The Rule of Sevens

 This is the week that the pups will "come to their senses".  By the end of the week they will be able to see, hear, feel, taste and smell.

• Their eyes are open, although they are nearsighted at first. 
• They will begin to be able to hear. 
  

  

   You can see eyes in the bottom photo...
  

• They are beginning to walk unsteadily on all fours.  
• They are beginning to bark a little.
• They will begin to play with each other and interact with their environment.

We are proponents of the "rule of sevens" which says that by the time a puppy is 7 weeks old it should have:

Been on 7 different surfaces, such as: carpet, concrete, wood, vinyl, grass, dirt, gravel, wood chips, newspaper, etc.

Played with 7 different types of objects, such as: big balls, small balls, soft fabric toys, fuzzy balls, squeaky toys, metal items, wooden items, paper/cardboard items, milk/soda jugs, etc.

Been in 7 different locations, including: front yard, backyard, basement, kitchen, car, garage, laundry room, bathroom, crate, kennel, etc.

Been exposed to 7 challenges, such as: climbed a box, climbed off a box, gone through a tunnel, climbed up steps, climbed down steps, climbed over obstacles, played hide and seek, gone in and out of a doorway with a step, etc.

Eaten from 7 different containers: metal, plastic, cardboard, paper, china, pie plate, frying pan, etc.

Eaten in 7 different locations: crate, yard, kitchen, basement, laundry room, bedroom, x-pen, etc.

Met and played with 7 new people, including children and the elderly.

We will be working on fulfilling each of these goals with all the pups in upcoming weeks.  While it will be more difficult due to the Covid-virus social restrictions, it is imperative that socialization with your puppy continue after he or she goes home.  We'll have some resources and suggestions for ongoing socialization as the pups get closer to sending them to their forever homes.

 

The pups new mascot "Wally" the bear (with Humphrey and Divot)

Chunk's black pigment is coming in on his muzzle and nose

Otis surveys his world

Small Changes

View from the puppy cam.

• Jan has our regular dog cam set up so it shows me a view of the whelping box when I log in from my cell phone.  It makes me feel like I'm part of the action when I'm at work during the day and he is home with the dogs.  In the photo, you can see Kodi napping on the left side of the box, the pups spread out around the rest of the box and the stuffed Holstein cow in the right front.  Kodi often likes to rest her head on the stuffed toys and the pups like to snuggle up with them.
  
• Within the last day, Otis and Chunk were the first pups to reach the 2 pound mark (about as much as

  
  

  
  

  a quart of water or a pineapple).
• We have not seen any eyes opening yet, but should be any day now.
• The pups now pull themselves up on their front legs when moving around the whelping box.  They are not walking yet, but are working on it...
• We will be doing another round of toenail trims tonight.
• Newborn pups nurse 12 times or more a day during their first week of life.  At around 10 days, as their stomach capacity increases, they begin to nurse a bit less frequently.  At 2 weeks of age, they nurse around 6 times per day.
  

 

 

 

Kodi likes to sit in the chair and oversee the pups.

Minnie settled in for a nap after a big meal

A friend who has an older puppy (4 or 5 months old) was mentioning that he is getting fussy about eating and asked what to do about it.  I gave him some advice and followed it up with a link to a fabulous website by Sue Ailsby.  Sue is a fabulous dog person and amazing writer.  The info I shared with my friend was on the "writing" menu of the website.  There are some excellent articles and other engaging reading on Sue's website.

Week 2

Here is a link to the week 2 photo album.

The week is off to a pawsome start!

This week, the pups will continue to sleep 90% of the time.  When they wake, they crawl in a circle, moving their heads from side to side when trying to find their mother for food or warmth.

For those if you interested in learning more, an excellent book on puppy development  is "Another Piece of the Puzzle: Puppy Development by Pat Hastings and Erin Ann Rouse".

Maybe "Otis" should have been "Blaze"?  Here he is next to brother Diver.

Pupdate

Diver needs a tummy rub.

Miscellaneous goings on:

We intended to trim toenails a few days ago, but did not get to it until last night.  Just trimming puppy nails, that comes to 142 toenails trimmed.  Jan cups them upside down in his hands and shines the headlamp on them, while I trim them with a tiny pair of human nail trimmers while wearing high-powered reading glasses.  Kodi and Delta will get their nail trims today.

There are pros and cons to removing front dewclaws (you can do a search on the internet for this and also a search for what the removal entails).  We usually remove them, but opted not to for this litter, as we didn't want to haul Mom and pups to the vet through the hazarous air conditions resulting from the forest fires.  Yesterday, I suddenly noticed that one of the pups had rear dewclaws.  We've not had rear dewclaws on pups in previous litters, but they are not uncommon in some lines.  In PWDs, these are removed.  After rechecking and determining that only one pup had them, we were able to get a last minute appointment for Reggie to go have her dewclaws removed yesterday.  It is a simple and easy procedure and Reggie was home and back to her usual eating/sleeping routine in under 2 hours.

On their morning weigh-in yesterday, all the pups had achieved or passed the one pound weight mark.

Proprioception is the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body.  Newborn pups have good proprioception and will readily right themselves if they tumble onto or are placed on their backs.  They cannot back up, see hear or control their body temperature during their first week to ten days.

We are rotating different large soft toys through the box to stimulate the pups.

Reggie snuggles with the Holstein

We are adding early scent introduction to the things we do with our pups.  ESI is said to contribute to a dogs’ successes in hunt tests and field trials, nosework, search and rescue work, obedience, tracking and more.  Pups are introduced to a new scent daily, ideally beginning on Day 3 and ending on Day 16. We're a little behind on beginning this, but will start today.

We maytook some "mug shots" of the puppies yesterday.  We'll try to get one of each of them to upload to the Flickr alnum.

Reggie

Minnie

 

Weighing In

Chunk and Otis were the first two pups to reach the one pound mark yesterday.  Today Humphrey, Divot and Reggie joined them.  The others are not far behind.  They are an active little bunch and are gaining well thanks to their attentive Mama.

Today we began "early neurological stimulation" with the pups.  You can read more about what this entails and the benefits to the pups here.

Tomorrow is going to be nail trim day for the pups.  Lots of tiny toenails to trim to keep Kodi's skin from being abraided by little sharp claws.

Humphrey contemplates a jail break

Chunk flexes his mighty paws

Humphrey uses Reggie as a pillow. 

Eight New Names

As we mentioned in our post a few days ago our litter name theme is the Bears of Katmai.   Here are the names we chose (in order of birth) and their corresponding collar color.

Otis - Dark Blue 

Minnie - Pink

Flo - Purple

Reggie - Red (female)

Diver- Green (male)

Chunk - Light Blue (male)

Humphrey - Yellow

Divot (aka "Dot") - No Collar (female)

The Katmai bears are officially assigned #s by the rangers, but often end up with nicknames also.  Some are named due to their fishing style (i.e. Diver was skilled at diving for salmon while Divot, when young, would dig for salmon scraps in the gravel leaving divots behind).

We will have a weekly album of photos in our Flickr account and you will be able to see all the photos for that week there.  Click here for the week 1 photos so far.

Early days (and late nights)

 

Puppies staying warm on the heating pad.

A new litter of pups always means sleep deprivation for the humans even with a stellar doggy Mama, as Mom and pups require care and monitoring around the clock.

Kodi needs to stay well hydrated and have additional calories in her diet so she has plenty of milk.  She needs to be encouraged to leave the pups for potty breaks and we are providing "take out" from the kitchen to the whelping box area so she does not need to be separated from the pups while she is eating.  She is a HUGE fan of Jan's sourdough waffles and took herself off to the kitchen briefly to feast on them when she smelled them cooking today.

Kodi takes care of the puppies needs in terms of feeding and cleanup, but we will monitor their weight twice a day for several weeks to make sure all the pups are thriving and gaining weight as they should.

Janitorial duties fall to us and we change out the bedding under the whelping box a few times per day to keep Mom and pups environment as fresh and clean as possible.

We've chosen litter names for the pups and will post individual photos with their names, probably later today.  We'll also start a series of albums on Flickr and save photos there for easier viewing.  

Kodi was just a little blur heading into the kitchen to beg for a sourdough waffle.

Puppies lined up at the milk bar.

They've arrived!

It was an exhausting weekend!  From Friday night on, Kodi was fussy and uncomfortable.  She was in Stage 1 labor most of the day on Saturday and finally began having contractions in earnest around 7:00 PM.  Our first pup arrived at 11:03 PM and puppy #8 made an appearance at 4:01 AM.  

Mama Kodi and babies

We knew there was one more pup still due to come and worked with our amazing vet to attempt to stimulate his arrival.  Unfortunately he was stuck and, although we were able to finally deliver him naturally after hours of hard work from Kodi, he was born dead.  

Our final puppy count of 8 includes 4 males and 4 females with a mix of curlies and wavies.  All the pups are mostly black and the majority have some white markings.

Kodi, Jan and I all took the loss hard even though we hadn't "met" this little guy yet.  Despite this sad end to the  whelping we are very relieved to have a healthy and content Mama dog with 8 beautiful pups.  Kodi was such a trooper through the whole ordeal and Jan is amazing at supporting our girls when they give birth, while I mainly bark orders and wring my hands, LOL.

We choose a theme for our litters and give the pups names for the 9+ weeks we have them (instead of calling them by their collar color).  New owners are welcome to keep the names (a decent number of names from each litter has "stuck" as we try to select cute names) or chose new ones.  This year's theme is the Bears of Katmai.  Jan and I both lived in Alaska for a time and ever since we discovered the live feed cameras in Katmai National Park that show the grizzlies fishing and feasting during the salmon run, we like to tune in a few times a week in the summer ro watch.  We have not had a chance to chose the names yet, but will post them here when we do.

A few more quick photos from last night and this morning...

The first two pups born.  "Auntie" Delta
(nose at bottom right) supervised the whelping.

Pups peeking out from Mama's fur.

You'll notice lots of heating pads and microwaveable heat disks in the photos.  Pups are born with ears and eyes closed and unable to regulate their body temperature.  Heat sources in the whelping box allow us to keep the air temperature comfortable for Mom and also keep pups from getting dehydrated, while still making sure they do not get chilled.

More tomorrow...

Waiting and watching and smoke...

Kodi's "whelping window" is 9/11-9/13.  No puppies made an appearance yesterday, but we are thinking today might be the day.  Her temperature dropped during the night (an indicator that labor will be imminent within the next 12-24 hours) and she is very uncomfortable and a bit anxious at the moment.  She is still napping periodically and is resting on the floor at my feet as I type this update.

The fires in Oregon have been concerning, but the news is gradually getting better with the high winds we had earlier in the week abating and humidity increasing.  We have never been in evacuation danger and so far our vet, about 30 minutes to the south, has also been able to remain available.  Air quality is hazardous outside and the world looks eery and disconcerting. 

Kodi's X-ray from Tuesday.  Each circle is a skull and the line is a corresponding spine.

The little Mama dog is very full of puppies!

Our Sunflower bloomed on Friday and Kodi helped me take a photo in the smoky yard.

One More Week

Kodi has a baby belly.  

Note:  there are a few links embedded in the text this week.  The last one is the neatest.

We felt the puppies move for the first time on Wednesday.  It's always so amazing to feel that!  

We brought the whelping box down from the back shed and set it up.  Went through the contents of the big storage tub with all the puppy supplies and ordered some needed items.  We've got a bit more work to do to make the room inviting, but it's coming along.

We've been gradually getting the back bedroom ready for puppies.  We have used this as our whelping room in the past.  We were preparing to remodel the room when the pandemic began and had moved all the furniture out and stripped the carpeting, so the room is empty.

We invest a lot into our puppies, and preparing for this litter triggers lots of memories.  I've been thinking a lot about our previous litters and Mamas (Tango, Chili, Stoker and Ecko) and the beautiful pups they produced which became loyal companions to their famlies.  We look forward to a bright and loving future for these pups in their new homes.

Resting after a walk.  Blackberries were picked and eaten!

Kodi is scheduled for an xray on Tuesday to make sure all looks as it should.  There are benefits and risks to pregnancy xrays.   The Xray will provide the best possible count so that if labor ceases prior to delivery of the last fetus we are immediately aware of the problem and can intervene.  We are fortunate to live in an area with a registered theriogenologist and consider this a positive step to take to ensure the best possible outcome for Kodi and the pups.

Kodi is not usually a picky eater, but has been a bit so during her pregnancy.  Some of the healthier options we've been able to tempt her with are fresh cooked chicken, ground beef, sardines and veggies (brussels sprouts and sweet potato).  She is not keen on kibble at all, but will eat it if well disguised in canned tripe (Solid Gold also has a canned tripe that she likes).  She is usually eager to eat the Fresh Pet meat roll which you can purchase in the refrigerator section of some stores.  We  had never tried this before, but saw some recommendations for it from other folks with fussy pregnant bitches.  Her absolute favorite food at the moment is Jan's sourdough waffles.  She shivers in excitement when she sees the waffle iron and would eat them to great excess if allowed.

We've got lots of time before this will happen, but we are planning to do a puppy obstacle course with this litter.  We'll be careful not to overmatch the pups with any obstacles that might stress them out too much or potentially harm them physically, but this should be fabulous mental stimulation for them and inspire them to be bold and confident individuals.

This last photo will be more pertinent in about another 4 or 5 months, but I thought it was a good reminder that puppies really are part Velociraptor.