| Keeta Puppies, Days 33 - January 5, 2006 | |
| Click any photo for a large image. | |
Day 33 |
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A routine has developed During the day, after about every 2 hours of sleeping, the pups begin to stir. After most have waken up, we take the pups outside. The pen is setup next to the patio door so it's very easy to open one corner of the pen leading to the steps. Once all of the pups are out, depending on if we can take the time, we block off access to the kitchen and close up the pen so that when they come back in, they can have free run of the family room. As the pups crawl down the steps, we say "outside, go outside". 
They spend about 10 to 15 minutes outside, we watch for pups going poopie and go
to them telling them "poopie, good boy(girl)", we repeat this a couple times trying
to reinforce the word with the action. About half the pups will return to the
patio door steps on their own, we try to respond immediately that them going by
the door will get them inside right away. As they go through the door, we tell them
"in the house" several times again trying to reinforce the action with the words. The
pups that are too busy playing in the yard are nudged (or carried) toward the door
while we say "in the house".The pups will romp around the family room, we sit on the floor and interact with them. In addition to the toys we have around, the pups will try to chew on us, our clothes and our shoes. We tell them "no" and pull them away from us, sometimes a flick or two of the finger on the snout is required. The pitter-patter of puppies bouncing across the room along with the puppy growls and whines as they play creates a very lively environment. After about 20 to 30 minutes, it goes shockingly quiet as one by one the pups fall asleep. They tend to seek out sheltered spots, like under the table or alongside the furniture. We scoop them all up and lay them down in the pen, to wait for the next round and do the whole process again. The pups are being fed three times per day, roughly around 7:00 am, 3:00 in the afternoon, and again at 11:00 pm. The ones that are the quietest get fed first, we have some large bins we put onto the coffee table that place the puppies in so that we can monitor that each pup is getting their full portion of food. We are feeding them a mush of 2 parts crushed puppy food, 1 part baby rice, 1 part evaporated or powdered milk, and water. There is a bowl of water in the front hall, and in the pen so that they can drink when they want to. Again, we are not necessarily advocating the best way to raise a litter, this is intended to relate our experiences. We have been fortunate that with such a large litter, none are underdeveloped or slow, all pups are healthy and have progressed steadily. |
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