Jazz and Bailey Litter – Week Four

Growing bigger by the hour!

“Oink, Oink”

Golden Retrievers are passionate about love and life, but they’re also passionate about food. And it seems that Bailey’s brood has learned about that at the tender young age of four weeks. This week the group was introduced to gruel or mush:  a healthy concoction of puréed kibble, oatmeal, honey, goat’s milk, probiotics and vitamins to supplement the feedings they get from their mom. The charge was led by Mr. Basil who had a solid thirty seconds of private time with the food bowl before he ran out of elbow room. It didn’t take long for the rest of the mini-pack to catch on and with virtually every meal, the bowl is polished to a factory finish. Not only does the gang congregate around the food bowl, but they also fall asleep in it. We don’t fully understand how or why, but this has been the messiest litter on record that routinely needs to be cleaned up after every meal. We’re convinced that piglets have better etiquette albeit their mom doesn’t seem to mind because she helps to clean them up afterward.

A lot has happened this week in the little world known as Bailey’s whelping box. For starters, this group along with Sierra’s litter has moved from the bedroom to the living room. To Bailey’s delight, this venue is more like a V.I.P. lounge in that it has sofa she can relax on and access to a private section of the yard that she and fellow mom, Sierra can hang out in. Not only was there a change in venue, but an extension was added to the whelping box to double its size. Now that the puppies are growing, they need a bit more space to allow them to pick up speed as they scramble from end to end.

There’s always an adventure of one type or another. One evening as the household was winding down and getting ready for bed, Sierra began to bark incessantly from the living room which is at the opposite end of the house. This demanded a trip down the hall to investigate. What we discovered was that Miss Pepper had somehow escaped out of the whelping box into the living room and that’s what Sierra was trying to tell us. So where was Miss Pepper’s mom? Bailey was right there on the living room sofa putting some finishing touches on a bone she was enjoying at the time, leaving the policing up to her friend and roommate Sierra. I suppose it all gets back to food again somehow….

That’s it for now, but be sure to join us next week for another rustic installment of “Puppy Tales”.