Jazz and Bailey Litter – Week Three

We are spending more time awake!

“Oops!... I Did It Again”

You can’t blame a girl for trying. At least this time we witnessed the means by which Miss Garlic executed her second escape from the whelping box. Bailey was fast asleep in front of the opening when the little girl climbed atop one of her siblings, then walked across mom’s side and plummeted five inches onto the carpet below. The little ones are quite robust even at this age so she went right back to snacking at the milk bar.

Now that their vision is established beyond simply being able to detect light, dark and movement, the puppies are becoming increasingly curious about their surroundings and each other. As they are beginning to get acquainted with their littermates, they can often be observed standing in a group gently colliding or rubbing their noses and heads against one another. It is not essential for the recipient to actually be awake. This is the beginning of a key period for the puppies as they are developing rudimentary social skills. They are testing each other’s limits and learning the difference between hard and soft biting and they also take turns sleeping at the top and bottom of the sibling pile. To further enhance their experience, we’ve put stuffed animals in the whelping box as an obstacle course of sorts as well as fluffy playmates to cuddle with.

Meanwhile outside the whelping box, when Bailey is not engaged in her duty nursing and cleaning her pups, she likes to lounge on the cool tile floor of the ensuite just a few feet away from her brood or on the bed where she demands cuddles in her usual fashion. Since she’s very relaxed as a mom, Bailey’s trips outdoors are more leisurely now. While she’s seems to have backed off on the prospect of moving her puppies somewhere outside, she still find her surveying a few potential spots.

The pups are all growing very well and gaining weight which is all well and good, except that it means their nails are growing very rapidly too. This necessitates a weekly spa treatment whereby we’re trimming a total of 192 nails each time. I think it’s high time we humans had our own spa day!

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