The puppies are now 4 weeks old and are doing well (knock on wood, always knock on wood!). The little girl is still very, very little, but she is gaining steadily (if slowly) and her activity and development are on par with her brothers, so we’re hoping she’s just little. A number of different things could be wrong, but unless we start seeing signs of a problem we’ve decided not to borrow trouble — so long as I can say that if it weren’t for her size I wouldn’t be worried at all, I’m trying not to worry. (It’s not easy — my natural inclination is to worry exponentially more than is necessary! — but I’m working on it.) We started introducing solid foods today, so hopefully that will give her a boost — often smaller puppies do start gaining more once they’re on solid foods, and have caught up to their littermates by 12 weeks of age.
We moved the puppies into their new room today — they started crawling out of the pool a week ago, but rather than move them at that time (3 weeks is considered a fear period, although we did move the last litter at that age) we set up a puppy area where the pool had been — it was kind of a nice transition from the pool to the large space they have now, which is understandably intimidating. They’ve settled in well, so far — of course they have some familiar things with them, which helps. We added a small dog bed a few days ago, which they love to pile up and sleep in. (Soon we’ll add another one, as they’ll be getting too big to all fit in the one bed!) They’ve got one of the fleece ‘blankets’ they had in the pool/whelping room and all of the toys they had. We’ve added a few rugs (their new area has vinyl flooring, so the rugs provide traction as well as another texture) and a brick that had been outside (new object/feel and smells). We’ll bring in a radio in a day or two and start leaving it on during the day, set to a different type of station each time. Some new toys will make their way into the room as well, probably baby toys which are good for noise and motion.
As I noted, we started feeding sold foods today. Last time we started at 3 weeks; I held off this time because many of the raw ‘gurus’ say puppies can’t digest non-milk foods until 4 weeks old. Of course the last litter didn’t have problems that we noticed, but I didn’t see as much shivering the first time we fed this litter as we saw with the last one, and I wonder if that’s an indication. (Or it could be that I took pains to be sure the food was room temperature this time.) There are as many different raw weaning methods as there are people who feed raw diets, so deciding which process to use can be frustrating! We decided to combine a couple, so we’re giving 1/2 oz. balls of raw hamburger to start; they each had one at about 6:30 p.m. and will have another at about 11 p.m. Tomorrow we’ll feed those three times, and depending on how it goes I may start a goat’s milk gruel for the evening meal (goat’s milk, egg, kefir, NR Tree Bark Gruel, and baby barley cereal to thicken it). If they do well with that, we’ll give two meals of each for this week, then next week will mix the burger with the gruel and start feeding ground raw chicken (with bone). At some point this week we’ll throw a few wings in for them to suck on/play with, so they start to get the idea. Emma will have free access to them most of the time, as well — while we’re gone during the day, and at night — so they’ll still be nursing off of her, too. I think she’ll be glad that they’re getting some food elsewhere, though; she’s been a little reluctant to feed them and I know from experience that their sharp little teeth are coming in!
