Tally and her puppies are settling in well. All puppies gained weight in the first day, which is very good. Weight gains ranged from 2 to 6 ounces in their first 24 hours. The three biggest males already weigh 23-24 ounces. They seem to have inherited Tally's hearty appetite! When they start feeding, their little tails are wagging furiously. Tally does not want to leave them for more than a few minutes, so her exercise breaks are very brief.

We have identified all the puppies by giving them small "haircuts" (clipping a small amount of their coat in different places). For example the 5 liver males are: unmarked, left hip, right hip, left shoulder and right shoulder. These will need to be redone every few days ,as their coats grow very quickly. This is safer than using coloured collars, where there is always the risk of puppies getting caught on other puppies. Besides, we would have a hard time finding 10 different colours! 

The pups spent the day feeding and sleeping. They already seem to be getting stronger and more capable of moving around the whelping box and climbing up on Tally. They like to sleep nestled in Tally's tail feathers and tucked up against her chest or legs.

We are gradually starting to get caught up with our sleep, although we both sleep in the whelping room with the puppies, taking turns checking on the litter through the night. The big worry during these first few weeks is the mother inadvertantly lying on one of the puppies. The ledge that we have around the inside of the box helps to minimize this happening, and Tally is very careful, but it can still happen. We have never counted to 10 so many times in our lives!

Tally is so hungry and her food requirements are high, so she gets a meal in the middle of the night and every few hours during the day. She looks so thin now and we need to keep her in good condition so that she can easily make it through the next few weeks when the puppies demands on her are the highest.

Young puppies make the funniests noises. Mostly satisfied little grunts and squeaks. They sound more like kittens than dogs at this stage. There is one that almost sounds like he's barking already! And one that occasionally makes an almost whistle-like noise that sounds like a budgie. We haven't figured out which one is doing that yet, except that it's one of the liver ones.

It's really too early to start seeing personalities coming out yet, but we've noticed a few things. The big black male is easy to spot in the litter and always seems very content. He is more often seen lying out on his own than the others, but he's perfectly healthy, so it's probably just because his bigger body mass means that he does not get as cold as the others and doesn't need to snuggle so much. The last liver male to be born (right shoulder) has a few white hairs at the tip of his tail and so far he's been the noisiest. He was squeaking even as he was being born!  We think he could end up being quite a character.

Today Tally seems to be thinking that she should move the puppies. When we take her outside, she just wants to dig holes. Fortunately when she's back with her puppies, she is happy to join them in the whelping box.

Our big task today is cut toenails - all 180 of them!  Puppy toenails grow very quickly and as they "knead" with their paws while nursing, it's only fair to their mother to clip them frequently.

The Group of Ten continue to do well and all puppies are gaining weight. They have collectively put on just over 5lbs in their first four days of life! No wonder Tally is so hungry. She is pretty much getting as much food as she wants and is eating 5 - 6 lbs of food a day.

Hans Berin advises that the most important part of raising a litter is to look after their mother and keep her happy. Tally gets a daily brushing session, several breaks away from her litter and lots of snuggles. She's going for short walks with the other dogs and has played a bit with Lupine. We noticed by Day 4 that she is more eager to take these breaks and will spend up to half an hour away from her pups. Any more than that and she starts to howl and and whine at the whelping room door! It's a terrible noise. Because Tally is so keen on digging holes outside and investigating every closet and dark space in our house, we have tried to make her whelping box darker by tenting a sheet over it for some of the time.

As well as weighing the pups and moving them when we clean out the box, we handle each puppy every day. We have already noticed that they settle more quickly when we pick them up and hold them against us. This is good "early training" for the puppies.

The puppies now weigh between 22 ounces and 29 ounces.

We took some more photos this morning.......

Tally is starting to take longer breaks from her maternal duties. Today she went for a short walk down into the river valley and even retrieved a few training bumpers. She's always eager to get back to her puppies though. As you can see from the photo below, she has lost some weight but is in pretty good condition.

The puppies are getting quite mobile, so we have replaced the towels and fake sheepskin with rubber-backed mats because they have better traction. We are starting to see some early attempts at walking (OK,so they are still a long way from actually walking, but they are definately starting to lift their bodies up a bit with their legs, kind of a half-crawl-half-walk). They have also become more responsive to Tally when she enters the whelping box. This must be based on smell, as they cannot see or hear yet. When they detect Tally, they start squealing and wriggling around until they find her. It's quite a racket!

We have figured out which one sounds like a budgie - it is #1 puppy, one of the liver males.

We have started putting a few soft toys in the box for them to clamber on. They like to rest their heads on them and sometimes they crawl underneath them .