Day 23 - New Digs!

Yes, I skipped a day. So sue me. Patrick MacRoberts and family are in town to see puppies, hang out in SLO, etc, and we were super busy!

The little guys were busting out of their pen yesterday so I knew this morning the first thing I would have to do is change up the living area. They're now sporting a crate sleeping area, a potty area, and a play area. They get themselves a bowl of water to lap at, and the ex pen is sealed. I have it flipped over so Fury can jump in and out a will without them climbing out. It's a good thing she's in shape. She's leaping over the two-foot barrier without any kind of lead.

The puppies were out yesterday and being poked and prodded and messed with by the MacRoberts kids for hours and handled it in stride. Sleepy puppies were quite tolerant of being forced to wake up, have their limbs manipulated, be played with like toys, etc. Patrick and Kathryn mentioned repeatedly that it was obvious we'd done a bunch of handling of them. I'm pretty proud of how they're turning out.

When they were out playing, some of the puppies discovered Fury's food bowl and tried very, very hard to eat it. I guess it's time to start trying weaning out. Their teeth are breaking through and they're teething pretty badly. I was worried about "weaning methods" but Fury has quite clearly shown me that she'll be doing it for me.

Roommate Laura with her favorite puppy, Reid. Also the MacRoberts' favorite.

So, when I arranged the new digs, I left Fury's food bowl in the pen for the puppies to experiment. Bad idea.

Firma, Fury, and myself learned a valuable lesson this morning - if mama's trying to eat, puppies are not allowed to. Fury was growling at them (me telling her to knock it off as I was about to fix the situation) but with them not responding (because obviously they've not been taught about dog corrections yet), Fury snapped at Firma, who then cried bloody murder. I felt bad, but Fury felt much worse. She nuzzled and licked and cuddled and you could tell that she would not be doing that again.

But, let's say that Fury's food bowl is now safely away from puppies and I will be doing the introduction of solid foods when she's not around. I was originally going to do the make-puppy-food-mash method, but they already seem keen on trying to eat the kibbles, so I think i'll just blend them up in the blender for smaller sizes and leave it at that, to supplement with milk, until their teeth are bigger and they can work on the kibbles themselves.

Oh, side note, I am starting to hate the webcam. When the puppies soak the paper with urine (which Fury still dutifully cleans up), I don't change it right away for whatever reason, so it sits there for the whole world to see. I hope ya'll watching don't think it's nasty. The puppies are clean and happy, I promise! (Oh, and if you're just tuning in: The Puppy Webcam.)

Cannot wait for Chris to get back from LA to process this latest photo shoot. It took him a full hour to set it up and get the lighting/flash right, so I assume these will be some amazing photos.

Now that they can see what they're missing, they are always like, "Let me out!" That's going to be annoying. :)