Oh Yeah, You Blend

They’re 13 days old and some exciting developments! Several of them have eyes, Popcorn (just like Demi, who was the smallest in the A litter) is the first to have two eyes almost all the way open, but they all have at least squinty openings. AND! Popcorn, Frito and Orson have all been seen STANDING UP on all four legs!

Frito standing up (sort of)!

Popcorn eyeballs!

The Fab Five 13 days old

Ruffles in a milk coma

Popcorn has eyes!

Ruffles

Orson

Chex

Frito

I wanted to take a moment to get on a soapbox, please feel free to stop reading if that bothers you. A throwaway comment by a client at work yesterday cut deep. She said, when she found out that I had a litter of puppies that I (dared to) breed ON PURPOSE, that I must be “in it for the money”. I am SO tired of the hateful, brainwashed rhetoric out there against breeders. Are there bad breeders? Sure. But most of us do this to preserve our breed, to produce dogs with predictable temperament, appearance, health and tendencies. And the shitty breeders out there should not be the standard by which all should be judged (not that it’s anyone’s business to judge me anyway).

If you do it right, you’re lucky if you break even. Purebred dogs are pieces of history. I’ve had rescue dogs, I think rescue is a wonderful and noble thing. But it is NOT the only way to ethically obtain a dog, and I am sick to death of hearing “adopt don’t shop” and that sort of shit. Dogs end up in shelters overwhelmingly because their OWNERS give them up.

I breed very, very rarely (the last litter I bred was the one in which the now-5 year old mother of THIS litter was born). I do NOTHING else when I have a litter of puppies, I lose money on missing time at work to care for them. I put a TON of work into my puppies, from training, testing and trialing the mother, to researching pedigrees, to breeding the litter, to not sleeping for 72 hours trying to keep a puppy alive, to clicker training, socializing, enriching and stimulating them in the hopes of setting them up to have the best possible lives. I screen homes carefully and agonize over that. I care about every single one of my puppies, I take responsibility for them for their entire lives, and I love each and every one of them. And this litter especially….I won’t even come CLOSE to breaking even on, this litter had cost me thousands of dollars (stud fee, progesterone testing, shipping semen, artificial insemination, ultrasound) before I had a single puppy on the ground, because the first litter was resorbed. And now that I have five beautiful puppies, they cost me thousands MORE to get them here (consult with a specialist, driving to pick up the stud, housing him for nearly 6 months then driving him back, progesterone testing, ultrasounds, more consults, medication, emergency cesarean section to save the last puppy (that surgery alone was one puppy’s purchase price), vet care and medication for Zhora afterwards when she was sick, special food, special feeding supplies, subcutaneous fluids and supplements for Popcorn to keep her alive until she could make it on her own, etc. etc. etc.) and that’s all WITHOUT taking my time into account, or the expenses yet to come. I don’t dare add it up. I assure you, it’s not about the money, that’s just laughable. It’s about love for this breed and these dogs. My dogs sleep on my bed and snooze on the couch, they want for nothing, they are beloved pets first and foremost.

So think what you want, but I would suggest that if you blithely wander around spewing hateful things about breeders, you’re truly ignorant of what ethical breeders do, and why they do it, and it might benefit you to learn a bit before you parrot the rhetoric.

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.

The puppies’ lives right now consist mainly of eating and sleeping (must be nice!). And activated sleep, where they pop and jump and twitch and build muscles and their nervous system.

Zhora doesn’t make skim milk, they are all fat and plush.

Weigh in:

Ruffles – 670 grams ( 5.5% gain)

Orson – 753 grams (11.9% gain)

Chex – 731 grams (13.5% gain)

Frito – 595 grams (7 % gain)

Popcorn – 411 grams (8% gain)

The puppies are 10 days old already! Today they took turns coming out and sitting on our laps to watch (sort of, they can’t see or hear yet) Formula 1 racing. Everybody settled in and snoozed (it wasn’t a very exciting race I guess), got sniffed by their grandma Nina and aunt Tish, and decided that being away from their littermates was a-ok.

Brought to you by the letter E

Yesterday Caroline came to visit them and Friday Nicole came. I am a big believer in the value of socializing early and often. Sensible safety precautions (shoes left at door, clean clothes, washed hands, nobody who’s been around a sick dog) are important, but the benefits of socialization are well-documented (and the potential harm of lack of socialization are well-documented too). As Ian Dunbar says, far more dogs die from the behavioral consequences of lack of early socialization than ever die from disease. The true socialization window hasn’t opened for these puppies yet (it starts around 3 weeks), but I do think they really benefit from smelling new smells and feeling new hands even at this young age. Can’t hurt, might help. Zhora is a wonderful mum and keeps a close watch, but she doesn’t seem worried at all (the only people coming this early are people she already knows and likes, we don’t want to stress her).

Orson and Popcorn use Chex as a pillow

Weight check:

Ruffles – 635 g (birth 216)

Orson – 673 g (birth 189)

Chex – 644 g (birth 180)

Frito – 556 g (birth 179)

Popcorn – 380 g (birth 158)

The big gainers were Chex (who’d actually lost a little yesterday at weigh in so I was pleased about that) and Popcorn. Everybody else gained 4% and change, Chex gained a whopping 19% and Popcorn just under 14%. And Popcorn only had one feeding yesterday and it was a true top up (she didn’t even get a full feeding), so I am VERY pleased to see how much she gained almost all on her own from nursing!

So Zhora’s currently rather….better endowed underneath than usual. This has meant that she on occasion scrapes her tender underparts on the box as she jumps in and out. Since her poor undercarriage is taking a bit of a beating from nursing and kneading and scratchy puppy claws (even though I am keeping them clipped), I thought it might be a good idea to make it a bit easier for her to get in and out so:

Behold the Edisonian innovation that is an upturned Rubbermaid container with a bathmat on top. It’s actually the warming box for the puppies where I put them when cleaning out the whelping box or doing their early neurological stimulation. But it’s UPSIDE DOWN and has a BATHMAT on top for traction. So I may patent it.

Either way, Zhora can get in and out more easily now, although I did have to actually get her to jump on and off a few times, because her initial reaction was to try and jump OVER it…

Weight check:

Ruffles – 542 grams (birth weight 216 grams)

Orson – 577 grams (birth weight 189 grams)

Chex – 542 grams (birth weight 180 grams)

Frito – 482 grams (birth weight 179 grams)

Popcorn – 309 grams (YEAH SHE BROKE THE 300 gram MARK! – birth weight 158 grams)

Top-Bottom: Chex, Frito (L), Orson (R), Ruffles, Popcorn

The puppies turned one week old today! Zhora’s still battling a bit of loose poop and the puppies have a bit of it too. I am going to start her on slippery elm, which is safe for lactating mothers and should help both her and the babies.

I was just writing some information on the puppycam chat that I thought might be worth sharing here too (I use this blog for my own records as well as a way to communicate with all y’all!):

Most folks will tell you that baby puppies need it to be very warm. Some recommend keeping the room they’re in at 90 degrees. While I definitely think that until they’re about 24 hours old or so (and might still be damp or being licked constantly by a new mother) they benefit from a lot of warmth, in my experience Vallhund puppies and moms are much more comfortable when it’s cooler.

It’s been unseasonably hot here until last night. The temperature in the whelping box (I have a remote temperature sensor in there so I can keep an eye on things) has been 79-81 for the last week. And the puppies, if you’ve been watching the cam, have been as far apart as they can possibly get, and have almost NEVER been on the heating pad (which is in one corner, you should never heat the whole box as young puppies cannot regulate their body temperatures and must move themselves towards and away from heat to maintain their temperature). In fact, the litter Tish was born in was born in January and even in a Buffalo winter those puppies never used the supplemental heat source (I had a heat lamp for the first day and Nina couldn’t stand being in the box because she was too hot – it’s also not recommended to use a heat lamp because it’s very drying and can predispose puppies to dehydration).

I use a heating pad with an “always on” setting, set to level 3, underneath the bedding in one corner of the box. The puppies are almost never on the pad.

Puppies at a comfortable temperature are usually in a loose pile, touching each other but not jammed together. Over the last week, I could tell they were warmer than they wanted to be because they were very spread out and almost never more than two together in the same spot.

The temperature in the box today is 73-75 degrees and the puppies seem just about perfect, they’re in loose piles, not on the heating pad and not jammed together.

Vallhunds like it cool!

Sisters. Popcorn & Ruffles

Top-Bottom: Chex, Frito (L) & Orson (R), Ruffles, Popcorn

Since it’s a lovely warm day (and supposed to cool off significantly tonight), we took the puppies out one by one to let them sniff the whole new world of smells outside (they can’t see or hear yet, but they can smell!). This is always one of my favorite puppy things, because you can see the moment when they realize they’re smelling all kinds of things they’ve never smelled before (not that it’s difficult to have all kinds of new things when you’ve only been out in the world for 6 days!).

I managed to video Ruffles expanding her world, and you can really see, towards the end of the video, her taking in big sniffs of the new smells:

So I tried an experiment yesterday, I didn’t supplement Popcorn at all, and not only did she maintain, she even GAINED a little all on her own! I am so happy about that! I did supplement her today (as I will  start supplementing everyone, not so much for the nutrition, but for the bonding, learning early on to associate people with good things).

So here’s a video of Popcorn sponge feeding. What you do is this:

• use a cosmetics sponge which is latex free and made in North America
• cut the narrow end of the sponge into a size approximating the mother’s nipple
• cut an x shape into the wide end, big enough to insert an oral syringe
• rinse the sponge out well with water and then squeeze all the water out (I squeeze it in a paper towel to get as much water out as possible)
• saturate the sponge with warmed formula (I use home-made Myra’s formula, which is a balanced and calorie dense one)
• fill an oral syringe with the amount you’re feeding (roughly 1 cc per ounce of puppy weight every 4 hours or so for full feedings, I did less because I was just supplementing)
• I found that getting a bit of formula on the puppy’s mouth to start makes them interested in it (Popcorn has been doing this a few times a day for several days so she is a pro and knows what’s coming)
• I don’t hold it in once she’s latched on, I have my hand beside her to support her but she can spit the sponge out any time she wants to (spoiler alert: she doesn’t want to)
• insert the oral syringe in the wide end of the sponge (opposite the puppy) and gradually depress the plunger to keep the sponge saturated but not dripping
• watch carefully to make sure that formula doesn’t go up her nose!
• she has her front end up on a Snuggle Safe – partly so she doesn’t get chilled, and partly to elevate her front end, she is old enough that she is pretty skilled at nursing and not aspirating, but you want to be careful especially if the puppy is weak or compromised. When I first started feeding her like this I held the sponge higher up so she was at more of a 45 degree angle, now she’s fine to have it at whatever angle she prefers – I am just holding the sponge, she is deciding where it sits
• you will see her pawing at the sponge and my fingers, what she’s doing is kneading (like cats do) – puppies knead their mother’s teats to help the milk let down, and it’s an instinctive response when nursing (plus it’s pretty cute)
• At the end I gently squeeze the sponge to get the last of the formula into the puppy, she’d just nursed so she wasn’t starving (although she can always eat!), if she’s really hungry, she gets annoyed when I try to take the sponge away and squeaks
• Vallhund puppies look like otters wearing opera gloves

The C litter are five days old and everybody is doing great! Zhora is being an incredible mother, just as her mother was. You have to love a dog who is an excellent mother. The puppies had their first nail trim on Sunday because they were scratching her, poor thing, but even then she was still caring for them, but I noticed she wasn’t snuggling as much, and sure enough, she had little scratches. The funny thing is that Zhora has always taken a rather…laid back approach to her own personal care (she is so icky when she’s in season), but she has kept her puppies immaculately clean. She potties them religiously and there’s never even a drop of urine or poop in the box, but her own lochia (normal post-whelping vaginal discharge)…well that’s my job to clean up. But the puppies are always spotless.

Weights today are:

Ruffles – 410 grams (13% gain since yesterday morning!)

Orson – 444 grams (10 % gain)

Chex – 380 grams ( 15 % gain)

Frito – 364 grams (18 % gain)

Popcorn – 226 grams (21.5% gain), and that’s without ANY supplementation so far today!

As you can see, Popcorn is the big winner here! Everybody gained nicely, but I really feel like maybe she’s got ahead of her setback now! She’s feisty and active and LOVES her sponge feedings, she gets a nice little “pit” in her cheeks that shows she has a good latch and is nursing hard, she kneads my fingers with her little front feet, and she gets quite annoyed when it’s over, squeaking and complaining and not wanting to let go, even though her little tummy is obviously full! We will try to video a sponge feeding so you can see what I’m talking about. Since I will start feeding everyone one meal a day this way to help with bonding, they’ll be having this regularly.

Here’s my Deep Thoughts for today (I actually got a chunk of uninterrupted sleep last night for the first time in nearly a week, I’ve been averaging 3.5 hours a night per my Fitbit so a decent sleep is huge and my brain feels somewhat functional again): the more experience I get, the less I try to judge others. Because what’s right for me isn’t right for everyone. Now many breeders simply don’t supplement the teeny tiny puppies, and the truth is that most of them (in this breed anyway) really will pull through even if it takes them a while. There’s NOTHING wrong with that. My own view, what works for me, is that especially in a case like Popcorn’s, where it seemed to me that she had several things working against her (recap below), I felt that any extra care I could give her that might help her make it, was warranted. I brought this puppy into the world, she’s my responsibility until the day she dies, and I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know I did all I could for her. Many breeders feel you need to let puppies sink or swim on their own, and that is certainly a valid opinion.

What I Think Happened With Popcorn:

• she had a poor spot in the uterus so she was small at birth (much of the time when people use the word “runt”, what they are really talking about is a puppy who didn’t get a uterine implantation spot with ideal blood supply, these puppies don’t have anything genetically or congenitally wrong with them, they just tend to be smaller than their littermates who had better spots to gestate in). Is she the smallest Vallhund puppy I know of? No, but she’s close!
• she was in there for several hours waiting to be born, when we checked her heart rate when we first arrived at the vet clinic, it was over 200, which is normal (I was actually worried she might be dead already, but she wasn’t!), but after unsuccessfully trying to get her out medically and manually, it started dropping and so we decided to go to surgery
• As it turned out, her neighbor puppy’s placenta hadn’t been expelled (the three boys all came within half an hour, and Zhora was grabbing and eating the placentas so fast I wasn’t sure if we had all of them out, and we didn’t), which was blocking her from being born – she was very high up in one horn so had a long distance to travel to the exit, and she hadn’t even been able to start making her way down, because Zhora was pushing against a stuck placenta roadblock
• her sac had ruptured, so she had very little lubrication to ease her movement, and she was so high up there’s no way we could have got lubrication up to her
• Zhora was tiring – she’d been pushing for nearly 6 hours, and in stage 2 (active) labor for nearly 8 hours by the time we went to surgery. This was not because Zhora “couldn’t” whelp her naturally (she free whelped the other 4 just fine), but because there was a mechanical blockage stopping her from getting Popcorn out
• so in addition to having a very hard time being born, when she finally WAS out, she’d had a dose of anesthetic (very small, Dr Gray, Renee and the other techs did an awesome job), and when you’ve never taken a breath in your life and then get anesthetic, it is that much harder to get going
• Dr Gray helped us make sure she nursed as soon as she and Zhora were awake enough, so that she got colostrum – which is VITALLY important
• So all those things conspired to set her back, but she’s a fighter! And because she wasn’t giving up, I wasn’t either so:
• she was dehydrated, so I gave subcutaneous, warmed, sterile fluids (Lactated Ringers if you’re interested), via a scalp vein catheter (this is a “butterfly” catheter, with a very small needle, and easier to manage with a teeny tiny puppy than a needle directly attached to a syringe)
• she was expending most of the calories she was taking in by nursing, and she wasn’t gaining any weight at all for the first couple of days, which was making me nervous (it’s normal for them to lose on the first day, but then they should start gaining), so I tube fed her two to three times a day for a few days (tube feeding means the puppy gets the formula directly into her stomach by way of a tiny tube you pass through their mouth – they don’t like it, but it’s extremely effective and very safe if done properly). We’ve now switched to sponge feeding and I am going to try feeding her just one meal today and see how her weight does.
• we also placed her on the nipples which had the most milk and the easiest milk letdown (these are usually the inguinal teats, closest to the mother’s back legs)
• I gave her liver water and Nutri Drops
• we tried to strike a balance between allowing her to be a normal puppy of this age, having to push through her siblings to get to the milk bar, having to defend her spot at the milk bar, nursing naturally as much as she wanted to etc. (all of which are important for her mental and physical development) and making sure she got the most calories into her possible (which is important for her survival!) with supplemental feedings and moving her to the “choice” nipples
• I won’t say she’s out of the woods, but I think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel (mixed metaphors for the win)
• I haven’t started Early Neurological Stimulation with her yet, but if she continues to gain, I will likely start it tomorrow