Boomer sleeping.
The puppies continue to grow and be healthy and happy. At 3.5 weeks they began to be offered solid food (mince beef) to start the process of weaning. They now only get access to Clover after they’ve been offered ‘real food’. (The idea is that they will fill up on mince before having a drink.) Clover is no longer getting several big meals a day, as we want to encourage her to cut back on the milk production. Continue reading
Clover with six puppies in the whelping box, with the 'door down' so that they have a bit of a pen.
The puppies turned 3 weeks old, and they started to get busy! They started walking, and toys were interested to their pen. Their pen was made bigger. Grass was also added to the end of the pen, so they can start toilet training (in theory).
The puppies only met one new person this week. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t meet a lot of people – they did! Just they were all (but one) repeats of the week before.
From the 25th of November (puppies at 19 days old) the puppies started to approach people in a happy way.
A waterbowl was introduced to the pen for puppies, but no pups were really interested at this age.
The set-up in this picture was soon changed, as the puppies weren’t quite strong enough to get up the ramp into the whelping box. The whelping box came out, and so the puppies were left with just a pen.
The puppies had been on this earth for 2 weeks! In this week, the puppies continued early neurological stimulation. They met 8 new people, meaning they have now met 30 people in their 14 days of life. The puppies had their first nail trim and were wormed for the first time.
Jakkalberry, 14 days old.
Physically, the puppies have now got their eyes open and their ears partially open. They are starting to toilet on their own, and starting to stand up to toilet.
Boomer, 14 days old.
Puppies are born with their eyes and ears closed, and are almost ‘blobs’ and personality-less. However, they can feel hot and cold, and they can smell, and that’s enough for us to begin to habituate puppies to touch and begin socialisation.
Clover and 3-day-old puppies.
Early Neurological Sitmulation
We always commence early neurological stimulation on our puppies. This is a program that runs from day 3 until day 16. However, the program very much advises that puppies are not overly stressed by this program being modified in any way – i.e. extending the times or the frequency of any of the stimulation. Because of this, I do not perform these stimulation exercises on days where we are expecting ‘puppy visitors’. These puppy visitors often handle the puppies in a way that tick many of the exercises, anyway. Because of our attempts at bottle feeding, puppies also did not undergo neurological stimulation on these days, as this process was deemed to be stressful enough for the pups. (Watch a video about early neurological stimulation.)
Some include an extra component of early neurological stimulation which includes introducing puppies to new smells. I don’t actively attempt to do this with my puppies, but they do receive exposure to new smells as mum is fed different foods in the whelping box, from different people handling the puppies, and also different products on these peoples (e.g. fabric conditioners, hand moisturisers, etc).
Meeting New People Continue reading
On day 4 of our puppies, I was woken by a crying puppy. This is not unusual. Puppies cry to voice their unhappiness at various times, and puppies often cry when they’re not touching mum or a sibling. However, the crying puppy on day 4 was different because this puppy was drinking and crying. To me, this was a frustrated cry because there was not enough milk available.
This is "Boomer", the worse offender of the crying!
The puppies have been gaining weight, but not as they should. It may be an ‘old wives tale’, but I was always told puppies should double their weight in the first week. These puppies haven’t come close.
This, along with the frustrated milk-sucking, made me conclude that Clover didn’t have enough milk for her big brood.
Immediately, I started feeding Clover fenugreek, which is supposed to increase milk production. It’s a herb/spice, and couldn’t hurt the situation.
I went and purchased Wombaroo (a dog milk substitute), baby bottles, and set on getting some milk formula into the puppies. Gee, that sounds a lot easier than the reality. There was no way I could get any puppy sucking the bottle.
A friend suggested a more time consuming method, of using a dropper to drop milk into the puppies’ mouths. The puppies were far more receptive to this method – but, of course, the two smallest puppies weren’t having a bar of it.
However, the good news is, these puppies are not on death’s door by any means. Except for their frustrated crying, they’re doing everything puppies should do. They look plump, they move around the whelping box easily, they cry when they’re unhappy, they twitch in their sleep. The good part of this story is that they’re not fat puppies, either. Border terrier babies have a habit of getting too fat to walk, so the fact that these puppies are slightly leaner is a good sign.
So, things are not ‘smooth sailing’, but things aren’t dire. We are managing.
