How did it get to be week two already?! The puppies have all doubled their weight in one week - this is a very good sign of healthy puppies. In their short little lives they have already had their nails trimmed twice. It never ceases to amaze us how quickly their nails grow. Tally appreciates us keeping the nails short!
Today we can see signs of eyes starting to open - a few puppies eyes' look very slightly open. It will be a while before they can see though.
It is always a relief to get through the first week, with all puppies surviving and doing well. They cannot regulate their temperature, so keeping them warm is very important, especially when Tally takes her breaks. The whelping room is kept at 21-24 C, which the humans find to be quite hot! We can let it get a bit cooler now as the puppies gradually get a bit better at regulating temperature. When they are warm, they spread out in the whelping box. When they are cool, they bundle up in a big pile.
The puppies continue to get more mobile every day. They are often lifting themselves upon their legs in a "sort of walk", but it's not a very effective way of moving around and they can't do it for very long.
April 8th
The puppies are developing and we have seen several new behaviours in the last couple of days. There are some quite effective attempts at walking and less crawling. Today they seem to have suddenly become aware of eachother and are slowly starting to interact with their siblings. They also make very valiant attempts at walking away from their sleeping area when they have to pee. We are taking advantage of this new behaviour and leaving a part of the whelping box with newspapers only and encouraging them to use that area. Very early house training! They are now much less reliant on Tally licking them in order to stimulate them to pee and poop. This is where the work begins for us!
The other exciting development is that their eyes are all starting to open. Now when we look at them we can see the twinkles in their eyes! They probably can't see very much just yet, as it takes a while for their vision to develop.
They have become quite responsive to us now too - licking us when we handle them and settling down much faster.
For the first time today we noticed PUPPY BREATH!
Oh yes, and we are now having to use two boxes to put them in when we clean out the whelping box!
We put them in this box when the whelping box is getting cleaned out. Soon we will need two boxes!
Tally is feeling so much better these days. She is very energetic and is much more like her usual self than she was during the first week. We think that the surgery was pretty hard on her.
