Alone Time
It is far too wet and rainy (YAY! We need rain!) for outside time today, so the puppies took turns spending time out of the box free in the house for their daily individual enrichment time. It’s good for them to learn to be away from their littermates and find their own feet a little bit. Nina is definitely getting serious about weaning them, she fed them one good meal this morning, but she has been keeping them away from nursing otherwise. Tish is learning about mothering, Nina was licking a puppy’s butt (ah, the glamor of motherhood!) and Tish was right in there studying and learning and helping…
Donnelly is the dish of the day
I fed them a mush meal this morning (ground kibble, canned tripe, warm water), but I gave them straight kibble for lunch. They are really interested in it and have managed to eat almost all of it. I don’t think they are ready for straight kibble for every meal at this point, so they’ll get Honest Kitchen or mush for dinner, but they are getting very close to being able to eat whatever the big dogs eat.
They are full of beans, pouncing and play bowing and wrestling and making ferocious puppy noises at each other. Rakki is tolerating them very well but he does NOT like it when they try to nurse on him, he grumbles at them and moves away exactly as a good boy should.
It is likely a matter of days before they escape from the box, so the second x-pen will have to go up around the box very soon. This morning also greeted me with the first true poop disaster of this litter…they’d considerately moved the bedding out of the way so they could grind it well into the linoleum underneath…it was a 40 minute clean-up job, and this will only get worse. They are using the turf really well for urine, but they haven’t quite 100% got on board with using it for poop. People ask me all the time how I can stand to let them go at the end of 8 weeks…it’s the poop that does it!