It’s been an adventure already! Carmela is settling in to motherhood very nicely. She is very clear about exactly who is THE Mama. She’s ok with us looking at them and touching them but is not on board with us taking them out of the pool.
As you can imagine this makes holding our weight watchers meetings more difficult. It’s already fun trying to weigh wriggly puppies when one has to wait for the talking scale to get around to telling the weight but with her ‘helping,’ it’s quite difficult. It’s a combination of her wanting her puppy back where it belongs and being nosy. (I weighed a spoon and she was checking to see what was going on with that but wasn’t insistent on taking it)
She is eating well and has a pretty good handle on feeding and cleaning the puppies (whether they like it or not.). I’m glad she’s cleaning them up and I’ll let her take care of that as long as she chooses. I do NOT let her give me kisses right now though.
While we were gone, a Dalmatian appeared on the cameras going all around the house whining at the doors. It was very cold so I worried about her but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I thought I heard her Monday night but it was dark so I didn’t go searching. This morning, when the MSU was on puppy duty after my nap, I went looking for her. She was hanging out up by the pond and was VERY hungry. I fed her, gave her some bedding in her chosen spot and more in one of the crates up there that I also covered because it was quite cold and getting colder. I also took pictures and videos and enlisted one of our neighbors to help find her people. She was wearing a collar but I wasn’t sure she was going to let me check the tag (tirns out she ‘smiles’ but I wasn’t sure she wasn’t snarling although she did also wag her tail) so I gave her a little while to decide if she wanted to go into the crate. The MSU got the number on her tag and determined she wasn’t snarling so I also took the fleece dog coat I bought many years ago for Jack (he wore it once and was obviously too hot in it so it wasn’t worn) and put it on her (she was skin and bones and it is cold so I needed her to have more than the blankets and bedding)
Her dad found out through the facebook postings about the time the mom got the messages we’d left on her phone and they came to get her. She was obviously in pain from her injury (she must’ve been hit by a car because she was going down the driveway fine Monday morning but came back up limping not very much later) so I helped her walk a little supporting her rear and then I just carried her down the driveway to meet them.
The MSU hung out with the puppies and Carmela during that and I took back over after I changed clothes and washed any potential germs away. The puppies tooj it all in stride although Carmela is quick to jump up and greet us any time we come back into the room. We are trying to convince her that we’ll come to her and she’s waiting for us on occasion now.
She’s also started the digging phase but only wants to dig in the pool, the couch or the chair. None of those are really ideal for us but we’re working on alternatives that suit all of us.
The puppies attended their first dog training club meeting with me via Zoom and were mostly well behaved. They did some singing and lip smacking but not too much squalling.
I’m still rearranging the rubber room nursery. Having been sidetracked somewhat by the new ankle, I didn’t get everything set up before hand. Plus, it’s been 4 years since we’ve had puppies and there have been some additions to the room. I’m still working on getting the waves out of the blue vinyl coin flooring but I have a while before the puppies start escaping from the pool!
Nighty, nighty nighty while we work on sharing puppy breath on cue
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