Oh Yeah, You Blend

The puppies had more visitors today: Riley’s people Nichole and Chris! They LOVE visitors! Chris wants to install a “wake up the puppies” button on the webcam, I told him he could do that at HIS house…

I was thinking about how many people the puppies have met so far, they’re at at least 18 people plus us! Not bad for less than six weeks.

They turn six weeks old on Sunday! Their second-last deworming while they are here…it’s gone so quickly this time! Their personalities are really coming out, although I remind myself how much change there was in the last ones between five weeks and the time they went home.

They are really noticeably building their muscles and stamina – they need more and more time to zoom around and spend less time sleeping (although they are still babies and do sleep a lot). They get straight kibble for one or two meals a day now, and I got them some sweet potato chews to try, they’ll get those tomorrow!

This morning I came in to ZERO accidents outside the turf potty! The bedding was completely dry! Yay puppies! They’re getting it!

They also each got a blueberry to try. Some snarfed it right up, others wanted to inspect it first. A certain girl with a brown collar swept in and stole her brother’s blueberry while he was inspecting it, so he had to get a replacement …

Since I posted about the routine back when the puppies were wee, I’ll tell you how things are done now:

• get up, let big dogs out
• clean up the worst of the puppy poop while they’re out
• take last night’s load of puppy bedding out of dryer and move the puppy bedding out of washer into dryer
• let big dogs in and let Nina in to puppy pen to feed them and satisfy herself that they all survived the night without her
• while Nina is nursing, measure out food into blender and big dogs’ bowls, add warm water to puppies’ food
• get big dogs’ breakfast ready (add fish oil, spoonful of tripe, etc.), add tripe to puppies’ food and blend it up (the blending is getting less and less now and soon they will be on straight kibble or Honest Kitchen)
• feed big dogs once Nina is done nursing and has been let out of pen
• feed puppies (I call them with “pup-pup-pup” when I feed them, so they start learning to come when called)
• let big dogs outside again, let puppies out to run around and play and eat Jim’s feet (Jim plays with them while I clean the pen, a tough job but someone’s got to do it)
• remove all bedding from puppy pen and replace it (there is underpadding of recycled hospital pads, and then towels and bathmats over that)
• remove turf and take into bathroom to wash, get last night’s turf which has been drying
• throw out pee pad underneath turf and wash pan, replace with fresh pee pad and clean turf
• remove underpad from turf area and replace with clean one
• when puppies are finished playing, each one gets an individual cuddle and its collar put back on, then they go back in the pen with any leftover breakfast
• start the washer with the dirty bedding
• have coffee, start webcam, get ready for work

And then that gets repeated at lunchtime (sometimes I just change the top bedding if it’s relatively clean), and dinnertime. Right now it’s about 2 hours of just puppy care per day, not counting playtime and enrichment activities like taking them outside, time spent clicker training, Dremeling nails, handling, teaching them to play with people, etc…THAT is the fun part!

The puppies now have a crate. Par for the course, they think it’s a chew toy…

They ate the first part of their lunch outside today, until I noticed that some wasps were also interested in tripe and puppy mush, so they finished their lunch indoors!

We happened to catch this moment of cuteness with Jim’s phone. Donnelly trying very hard to get his mum to play with him while she was busy nursing the others and cleaning up poopidue (that’s what’s left over after we clean up the poop for her!). He already has great ear biting skill!

They are ROWDY just now, running around in the box and wrestling!

You would not believe how squirmy five week old puppies can be… Connelly play bowed at the treats, Aniston tried to run off the table to see Jim…

Aniston

Aniston

Beals

Beals

Connelly

Connelly

Donnelly

Donnelly

Esposito

Esposito

How did this happen? They are five weeks old already!

Here are their weights as of this morning (they are guesstimates since they are too big for the scale and the numbers jump around):

• Aniston (yellow): 2190 grams or 4.83 pounds
• Beals (grey): 1630 grams or 3.59 pounds
• Connelly (blue): 1785 grams or 3.94 pounds
• Donnelly (orange): 1920 grams or 4.23 pounds
• Esposito (dark brown): 1930 grams or 4.25 pounds

They have gained an average of about 20% since last week. Their combined weight is 20.84 pounds, which means Nina is feeding more than her normal body weight (she is normally 19.5-20 pounds at her good agility weight) in puppy!

Individual pictures to follow, and the puppies will have more visitors today!

If you were watching the puppycam just now, you might have seen a certain little stinker puppy wearing a blue collar climb out…containment measures will need to be adjusted!

I knew it would be soon, but…

I just booked the puppies in for a litter swim at Canine Splash the day after they turn 7 weeks old (Monday the 24th)!

I hope this will be a great new experience for them to have before they leave for their new homes (sob). My adult Vallhunds love to swim, and I hope that getting the puppies some good water experience early might set them up to be the same way.

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!