Fat and Happy
Weaning is going well, Annie’s milk production seems to be going down and the pups are eating well on their own more and more frequently. They are fat and happy. When I walk into the room they gather around me and bite (hard) on my legs, ankles and feet. I have to really control myself so I don’t kick out reflexively and send one of the sailing! Today I imagined their first time outside in the snow and got really excited. Of course that will have to wait until they are a bit older and hopefully the weather will cooperate. In the summer I’d have had them outside by now, but they are just too small and it is just too cold and so my instinct is to wait.
Read on for more photos! Read the rest of this post »
All is well
Everyone was walked and relaxing. The puppies were happily playing on their bed after a big meal, wrestling quietly, chewing each other’s ears and slowly falling asleep. I was working on the computer and Annie was chewing on her Kong. I was feeling good about myself, thinking “I am so good, everyone has been taken care of and all is well.” I hear Annie drinking heartily and smile to myself about how happy she sounds when I realize, “hey, her water bowls are in the puppy room and the door is closed…” I look and see her drinking from the toilet that really needs a cleaning (yuck)!! Oh well.
Puppies everywhere
Puppies puppies everywhere! They all walk around the room now, exploring, playing and peeing. Every time I enter the room I have to laugh as they all stop and look, just like little kids you burst in on and startle. They look like they’ve been caught doing something wrong.
They are well into the solid food now and are taking more and more from me, and less from Annie. This is good as she wants less and less to do with them. Tonight, for an hour during feeding time, they had a babysitter! My friend, Maria, came by and played, fussed, and held them all. When I came down to clean up the meal mess they were all zonked out. They continue to enjoy human contact, wagging and crawling over one another to get to the people who visit them. There are going to be a lot of visitors soon. We plan to post their pictures on Petfinder next week. Look for them either by going directly to Petfinder or through the HELP website . They will be named after Santa’s eight reindeer – Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comit, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. The brown one is Blitzen.
Signs of things to come
As I was cleaning up the puppy room before bed half of the group was wrestling and the other half was exploring. Walking around my feet, chasing the mop, and peeing and pooping on the nicely cleaned floor. I must have mopped that floor three times before I gave up, turned off the light and let the pups do what they will. They are paper trained, but they also pee and poo on the floor too…so maybe not so paper trained after all. Sigh. This is the beginning of the busy time. If I can keep myself in the moment, it isn’t too bad. But if I try to project outward a few weeks I get overwhelmed. This is going to be a challenge, trying to keep everything sanitary.
I cut the pups toenails again, boy they had gotten long! Everyone was very good about it and stayed relatively still. Read the rest of this post »
Pups getting the hang of it
Today Annie got to show off her stuff to an interested family. She did great and I was very impressed by her easy going nature. Now if we can just figure out this Kong obsession! Really, though, she was friendly, open and happy to let them interact with her. I couldn’t have asked for more.
The puppies have really gotten the hang of eating, as the photos show. They just put their heads down and lap it up. It’s funny, but they lap for a bit and then get distracted and wander off. But if you put them back to the bowl they react like, “Say! Where’d this come from? Food! Yahoo!” and start lapping again, only to get distracted and wander off again. They have mastered the ins and outs of climbing the board that separates their bedding area and now when I enter the room it isn’t unusual to see one or two pups out wandering around, exploring the space. However, the room Read the rest of this post »
Part Lab Perhaps
I was at work last night and saw a magazine all about Lab puppies and stopped and stared…the cover had a line of three puppies and I swear that the middle one looked exactly like Annie’s cream pups! So, they are likely Lab mixes! What fun. So many people want a Lab puppy, this will surely help with their adoption. Although I doubt there will be much trouble adopting them out, they are adorable.
They are really starting to show their personalities now. After feeding them they have about 30 minutes of rough-housing in them before the crash. They play fight, stalk their toys and run in little circles barking. They are getting more steady on their feet too, and are more able to actually accomplish a pounce. Before they would just think about pouncing and instead just Read the rest of this post »
