Oh Yeah, You Blend

We had a small puppy socialization party today, everyone was very cooperative and washed their hands carefully before meeting the puppies, and left their shoes and coats at the door.  The puppies met eight new people today, including two children and a baby!  Thanks to everyone for coming!

Puppy party!

'Sup?

Jim with Lefty

A present!

Nina was a good mum, keeping a close eye on things, but she didn’t seem overly worried or stressed.  She got lots of extra goodies as well.  I was worried she might be stressed about strangers handling the babies, and I was ready to put her in her crate upstairs with a good chewie, but while she was very watchful, I thought she handled it very well.  It helps that she likes people so much.  She was even wagging her nub at people when they were saying goodbye to her (and she has to be VERY excited to wag her nub, it’s not really much of a tail at all).

The puppies are one month old today!  They had their second deworming and got their nails Dremeled for the first time.  I was very impressed with how they handled it, they didn’t exactly like it, but they all waited to see if they didn’t like it first, instead of complaining about it right away.  They put up with it very well.

Nina started actually playing with them this morning!  She’d push one gently with her nose, and then it would come back at her with front paws waving.  Adorable.  I hope I can get some play on camera.  Yay Nina, such a good mum!

The puppies are spending some time each morning in the playpen. I’ll tell you that sitting in there with puppies crawling all over you is just about the best thing in the world, you can’t feel sad or angry when you have puppies licking your legs and biting your feet.

Ah yes…biting…they have their baby teeth coming in, including FANGS. Which means that the piranha days are just around the corner. Stepping into a pen full of five-six week old puppies is like stepping into a shark tank at feeding time, you think you’re going to get shorter as they eat you alive from the feet up. Poor, poor Nina…she is such a good mum, with those sharp little nibblers on her!

Another nail trim today, everyone was very good, even when I quicked one, it was just a quick “BEEP” and then relaxed again. Good babies.

..so they are getting so big now that when I’m changing the bedding in the whelping box they need to go into the playpen (which will eventually attach to the whelping box).  Kate built all this!  (Like the alien toy?)

Playpen

They aren’t ready to move into the playpen for good yet, but for now, it’s a safe place for them to stretch their legs a bit (they are starting to RUN now!).

There's a lotta room in here

Pardon me, excuse me, coming through

What the heck is THAT?

We decided to feed them their second solid food meal (veal again) while they were in the playpen:

GRUB for Grublets!

SHARE, darnit!

and Jim got in with them to help them settle in (or to get swarmed by cute puppies…).

Jim

…so for a while now most of the puppies have been using one end of the pen as the bathroom.  So today I decided to start trying the litterbox experiment.  What’s in there now, at that end of the pen, is an old cookie sheet covered with a towel, with a tiny handful of Feline Pine pellets.  One puppy has already pooped in there, yay!

Day 23 - Litterbox!

I cleaned the poop out (maybe I should have left it in there as a signpost), and that’s Lefty sleeping in the makeshift litterbox.  But you can see that there’s a couple of pee spots in there.

Today we will also put the weaning box that Kate made together (it will eventually attach to this whelping box) and put an x-pen around it where they can go for some of the day (and for when I need to change the bedding in the whelping box – forget the warming box!  It’s getting put away today, they just swarm out of it now).  They will still come in here at night or when we’re not home, but they are getting close to being able to climb out of the whelping box, and they’re moving around so much they need more space.

They are all well over 2 pounds now, all getting very close to 2 1/2, and Immelman and Lefty are over 2 1/2 pounds. Which means Nina is feeding over 17 pounds of puppy from her 19 1/2 pound body…that’s amazing.

Today they got their first taste of solid food.  Following Ulla’s Swedish tradition, they had a tiny bit of raw veal:

First Solid Food

And they LOVED it, they figured out right away that it was food, were able to lap it up, and in proper puppy fashion, crawled all over it:

Tastes Like Feet

And then, there was wrestling, and cuddling, and sleeping:

Wrestling

Cuddling

They growl and bark, and come over when you call them.  They make eye contact, wag their tails, and lick!  They are real baby dogs now!

..and one more day 18:

Squash!

Here are the day 20 pictures (from today).  They are really getting talkative now, lots of growling at each other when they’re playing and trying to wedge in between each other.  Immelmann seemed to have a bit of an upset tummy last night, he was doing a lot of complaining, so I gave him some infant Mylicon and that seems to have helped, he’s back to normal today.  I will tell you that any little thing like that sends you right into a panic, especially when you’ve been lulled into a sense of security by how well they’ve been doing and how uneventful things have been thus far.  (touch wood!)

Mealtime - look how big they are compared to Nina.

Thankfully, tomorrow they will get their first taste of solid food.  We will videotape it, it should be very entertaining.  We will gradually increase the amount of solid food they eat and Nina should gradually start weaning them as we do.  Nina will be very glad to have some of the food burden taken off her, I’m sure, she is eating a ton and not getting fat, it is all going to feed these little monsters.  They are ALL over 2 pounds as of this morning, which means Nina, who is normally 19-20 pounds when she is not pregnant or lactating is feeding over 14 pounds of puppy, that’s a lot of work!

Sleepy

Cuddle In!

A few times a day, they get what has to be the three-week-old puppy equivalent of the FRAPs (Frenetic Random Activity Periods), or “zoomies”.  However, since they are all just learning how to walk, it’s more a case of them all staggering around like drunken sailors at the same time, crashing into each other and the walls of the pen.  Jim calls this the SRAPs (Slow Random Activity Periods).

Mischief is evident in this face already!

Cutie