They change SO QUICKLY now! Just as of today they are able to see well enough to really interact, play bitey face, walrus over to see new fuzzy shapes like my hand in the box. They’ve been trying to move away from the sleeping area to urinate and defecate to some extent, so today I added a litter pan even though they really won’t be able to use it yet. They’re getting better at almost-walking. They’re basically drunk toddlers right now, moving in slow motion.
Today was the last day of Early Neurological Stimulation already! It’s always like this: the first two weeks you worry about keeping them alive, but they’re really just fuzzy jellybeans, then all of a sudden they’re puppies!
So last night Jim noticed that Orange Girl had a watery eye (her eyes aren’t open yet), and this morning her left eye was crusty. Because her eyes aren’t open yet, if she has an infection it has nowhere to go and you can end up with a problem, so I emailed my awesome repro vet and tech for help. They said if I wanted to pry the eye open I could probably treat it myself with help from my boss (I work at an animal hospital), but I said nope, I’m happy to pay you guys to do it! It’s her eye and I dont mess around when it comes to eyes, they only have two!
So today I bundled OG and her sister Red Girl into a little crate full of bedding and two SnuggleSafe discs (microwaveable heating discs), covered it with a towel, warmed up the car, and off we went to the vet. Dr Gray pried her eyelid open with saline and cotton swabs, flushed her eye and examined it. She says it all looks normal, eye, eyelids, etc all appear normal and healthy, and sometimes it’s just that they have normal discharge that gets trapped. But we have some ointment to use for the next few days just to be on the safe side.
Mr Pink is first to have eyes! A couple of others look like they will open their eyes in a day or two, but he’s first:
Soon the super fun “Mr Magoo” stage will start. We’re also checking a couple of times a day to see if they can hear yet. One of the most important things I learned from Puppy Culture is that there’s a period of about a week when puppies have a startle reflex to sound, but don’t have a fear response yet, If you can trigger that startle reflex several times during that period, the puppy may grow up to be less sound sensitive. Anything you can do to help a puppy have a better life is worth doing!
Now that they are quite mobile, I have added a little bumper mat as a bed for them. It’s also something novel in their environment!
From days 3-16 I perform Early Neurological Stimulation on my litters. This is a “can’t hurt/might help” thing, since they get a lot of handling anyway, but I’d always rather err on the side of having done something than wish I’d done it later. Orange Girl didn’t start until day 5, because I felt she had enough stress just gaining some weight.
There are five exercises designed to stress specific things and hopefully help the puppy develop a more robust response to stress as an adult. It’s like astronaut training for puppies, although we usually call it their ritual abuse. Tactile stimulation (a Q-tip on the pads), vertical position (head up), head pointed down, on the back, thermal stress (a damp towel that’s been in the fridge).
I increased Alice’s food again, as you can see, she’s putting everything she has into making amazing milk for them, they’re enormous! Several of them have almost stood up, and they should have eyes and ears over the next few days. They are quite vocal and make lots of adorable sounds.
And here’s a puppy talking to itself in the wee hours, volume up (one of the many reasons sleep for me is overrated!):
Orange Girl is caught up now, she’s big enough that you can’t immediately pick her out of the group. Alice went for her first walk today since they were born. We’re continuing Early Neurological Stimulation. Their vocalizations have expanded, until the last day or so all their sounds basically boiled down to “help I’m stuck” and “damn this milk is tasty”. Now they make a wider range of sounds, including what sound suspiciously like proto-barks.
The PuppyCam will hopefully be up and running tomorrow!
Lots of eating and sleeping around here. The puppies too.
Orange Girl is doing great, I haven’t supplemented her in two days, and I also stopped giving her private nursing sessions, I just keep an eye to be sure she’s getting her share, but she’s really looking plump and good!
I weigh puppies twice a day for the first couple of weeks. It’s “noisy data” as Jim says, so you get the overall trend much more clearly with more information. Ideally you want an average of a 10% gain every day, the average and the trend are more important than the single details.
Here are this evening’s weights and trends:
Red girl: 283 grams (16.94 % gain)
Orange girl: 150 grams (!!!!!!) (20.97% gain – I can’t even tell you how much this makes me happy, and this is WITHOUT supplementation, just with some private nursing time)
Yellow girl: 208 grams (7.77% gain, but she had a 12.21% gain yesterday)
Green boy: 297 grams (16.93% gain)
Blue girl: 281 grams (17.08% gain)
Purple girl: 311 grams (CHONKETTE 13.50 % gain)
Pink boy (AKA Mr Pink): 286 grams (13.49% increase)
Alice makes very good milk, and I supplement her with mother’s porridge, which is steel cut oats, whole milk, Karo syrup, eggs, and whole milk yoghurt. She is being an excellent mother.
Finally, here’s a cool video of “activated sleep”. Baby puppies pop like popcorn in their sleep as their muscles and nervous systems come on line (you can see little Orange underneath Purple here, and you can see that she is really filling out and developing a bit of pudge, everyone else turned into beanbags quickly, while Orange looked like she was at lean agility weight until today!):
Tiniest puppy Orange Girl finally made back her birth weight plus a gram. I didn’t tube feed her yesterday because she was holding her own, and she not only held her own overnight, she gained a gram!
She’s energetic and feisty, just tiny.
Here are biggest puppy Purple Girl and smallest puppy Orange Girl at the milk bar this morning:
