Week 1

What a difference a week makes!  The puppies are all gaining well, most have doubled their birth weights already.  You can see they have quite the nice, plump bellies now!  They can lift their tummies off the floor for a few seconds.  This is a very strong and vigorous bunch as they are all quite mobile and can navigate quickly even if they can't see where they are going.  <g>

They have begun the Early Neurological Stimulation exercises.  These simple exercises are designed to put a little bit of stress on the puppies' developing nervous systems which will prompt greater development and hence enable the pups to handle stress better as adults.  I've been doing this for several litters now and can't really say if it makes a difference or not.  But it can't hurt and is another way to give them one more possible advantage later in life.

They also had their first little adventure.  Nova and Aurora had rear dew claws so we had to go to the vet to get them removed (under a local numbing agent).  I thought we'd make the trip worthwhile and have a chiropractic adjustment done on everyone.  My vet couldn't tell if anyone was out of alignment so he did some motion adjustments and if anything was out, it would go back into place.  Whatever he did, all the puppies liked it because it put each one of them to sleep.  Apparently it felt good!

And it really felt good to come home with all tails and front dew claws still intact!  I am really enjoying watching them use those tails for balance.

February 27, 2008