Moving on Up

This weekend we bid goodbye to the whelping box. I directed my staff to take it down and install the X-Pen. As the above picture demonstrates, it was a tiring experience for all.

Having the X-pen up allows room for more toys and other gadgets. As you can see, the puppies also like sleeping on the puppy platform.

Here's a picture of the puppies first meal in the X-pen. They are growing quickly and have had their mush ration doubled twice in the last week or so. And they continue to lap it up.

Here's one last view of the whelping box. When the puppies can rest their chins on it, its time for it to go.

And yet one more picture of sleeping puppies. They love passing out on the big yellow duckie

Solid food (sort of)

Tonight my staff mixed up the first batch of what they affectionately call "Mush" to see if the puppies were ready to try something besides their mother's milk. As the pictures demonstrate, "mush" was a big hit with the puppies.

Bono decided to jump in and circumnavigate the dish

Here's a view from the blimp (yes, I know I used that joke last year, but I still think its funny)

I think this one is passed out in the pan

The aftermath-messy passed out puppies

Some of the staff suggested that the puppies were making the "Recycle" sign

Another passed out puppy

Almost Ambulatory

In the last day or two, the puppies eyes and legs have started to work, albeit slowly. Some of the puppies are now able to see me and my staff, albeit blearily, and they have also started to pick their bellies up off the floor when they move. Its not quite walking, but more like "wobbling". You can judge for yourself by watching the video at the bottom of this post. But you will have to scroll through a bunch of pictures.

Did I mention that they still sleep most of the time?

Here's a couple that are trying to walk

More sleeing

Here's Roisin (R0-Sheen) walking, with me giving intstruction.

Spring Break

Some of you have asked that why I haven't updated the blog lately. And the answer is that we have been busy. Like much of the rest of the state of Minnesota, we have been on spring break.

And what do puppies do on spring break you ask? Well, they don't need to go anywhere warm as the whelping box is plenty warm thanks to the heat lamp. And they don't know what a beach is yet, so they have had to make do with beach towels. (Besides, I do enough cleaning without having to deal with sand.) So we spent the whole weekend practicing sleeping in piles. I think the photos will demonstrate that we have had some success.

First we start with cuddling and encouragement.

Then we try to get them to line up. This didn't go so well.

So we resorted to remedial practice in the laundry basket-the sides of the basket help them with stacking techniques, and provide confidence and safety. After the remedial practice, we were ready to try again.

Here you see the first row (aka "the Base") fast asleep and awaiting the arrival of the second tier.But the second tier blew it, so it was back to the basket, and this time they seemed to have gained some confidence.

Here we see the puppies moving into position for their next attempt.

And here you see the result of all our practice. The litter is demonstrating the "Triple Sleeping Puppy Stack"with Finnegan providing the top of the pile. Well done kids!

Helping Paws in the Final Four

The other day the phone rang here, and it was the wonderful folks from Helping Paws. They are involved in the "March Goodness"fundraising tournament, and they wanted to know if they could shoot some video of the puppies to use in their spot for the next round. Of course I said yes, and immediately directed my staff to clean up the whelping box.

The video of the puppies is here www.helpingpawsinc.blogspot.com

Pictures

Today we worked on "line up for pictures"-this is the best that they could do.

What can I say? It's been a long day. That's me and Donegal (aka "Splash") taking a well deserved nap. Staff was kind enough to take lots of pictures. What follows is some of the highlights.Lunch time!

Here I am observing lunch and naps. Splash (black dot on his tail) seems to be a camera hog.

Above you see Limerick sleeping on my paw.

Here's another shot of lunch time/nap time.

And a close-up

And an extreme close-up

And naps-the boy with the blue marking is Bono. You may have noticed a pattern in the names. When I came to live with my staff, I came with a green collar with shamrocks. Camby/Melvin referred to me as her "Irish" dog. (not sure why) and my current staff is very "Irish identified" plus the last two St. Patrick's Days I have either had puppies of have been expecting puppies, so the theme for this year's litter is Irish names. There will be official portraits later, but the boys are named Limerick, Declan, Donegal (who will always be known as Splash owing to the circumstances of his birth) Brennan, Finnegan, and Bono. The girls are Roisin, Dara, Maeve, and Callaghan

Did you know?

As I have stated before, the folks from Helping Paws are wonderful. They are extremely knowledgeable about all that I have gone through since January, they are great at whelping puppies and extremely nice to my staff. Honestly, I don't have enough room to list all the good things that they do.

But did you know that they are excellent photographers too? They took these pictures:

http://www.helpingpawsinc.blogspot.com

Honestly, I was going to steal them and post them here, but anybody that can make a girl look that good during a whelping deserves all the credit they can get!