Week Five Over, On To Week Six!
Week five is over (yesterday was day 35), and we are entering week six!
The puppies have ears now, and their toes have differentiated. Their internal organs are continuing to form. They are now officially fetuses.
Zhora is getting a little more food now (not as much as she says she should be getting mind you!), it is important to keep the mum in a good but still lean body condition as being overweight and unfit can lead to difficult whelping and other complications. She is still eating her performance dog food which conveniently has 20% fat and 30% protein, which is what is recommended by repro vets. Plus she likes it! While she isn’t doing agility, she continues to go for regular long walks (we shift our walkies to the evening hours if it is too hot to walk during the day, don’t want to cook the babies!). She is still quite slender looking but she has a rounder tummy, a pooch on a pooch! The puppies do most of their growing in the last three weeks so it might be another week before she really starts to go into Zhornormous Zhorasaurus mode! She is still very much herself, playing with the others and full of energy and attitude, but she sleeps more and is very cuddly.
Next weekend we will set up the whelping box and do a supply inventory to make sure we have everything. I will move into the guest room with her the weekend after that and then we wait!
We are watching the Puppy Culture movie so we will know what to do and when. We will still do Early Neurological Stimulation too! I am excited to see how they respond to Puppy Culture!