What a difference a week makes. I’ve gotten significantly less sleep and significantly more puppy breath. The puppies snuggle up to my face when I nuzzle them and I can often catch them yawning (the better to sneak in some puppy breath.) Against all odds, they’ve managed to get even more adorable.
We have had to graduate to the bathroom scale for the weight watcher’s meetings. The not so little ones are too big/squirmy to effectively weigh on my kitchen scale.
SammieDoodlebug has started leaving the box for moments at a time. She uses some of her time to get a cuddle or and some of it seems to be scouting out other locations for puppy keeping. She doesn’t attempt to move any puppies (I actually think if she found a spot she really wanted to move them, she’d tell me to do it.) She also spends some time digging in the floor. She doesn’t go outside long enough to dig there but she has made several test forays under the massage table. The digging is thankfully limited to when she has puppies, her Mama (will be 12 in November) will often dig up any textiles on the floor and in the last year has started just digging at the floor several times a day. I did have to close the crate so SDB couldn’t keep going in there to dig at the crate pan/bedding though. She doesn’t dig at the bedding in the whelping pool so it’s not a worry.
The puppies are more and more mobile but so far no one has come out of the pool. At this age, they really are only a risk for that if they climb over their mother and fall out but I can (and do) worry about everything.
Collars (that I put on yesterday) had to be loosened today so it’s not just a fig newton of my imagination that they are growing. In a few more weeks, we will be putting them in little lion trims.
They and their mother are trustworthy enough that I can theoretically sleep beside them instead of the MSU staying awake with them at night. Once again, I am searching for a comfortable way to accomplish that. I don’t really sleep beside them anyway. I cat nap beside them and do the puppy count numerous times during the night. If anything happens, it won’t be anything I can prevent.
I’m ready for some nice summer weather. It’s cool (not what I prefer) but still too humid to go without the a/c – especially for the MamaBug on the fleece with those little ones so nearby. I spend a lot of time bundled up like it’s the dead of winter but it’s not about me ;-) I’d like a few days without a storm, maybe even without rain. The grass needs cut and JillyBean doesn’t like to get her feet wet just to go out to walk the plank. I hope we don’t use up all of our stormy weather now and not have any for the babies when they are old enough to get more benefit from it.
The Mama’s caloric intake goes up today. She needs 3,841 calories per day now. Thank goodness for spreadsheets because it is a lot harder than you would think to make sure she gets the right number of calories. I am pretty accustomed to general feeding, I raise or lower the amounts according to the condition of the dog but our dams can nurse a LOT of weight off really quickly. At least I can do this amount with not a lot of carbs so her ear situation is ok. (She gets yeasty ears if she has a lot of carbs and when she is hormonal. I just need to keep them clean so we don’t have a repeat of the hematoma incident.)
She eats happily – and once today her feeding time didn’t coincide with any of the puppies’ so she ate outside of the pool. She’s pretty quick about it and I don’t have to coax her like I did with the Allyn TEN puppies and she needed 5, 100 during week 2. I am, however occasionally having to coax the Mama’s Mama to eat. She’s always had sort of a habit of waiting until the other dogs have finished before she starts hers. (I like to think she’s just being polite but it seems more that she likes to hoard hers so she can eat in front of them.) She seems to feel fine, I think she is just a wee bit spoiled/feeling neglected but I am feeding Jack and Jill every time SDB gets a meal so she may just not be hungry at every meal. Maybe I will just offer her a cookie at a couple of the meals and see if that helps.
Results of the one week weight watcher’s meeting:
Blue (aka Kodiak because he is apparently looking like a little bear) has doubled his birth weight.
TJJ (Green) (aka TJ2, and T2J) is now a 2 pounder
Pink (aka Chipmunk) and Turtle (Red) weigh 1.2 lbs. each (IF they would hold still it might be more accurate/precise to use the kitchen scale but that isn’t happening)
Tootsie Roll (Purple) weighs 1.4 lbs.
We have 7.6 lbs. of absolute adorableness now. At this rate, they’ll reach my birth weight very soon. I think they’ve already surpassed the MSU’s.
Sending virtual puppy breath to y’all.
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