I didn’t get yesterday’s written last night or this morning so this will be a 2 day post. Saturday, the wee ones slept until a reasonable hour – at least as far as I could tell. I was a mean dog mama and penned them in to the crate and potty area only for nighty, nighty, nighty time. There appear to have been some pees but they managed to wait until I got them outside for pooping. And they had a nice big breakfast which they ate with gusto.
Their Aunt LeAnne arrived first, she’s an early bird and got to see some of the early morning play and then watched them as they slept in the castle sandbox. While she did that, I changed the bedding in the puppy pen. The fleece in the crate was clean and dry. What good puppies!
Dog Cindi came with the parts to make the outside dangly toy contraption. Indoors, I hang things from rope across the top of the ex pen so they can play with it and it randomly touches them as they walk around. Now we have an outdoor version. We may need to glue some of the joints it they pull it apart but I like being able to disassemble it if possible. So far, it has been quite the hit and they haven’t pulled it down yet ;-)
Colleen and her sister Jenny came by to play with puppies and do the photo shoot and when Susan and Meg arrived we waited for the babies to finish their naps before taking them to the pond. LeAnne puppysat (and tried to corral the big dogs) while we took Aunt B to the pond for a little practice and then we took the puppies up for their first swim.
Again, nobody even considered swimming until their little chins hit the water and then they took off. They headed for shore just fine but had a tendency to veer off to do a swimabout along the shoreline so they required a little guidance. I did each puppy twice and then we let them play while the people just made sure they didn’t have anything bad happen to them. Plus they were fed some goodies (they had steak pieces and tuna) so they seemed pretty happy. Tootsie was not a fan of wearing the life jacket for group play but we wanted to be able to id her quickly in case she had any issues. She did not and eventually we took it off. She did not wear the life jacket for her turns swimming and did just fine.
We let the old puppies, Caly and Armada come up to play then, too and the puppies watched their antics some in addition to playing. Jenny had to leap into the water to beat T2J who was taking a previously unapproved route into the pond. I think she was the only one that didn’t have pond clothes on or a change of clothes with her. Fortunately, several of the Villagers have spares here and she got to change before they left. She did say we need to get her a puppy lifeguard shirt for next time ;-) I had the pupsters follow us down the hill (through the yard) back to the dog yard and they did pretty well after a couple needed to be carried away from the pond area. They napped while I bathed the big dogs then I bathed the puppies and LeAnne held them in towels as they would allow. Turtle was having a cuddly day so the MSU held a puppy or too while I finished up the others.
We were still sitting out with them when we thought Tut, Tut it looks like rain and as we started carrying the babies inside, it poured. The puppies were fine but I got soaked again, especially when I went out to put the cover on the castle sandbox and take the cover off of the ez up. The e z up collapsed again and there wasn’t even water standing on it, I don’t think it’ll ever go up and down again. I left it in place and moved the cover on and off to provide shade but it’s a goner unless I have the right size pieces from old skeletons that we’ve saved.
The puppies did a LOT of resting the remainder of the day yesterday and I went to take a nap in the evening as I was rather tired myself. They went out to poop after their last meal (in the dark although I turned on some outside light since I don’t care for the pitch black.) and we all went nighty, nighty, nighty.
I then proceeded to not sleep well at all. I didn’t realize that there was a big weather change and that affects my sinuses. Since I was up a lot of Friday night with what appears to be gall baldder issues, I wasn’t sure why I felt so badly and didn’t know what to take. The pupsters were good and ate breakfast when I brought it at about 7:30 but were not amused when I went in to hurl instead of taking them outside. I eventually got them outside and fortunately Dog Cindi was coming to groom, etc this morning because those puppies did NOT understand why I was cuddling that trash basket instead of them. They wanted morning cuddles. When Cindi arrived, I was sitting on the floor behind the storm door into the laundry room periodically heaving my guts up. I turned puppy watch duty over to her and alternated between whining, heaving, and cleaning up the puppy pen. There was a poop in the time between breakfast and being taken outside but that’s to be expected. At least it was good poop and in the right spot but I don’t think the puppy was pleased with my service in the least ;-)
The change in the weather did enable us to open up the doors instead of running the a/c today. And the puppies have been outside all day as well. They even had more company and get to add 2 more people to their list. They were mostly well behaved puppies but were told that teeth are for toys more than once as they were re-directed.
They heard sirens go by (not really close as we don’t live right on the road but definitely close enough to hear) today. None of them cared. And the MSU drove up and down the driveway beside them (on the other side of the fence) in the truck so they could hear/see traffic, too.
Pupsters are napping outside as I type this (it takes longer to type when you are frequently going over to check on puppies) and I think they may stay out until after they have dinner and a post prandial potty and romp. Then I am planning to crash until last call and hopefully crash again until it’s time for the puppies to start it all over again. (And against all odds, they managed to get even cuter today.)
