It was a pretty preaceful night in the puppy pen. The MamaMila stays in with the puppies all night - I can get her to come out for hte 3am feeding but she spends all night in with them. I'm not certain why because she comes out more during the daytime. She's the Mama so she can pretty well do what she wants (except dig up the bedding in the puppy area. I am too much acclimated to the night shift with them and didn't even begin to get sleepy until 4:30. I did eventually sleep beside them for a few hours.
We have 4 puppies with their eyes definitely open. They don't see well (I wonder how much they see in comparison with me) but it will improve. The other 2 have a good start on eyes so will probably be another day or 2. I'm sure Tamara will be able to report on them better than I can.
Tamara came back this afternoon. As we like it for all of our dogs, Mila was very happy to see her but she didn't seem to miss her when she was gone. It takes some effort to keep the dogs in that frame of mind (playdates/sleepovers with other people, leaving them home with and without the other dogs on occasion, etc) but it is SO much easier ont he dogs in the event they need to be without their humans. Speaking of which, Grandma SDB is at Colleen and HER Jeremy's house for the weekend to play and romp. 2 of her sons live there and they play agility with her in addition to walks. She wasn't doing too much for the puppies at this age and Mila is pretty well settled in so SDB is having a mini-break before she needs to help with rearing the puppies. As with Tamara and Mila, I miss her more than she misses me but that's better for the dog. She'll be happy to see me when she comes home so it's all good.
There are now pictures (a LOT of them from the 2 week photo shoot, someone may thin them down but maybe not) on the Mila Griffin Puppies Facebook page. Now that their eyes are opening, they are going to be doing even more adorable things. It's always exciting. I'm starting puppy brainwashing tomorrow. I already set up the potty area, tomorrow I'll add the alfalfa feed pellets so they get used to going on the scent of grass. Since they are PWD puppies, I use the feed in the potty area because they WILL eat some on occasion and I won't have to worry about it being bad for them, That will wait for them to get teeth though.
Mila is eating well, thankfully because we are up to needing 4,500 calories per day. (Not as bad as when her Mama was feeding her and 9 littermates and needed over 6,000 a day - we were shoving food at her round the clock). According to my spreadsheet (hey, when I had vision, I was a CPA - I like spreadsheets), she is meeting her daily goals. ;-)
Speaking of eating well, every puppy is now over 3 lbs. The weight watchers meeting was a little challenging - especially since MamaMila (does that give anyone else an earworm of the Abba song?) wanted to 'help' but it was much easier with 2 of us and some patience. The total cumulative increase is impressive as are the individual ones (I wasn't kidding about the spreadsheets. I did however give up on trying to figure out how to use Numbers on my ipad and went back to Excel on my laptop. I may need to attempt to learn it when I am not busy with puppies AND sleep deprived). Maybe I'll make a graph for y'all (contain your excitement, I may not get to it).
We've had gorgeous weather, that also makes me excited for when the pupsters are ready to go outside. Puppies are exciting, adorable and sweet, even if they are a LOT of work to make sure they get the best possible start in life. I'm going to get a few cuddles before I feed the big dogs (I may try to move her back to the previous schedule since I wont' be doing it on my own every day now but only if she can still eat enough). Puppy breath to all, Nighty, Nighty, Nighty!
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