Day 25 - Oral Fixation

The amount of work it's taking to raise the litter is increasing at this point. We're working on potty-training (mostly good, some are still attempting to hit the paper, but going carpet), introducing solid food, and dealing with puppy awareness of self and others now. They come out and ask to be held if they wake up before the other ones (especially Reid and Dactyl) . Fury's still cleaning up after them, but them being able to urinate/eliminate on their own means sometimes she misses it. You may think it is gross, but I think her eating their messes is a godsend. How miraculous this whole process is.

I think Dactyl looks like some kind of gremlin.

People keep coming by and saying they don't know how I get anything done. This is somewhat true. Happily I am still on teaching vacation (no school until Feb 3rd), yet I have quite busy days. I will admit that it doesn't hurt that most of my work takes place from home. It's been a stressful couple of weeks and I have to say that having sweet puppies around makes everything better.

Dan and Kelly

David MacRoberts and Reid

It sure is fun feeding them their puppy food now. I broke down and decided to give them mash. The powder doesn't seem that efficient. Neither does the mash, really. They largely are just licking the water out and pounding the food into the pan harder. Trial and error, I suppose.

Here's Fie chirping happily while she works the mash.

And the little guys are starting to get hiccups. That's something I totally forgot about - how puppies get hiccups all the time.

Synchronized yawns.

In other news - everyone and their brother likes to stick the puppies in their mouth (or is it the puppies doing that?)

I would also like to give a shout out to a certain guy for making my life a thousand times easier with all this.

I have not been getting much sleep these days because Fury really wants to come into the bedroom with me, but needs to jet out to see puppies. There are two reasons this is bad - one, I have roommates and leaving the door open is both exposing and noisy and two - Fury comes in, leaps on top of me, snuggles in, the bounds out to check on puppies. Repeat ad nauseum.

So then I just closed the door for a while. So now one (or both) of two things will happen - Fury will sit at the door whining all night and/or she will not feel like feeding puppies when they wake up at 2 and 4 pm so they will wake me up with their mewling. Then I have to get up and yell at Fury to feed her babies.

She may also want to go to the bathroom. Now that it is raining and she is comfortable leaving her kids, this is at least a half-hour process. And most times, I wake up at 5 am for a teleconference so this is even more fun. Let's just say that life is a little hard - preparing me for kids?

So anyway, Yishai has done everything in his power to make life easier on me. He anticipates needs and does puppy chores, he loves on them, he's trained them all to lie upside down happily and submissively, he's volunteered to let me sleep at his house to get a break while he stays here, and last night, when Fury was whining (my new method was to just lock her in the ex pen, but no good), he went out and made her a little nest on the couch. Good, good man. I am very lucky. I never in my life thought I'd end up with a guy who liked dogs as much as he does . . . or who was as good to me. Heck, if you know our story, you'd also know that Yishai was the last dude I thought I'd end up with. So yeah, public loves for my best friend, business partner, and life partner.