Oh Yeah, You Blend

Circle of Puppies

Connelly’s tummy

As of today, their noises have started sounding more like dogs! I swear one barked today! And their markings are starting to show. Amazing how quickly they grow.

The puppies are one week old already!

Happy one week birthday!

Nina and the fab five – one week old!

Thank goodness for other breeders, like Diane Richardson of Frontier, who has been such a mentor to me over the last few years. She is a shining example of what ethical dog breeding is, and she has shared her contracts, her vast experience, and her breeding ideas with me so generously. I talked to Diane yesterday because I wanted to supplement little Connelly with some formula to give him a bit of a boost (he was fine, but up until yesterday he was the smallest, even behind Beals, who is little and female, and he was gaining slower than I like). Diane said she routinely feeds her puppies at least a small meal every day with formula, because it helps with bonding with people (they learn to associate humans with food, and food, especially at this young age, is the single most important thing in the world to them). I thought that made a lot of sense. I’d been trying to supplement Connelly, but wasn’t having much luck, I have good goats milk formula, but he just didn’t think it was food. Diane kindly shared her tips and tricks for bottle feeding puppies (I wasn’t going to tube feed, he is nursing just fine, and he is growing, I just thought he needed a bit extra). Here’s what I did thanks to Diane: heat the formula warmer (90-100 degrees, checked with a thermometer), add some evaporated milk and add a drop of Karo syrup. IT WORKED. I topped little Connelly off yesterday, and gave the others each a little taste, and Connelly gained significantly overnight (and his nursing seemed more vigorous when Nina was feeding him). I am only feeding him after Nina feeds him (since Nina milk is what is best for him), but getting even a few extra calories in seems to be helping!

The puppies also traveled in their warming box out into the family room and took turns being cuddled last night. They are really moving very well, they are going to need to go in a pen instead of the warming box in a day or two, since they are already trying to scale the sides!

Here are their weights today at one week of age as compared to their birth weights:

• Aniston: 573 grams (20.21 ounces or 1.26 pounds) today, at birth 340 grams (11.99 ounces), a gain of 68.53%
• Beals: 427 grams (15.06 ounces) today, at birth 280 grams (9.88 ounces), a gain of 52.5%
• Connelly: 429 grams (15.13 ounces) today, at birth 290 grams (10.23 ounces), a gain of 47.93%
• Donnelly: 503 grams (17.74 ounces) today, at birth 310 grams (10.93 ounces), a gain of 62.26%
• Esposito: 458 grams (16.16 ounces) today, at birth 280 grams (9.88 ounces), a gain of 63.57%

Their nails are far too soft to start Dremeling them yet (although that is the ultimate goal, I far prefer Dremeling to clipping, you get the nails shorter, they look neater, no sharp edges, and I think it’s far more comfortable for the dog once you’ve desensitized the dog to it, clippers can crush the quick, which is VERY uncomfortable), but their nails are NOT too soft to be sharp and scratchy for poor Nina! Since puppies knead their mother’s teats to help the milk flow, there is a lot of potential for scratches. So! Nail trim!

They were overall much less complainy about the first nail trim than I expected. I caught them at a mellow time just after they’d eaten, I sat them on my lap and let them nurse on my pinky finger as a pacifier, and I used baby nail nippers. Other than a bit of outraged squeaking at being woken up from their milk comas, they were excellent! Jim gets a lot of credit as he’s been diligently handling their feet every time he picks one up.

Aniston demonstrating excellent early adoption of the frogdog sleeping position

Connelly performing his shrimp impersonation

Sleepy puppy recreating his birth experience?

Aniston cuddling with his mum, PRE nail trim – look at how sharp they are!

Nina and the gang at 6 days of age. Look how big they are already!

We are closing in on a week! Everybody gained overnight, little spot chest boy Connelly is now the smallest, but is still gaining. It’s a beautiful cooler day here (cloudy, but at least not hot and humid!) so we have the windows open all over the house. So cute to see the little puppy noses twitching like mad at the new smells coming in from outside.

Nina got tripe with her breakfast this morning, how can something that smells so atrocious be something dogs love SOOOO much? Wait, never mind, dogs are gross… Nina is shedding, which is pretty normal from the stress of whelping and lactating, but the post-whelping/during nursing shed is nothing compared to the massive post-puppy shedpocalypse which will happen a couple of months from now, when she will look like she was attacked by a horde of moths and will have so little hair you can see her skin!

Lots of good active sleep happening, feet, legs, tails, whole bodies twitching! Donnelly is sleeping flat on his back as I type this and his little tail is wagging a mile a minute! It looks like he’s having the best dream ever, but it’s probably just his nervous system coming on line.

They are starting to build their little muscles, and they can already stand for a second or two on their front or back legs (not at the same time yet). They can trundle along like turbo-charged inchworms now, I am amazed at how quickly they can move!

Weights this morning are:

• Aniston 534 grams (18.84 ounces, OVER A POUND ALREADY!)
• Beals 390 grams (13.76 ounces)
• Connelly 389 grams (13.72 ounces)
• Donnelly 465 grams (16.40 ounces, ALSO OVER A POUND)
• Esposito 412 grams (14.53 ounces)

If you are watching on the puppycam, you will see that what goes around, comes around, and we are back to red.

The puppies have taken turns hanging out in my lap and watching the Olympic diving (well, listening, since their eyes aren’t open yet!). I am very happy with how quickly they seem to be adapting to changes, the ones who were squeaking like mad a day or two ago are now quite comfortable being cuddled. They like to snuggle right up into the crook of your neck. They also got to scrintch along on the carpet, a new surface for them! They also got sniffed by Rakki and Tish – Rakki thinks they might be monsters, Tish play bowed at them and tried to nose blatt them, she might think they’re playmates, or she might think they’re prey, hard to tell, but she was pretty gentle. For Tish. Nina seems to trust that we won’t let anything bad happen to the babies.

Beige! It’s the color of today! Dependable! Reliable! Solid! Absorbent! Clean! Grey was old, outdated (and dirty). (Other than their weights and their responses to handling, at this stage, they’re pretty boring. So there’s not always all that much to talk about except the excitement that is the color of the bedding)

Everyone gained overnight again, although a couple of them were quite complainy in the night. Spot chest boy Connelly gained the least, so he will get some unopposed nursing time today.

Day three of ritual abuse early neurological stimulation (AKA BIOSENSOR!!!) is done, most of them are very “meh, whatever” about everything except the upside down position and of course the cold towel (can’t say I blame them). It’s only five seconds puppies! And you call yourselves Marines?!

Here are individual puppy pictures of the guinea pigs baby otters puppies:

Aniston (large first-born male)

Aniston’s tummy

Beals (stub tailed girl)

Beals’s tummy

Connelly (male with spotted chest)

Connelly’s tummy (and spot!)

Donnelly (male with no white)

Donnelly’s tummy

Esposito (tailed girl)

Esposito’s tummy

That red towel was SO outdated, grey is the new red, it’s what everypuppy is sleeping on in Paris this year! I will do a picture tour of the excitement that is the whelping box a bit later, but if you are watching on the puppycam you can see there is an x-pen around part of the box, that is so I could drape a sheet over part of it to make a “cave” before she whelped. That weird-looking round thing in the electrical outlet is a DAP diffuser.

Everybody gained overnight, the biggest gainers were yesterday’s slowest gainers (stub girl Beals and chest spot boy Connelly), so that is all working out as it should! Beals sounded PISSED last night, so I turned on the light to make sure she wasn’t trapped anywhere, but no, she was telling off her (comparatively) enormous brother Aniston, who was trying to muscle her off the choice inguinal teat (those are the ones furthest to the rear). Nursing puppies have ridiculous amounts of suction power, plus she has tough little girl power, and she stood her ground and he eventually sloped off to find an unoccupied teat.

They are getting used to being handled quite nicely. Sometimes they squeak for a bit when you first pick them up, but less and less.

Day two of puppy abuse early neurological stimulation is done – biggest boy Aniston tried to GRAB the Q-tip when I was stimulating his foot. Nobody minds that exercise, nobody complains about the head up exercise, but NOBODY likes the head down exercise. A couple complain about the on the back exercise, and everybody has this moment when they first end up on the cold towel like “WHAT THE HELL!”.

They are really good at nursing now, with their days of experience, and when they are all nursing, they can really YANK on poor Nina, they look like a piston engine.

Clockwise from top: Connelly, Beals, Esposito

Weights this morning are:

• Aniston 452 grams (15.94 oz)
• Beals 312 grams (11.01 oz)
• Connelly 340 grams (11.99 oz)
• Donnelly 394 grams (13.90 oz)
• Esposito 333 grams (11.75 oz)