April 18, 2016 Pupdate

Good morning, good morning the little dogs say! Everybody has eyes (they don't see vey well yet but they have all opened their eyes). Overnight it seems they have become tiny little dogs.  They already sleep with appendages sticking through the ex pen (it took what a day and a half) and some of them bark.  Additionally, (Wild) Phlox howled - more than once today.  One of the others howled with her in the pen shortly after she was put back, too.  It was absolutely adorable.

They've also starting mouthing things (they have no teeth whatsoever -- not even any I can feel under their gums yet).  There is a definite difference between how they mouth around when they are looking to nurse and this.  Trillium even likes to play with the blanky hanging over the back 'wall' of the pen.

Weight watchers went fairly well tonight, as long as we could keep Mila from being too involved.  The pupsters continue to gain weight nicely - 2 are arleady at 3.5 lbs, one is at 3/10th of an ounce shy of that and the other 3 are closing in on it.  Grow, grow, grow.

Tomorrow we will begin to add things to the pen.  At this point, they are going to be things easy to wash (I am NOT a fan of trying to wash poop off of those chickens and Mila doesn't like her chickens in the bucket of water) or well supervised.  It will mostly be thing they just stumble upon for now since the Mama is the only one feeding them and they are too little to tug ;-). I did add the alfalfa feed pellets to the potty area and when we can catch them, we put them in the right spot.  If we aren't fast enough on poop, we just try to stick a paper towel underneath to catch it so we don't have to get it off of the pads.  I might be able to get more than one day out of the sheet underneath the pads if we are vigilant.

Training continues in resting/relaxing when cuddling or being petted by a human.  Puppy Yoga is finished, on to new adventures (which continue to include clipping nails daily at least.  So far, I have not quicked any again.  I'm not certain about Tamara but she hasn't mentioned it if she did.)

I skipped my evening nap (I put away laundry and changed beds instead) in hopes of sleeping beside the puppies.  If I am not still awake at 4am , Tamara will sleep until her alarm goes off at 6 And I will go to bed for a few hours.  If I am, I will call and wake her up and I wil go to bed for hopefully, 6-7 hours. Normally, I get 8.5-9 but with puppies, I drop to 6 or less (when she was back home the most I got was 4.5 in any 24 hours period.  Too many puppy things to think about.  I need to stop thinking about it now because I'm starting to plan again and that's not conducive to rest.  MamaMila's nex meal is scheduled at 3 but I'm sure I can get her to make it earlier if I am ready to rest.  I'll get the ottobenbed into position so I'll be ready.  In the meantime, I'm going to do a little cleaning and a little puppy cuddling - not necessarily in that order.  Puppy breath to all, Nighty, Nighty, Nighty

April 17, 2016 Pupdate

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!