12 Days Old – No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
The prize – a real WALK!
The price – a bath (undercarriage and feet, just to be safe).
That’s the face of a Zhora who gladly paid that price for that prize!
(And yeah, her four meals a day plus treats are free, she eats like a Hobbit right now….breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, bedtime snack…)
The puppies make all kinds of cute noises now – still the high pitched squeaks and squeals they’ve made since birth, but now also buzzing noises like tiny growls, and louder almost-barks. You can definitely tell when one of them is annoyed that another one is trying to muscle in on their teat when they’re feeding, they make a crabby squealing/whining noise. Since there are only five of them and Zhora has eight teats, there’s plenty of food to go around.
Last night we noticed that some of them are already almost standing on all four feet- that should gradually increase over the next few days and they will start sort-of walking (toddling) instead of walrusing (pulling themselves along with their front legs and pushing with their back legs). And we should start seeing their eyes open any day now. The puppycam time will reduce for a while when their eyes start opening, since I usually limit the lighting for the first several days after their eyes open.
Weight check:
Ruffles – 723 grams (7.9 % gain)
Orson – 800 grams !! (6.24% gain)
Chex – 772 grams (5.6% gain, but he was the big gainer yesterday)
Frito – 675 grams (13.45% gain, yowza!)
Popcorn – 461 grams (12.17% gain)
The two littles did the most gaining, but everybody is nicely in the right zone for gains (ideal ballpark is 5-10% per day average).
Oh, and I weigh them in grams for 2 reasons – one is that it’s easier to track small changes in grams rather than ounces. The other is that I’m originally Canadian, and my mentor and dear friend Ulla Gamberg at Vastgota Swedish Vallhunds (in Canada) always weighs in grams and so when we talk about puppies it’s more useful to know their weight in grams, plus all the learning I’ve done from her involves grams.