Growing Like Crazy

Look at these photos showing the size of the pups relative to Mama Stoker. One photo shows Mom and newborn babies, the other shows the babies at 3-weeks. Pretty amazing how fast they grow!

Visitors

The babies had visitors this evening. Joe and Nichole live in nearby Tigard and came over for an hour to see the pups and bring by their completed questionairre. The babies spent an astonishing amount of that time nursing and Stoker was being most solicitious of them, probably because she was a little bit anxious at having guests visit. Stoker enjoyed the extra pats that she got from Joe and Nichole though, and Decker was quite the silly boy, hamming it up to illustrate just how silly a big PWD boy can be.


Noted dog trainer Ian Dunbar DVM, PhD notes that the 'most' critical socialization period starts long before the pup leaves the litter: 3 weeks to 12 weeks. Dr. Dunbar is quoted as saying a pup should meet "100 new people by the age of 3 months." That's a lot of people! The pups will get to meet 10 more people tomorrow, so they will be well on their way in the socialization department.

Puppy Shopping & One More Pic

Funny where you find yourself shopping when you have a litter of puppies on the ground...

Today I hustled around and ran as many errands as I could, because we are expecting visitors throughout much of the day on Sunday. One trip was to the local thrift store, where a small purchase bought three new toys. Two toys are stuffed critters, one of which makes a rattling sound. The other toy is a childrens keyboard that makes music sounds or critter sounds when the keys are pressed. The pups can walk on the keyboard to activate it.

The next stop, was the local Radio Shack to purchase a power cord for my boom box. As I type, a sound socialization CD with squalling children and other sounds effects (thunder, gun shots, vacuum cleaner etc) is playing in the background.

Puppy Pics

Blue and Flossie

We weighed the pups tonight. Although they are all gaining steadily, it is fun to see the numbers climb and make sure no one is falling behind. After a nice drink and some quality time with the humans in the house, the pups were all tuckered out. Blue thought that Flossie the cow would make a nice place to pass out for a nap and climbed on top to snooze.

Jan and I were debating whether some of the pups are starting to be able to hear. I thought I witnessed a definite startle response from two of them when I opened the blinds this morning, but maybe it was just my imagination....

Details, details

On New Year's eve, we celebrated by once again trimming puppy toenails. This time, Jan held the pups and Suzanne got the thankless job of snipping all those tiny little nails. Talk about eye strain!

Last night, the pups got rearranged into slightly larger quarters. Since they were moving to the edges of the whelping box to try to potty away from their "nest", we opened the back of the box up and added an ex-penned area with newspaper for their potty area. They were not impressed with the strange new surface initially, but by this morning they were venturing onto it and will hopefully figure out that it is the "restroom".

We added some toys to the box yesterday too. The big stuffed cow toy that was Stoker's litters mascot got called back into service for this gang. Flossie is looking well-loved, but the puppies seem to like her anyway and Stoker uses her as a headrest when she is nursing the pups.

I ordered microchips for the pups yesterday too and the pups will be chipped when they are around 7-1/2 weeks old before they go for their eye exam. The microchips can be scanned to help identify your pup should they happen (heaven forbid!) to escape and be captured by some kind stranger who is trying to return the pup to you.

Today saw a visit to the post office to mail the litter registration form off to the American Kennel Club. I like to wait until the pups are a week old before submitting the litter registration to make sure they all make it through the first week. Because this was an AI breeding, on-line registration of the litter is not possible and snail mail is the only allowed method. I was reluctant to mail the paperwork during the holidays, so got it off today. Hopefully the AKC will be prompt in processing it and sending the individual registration forms back to me.

The Transitional Period

This information is from an article written by Kathryn Lanam

Transitional Period (14-21 days)

This period starts when the eyes are open and ends when the puppy first "startles" on hearing a noise. This week is characterized by the rapid development of motor skills, the ability to eliminate on its own, the onset of usable vision (by 18-21 days), the initial emergence of teeth, and the development of hearing - first evidenced by the startle response - although still unable to locate the source of the sound. The puppies move around a lot more, can now move backwards as well as forward and begin to walk instead of crawl, may start to lap liquids, and will begin to leave the nest to eliminate. Tail wagging begins even before developing functional sight and hearing ability, the first teeth erupt around 20 days and vocalizations become more specialized. They begin to show interest in their littermates - pawing at each other's face and chewing on each other.

This is the time to begin increased individual attention by the breeder. Toys and other visual objects should be added to the box and puppies could be moved to the kitchen or other busy part of the house. Puppies should be placed on a new surface for a minute once a day. In this short week of life, the puppy rapidly changes from the inability to hear, see and walk or eliminate without stimulation into a puppy that can now do all of these things - enormous steps in the puppy's life.