn’t sure enough was coming out so I figured those 2 would be my best bet.

               Turtle was the first (at least that I could verify) to manage to latch on while SammieDoodlebug was standing up.  She only got a few sucks but she did manage.  It was a pretty close race and I thought the Orange boy was going to accomplish that first.  It’s not efficient yet but they try to eat everychance they get.  It’s no wonder I am always having to loosen collars.

               While I was doing all of that bottle feeding/picnic organization last night, I noticed that at least 5 different puppies woke up (ish), staggered out of the pile and off of the lambswool pad onto the hospital pad, peed and then went back to sleep in the pile.  When I changed out their fleece, pads, etc I noticed there were very few damp spots other than there.  Doodlebug still cleans them a lot (I think we’ve only encountered poop 2 times and she cleaned it up immediately) but that’s a good sign as far as I am concerned.  I will try to make sure I give them a somewhat easily defined potty place all of the time and see if that makes housetraining go even faster.  Most of the puppies in the prior litters have been well on the way to housetraining before 8 weeks with a couple of them somewhat demanding about their preference for going OUTSIDE to eliminate  (the purple girl from the Master’s litter would SCREAM to go out even to pee.)

               It sounds like we are missing a lot of fun in Wisconsin.  We’ll have to keep making our own fun but last night was Shopping.  They always have cool stuff that you don’t encounter anywhere else.  I should have arranged a personal shopper. 

               I apparently have a cold but at least it is mostly coughing and not head congestion.  That’s good because I’d hate to miss out on any puppy breath.