Oh Yeah, You Blend

They celebrated by getting their nails Dremeled for the first time. Baby food was the reward. They mostly complained about having to hold still, none of them seemed to care about the actual Dremeling.

They’re eating a bit better but still prefer mum. I’m starting to keep her away for periods of time so they’ll be hungrier and eat more. I don’t normally do this but Zhora can only keep up with so much demand and they’re BIG and HUNGRY. They drain her in a very short amount of time now. I’m adding Answers raw goat milk to their kibble/mousse/tripe mush and they seem to really like it.

I think they liked the baby food enough that I can use it to at least charge the clicker, I’m champing at the bit to start clicker training but with them not really caring that much about food, it’s been impossible.

They visited with Sue on Tuesday and had a wonderful time. They got dried duck feet as their enrichment item on Tuesday, yesterday it was a different toy, and today it was various different chew things suggested by Megan (who works at Pet Supplies Plus).

Yesterday we separated them from each other and the other dogs for 2 1/2 hours so that we could do their cheek swabs for the Animal Health Trust DNA test for retinopathy. Again, caution is the key here, remember that there is a LOT we don’t know about the retinopathy, almost no dogs go blind if they have it, and dogs who are genetically “affected” can still have normal eye tests (Nina is one of these, she had yet another normal eye test this year at the age of 10). But still, I think it’s important to test and know what you have, so I opted to test this litter instead of doing eye examinations. They were surprisingly (or not) wonderful for this – just some fussing but mostly they just snoozed. I was very impressed considering they’ve only been apart for considerably shorter periods. They did NOT like the swabs, poor babies. Their soft little mouths must be so tender. But it’s for a good cause.

They are definitely baby dogs now, they’re looking very attractive and they’re so outgoing and so BITEY….oh lordy they’re bitey…sitting in the puppy hot tub is an exercise in trying not to be eaten alive too badly just now. They definitely tell each other off for biting too hard, and they’re NAUGHTY – part of the problem with all this enrichment is that everything is something to be explored and experimented with and dragged around, including the potty patch (not mentioning any names…RUFFLES), the litter box (not mentioning any names ORSON AND POPCORN), the TOWEL THEIR WATER BOWL IS ON….not mentioning any names CHEX! Frito is a perfect angel except when he tried to pull my sock off and run away with it….poor Zhora can’t be enjoying nursing them. I keep waiting for her to kick them to the curb but she’s still gamely in there feeding them of her own volition. Definitely going to start pushing the food though.

Weigh in:

Ruffles – 3.7 lbs/1680 grams (birth weight 216 grams)

Orson – 4.5 lbs/2050 grams (birth weight 189 grams)

Chex – 4.2 lbs/1892 grams (birth weight 180 grams)

Frito – 3.8 lbs/1720 grams (birth weight 179 grams)

Popcorn – 2.7 lbs/1247 grams (birth weight 158 grams)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2017 at 4:35 PM and is filed under breeding, C litter, dogs, puppies, vallhunds, Zhora. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.