Monday, October 8, 2012

Bright shining little eyes

Finally we have cute little puppy faces.  Waldo's eyes were 3/4 open Sunday night, and I could just barely see a glint of cornea.  Monday morning, Waldo and Estes both had their eyes open, and more pups had their eyes open at midday when Nancy came over.  This weekend, we had a mild scare with Teller.  I had noticed that his weight gain hadn't been as robust as some of the other big pups, but then Sunday AM, he had actually lost weight, which is a big concern for a baby pup.  I checked him over and he was not clinically dehydrated, but not as strong and vigorous as a normal pup at this age, plus his abdomen was very empty.  So I concentrated on making sure he received extra private nursing sessions on Sunday.  Black collar puppies have been jinxed these last two litters - Champ also had problems when he was a baby.  Midday, Juli beat me into the puppy pool and I found her nursing all the pups. . . except Teller.  After that, I locked Juli out of the bedroom and gave her a couple of hours to "refill".  Then made sure that Teller got a full tummy, he was still nursing strongly when he didn't have to compete with his littermates.  I noticed that Juli was quickly running out of milk with all these big pups, so started thawing a container of goat milk for the pupsters.  By bedtime, Teller was looking good and had gained almost 3 ounces from his AM weight, most of which was probably "water weight".  He likely started out 5% dehydrated.  Monday morning, he was doing well and seemingly back to normal.  Whew!

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