Out and about

Well the easy part is over. The pups have now started on solid food- going down a treat! which is great, the downside is what goes in 1 end comes out the other so keeping the pups and their environment clean has become a full time job.

Hand in hand with feeding them comes getting them out of their whelping box, which is the start of house training. This is the fun part of having puppies. They are starting to have visitors now and today my friend and her son joined me and my daughter to play with them. All parties had fun, the pups loved all the attention and some have started to play with toys whilst others wanted to use us as climbing frames/chew toys or somewhere comfy to have a nap.

Just a few more pictures

Will try and do some video soon as pups are getting quite entertaining now, and VERY noisy.

Eyes open, pups getting mobile.

Well in the few days I was away the pups have made good progress. As the title implies all pups have their eyes open and they are all wobbling around the whelping box. They have started play fighting as well, all in slow motion, and the progress I'm not so happy about is that they have found their voices, lots of funny barks and growls coming from them.

11 days old

Just a couple more recent pictures as off to crufts this evening so won't be updating again for a couple of days.

Thriving

Rhonda and her pups are continueing to do well. We do have a couple of pups that are quite a bit smaller than the rest so I decided that perhaps I should "top them up a bit", something I generally try to avoid as whereever possible I like Mother nature to be in control. Anyway the pups had very definate ideas about where their milk should come from and it certainly wasn't from a bottle! So we now have a routine where the 6 biggest pups go in a cat basket in full view of mum whilst the smaller pups have 4 hours in the evening where they have the milk bar all to themselves, this seems to be working well as although these pups are still smaller they are in no way thinner and are just as fiesty as their biggger siblings.

I also invested in a new upvc whelping box as after 15 years of service, the wooden box that my late husband built for me was looking a bit sorry for itself. Having moved mum and pups into their new home I am not sure that I like the plastic box as much, although it has obvious advatages with regard to hygene it just doesn't have the warmth and cosyness that wood offers. So have spoken to a chippy today to get a quote to go back to wood!

I need some sleep

Weds afternoon, Rhonda's temp had dropped so I knew pups were on their way. By late evening she had started a little bit of panting, hadn't eaten and wouldn't tolerate any of the other dogs near her, so I obviously couldn't leave her even though she wasn't in full labour I couldn't take the chance, so I spent the night on the sofa keeping an eye on her. Nothing happened!

Thursday evening the first pup arrived at 8.10pm. Between then and 1.15 am she produced another 9. Dogs are amazing, this morning she is looking far better than I am - no dark circles under her eyes.

She has done me proud producing 4 girls and 6 boys, all healthy and feeding well and all are beautiful dark apricot in colour.

Walking with friends

Have just spent a couple of days in the company of my best friend, Rosie, and two of her dogs- Chip and Fozzie the puppy. Whilst she was here we had a couple of lovely walks, on one occasion we took 11 dogs out with us aging from 4 months to just over 15 years! Even if i do say so myself the dogs were a credit to us, they all had a fantastic time but remained controlled enough for a couple of pictures where they all achieved a sit/stay.

The following day we took several to Dartmoor and again they had a wonderful time and ran off a lot of energy.

The only disappointment was Rhonda, we hoped she may have whelped whist Rosie was here but she is still hanging on, although her temp has dropped a couple of degrees this pm so we should have babies in the next 48 hrs.