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| This is how mom sleeps and while we feast! |
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
As if the expectations for Surrey’s
brood weren’t high enough! Surrey now spends her nights in the whelping box
getting as comfortable as she possibly can. This entails sleeping on her back.
Not only did Surrey’s little ones need to learn to stagger along on all fours,
they also had to hone their climbing skills if they wanted a late night snack
from the inverted milk bar.
The main attraction this week is that
the puppies’ eyes have opened. Puppies are born with their eyelids tightly shut
because the eye itself is still developing and is extremely fragile. The closed
eyelids serve as a barrier to protect the eyes from potential damage. Many of
their critical organs including their brain are not fully formed and they will
spend several weeks developing rapidly. The same is true of the eyes. Now that
their eyes are open, it will take a couple of weeks before their eyes mature
and their eyesight begins to approach normal. The ear canals begin to open at
around the same time, but are much more fully formed than the eyes and their
hearing will become quite acute within a week or so.
While the
little ones do spend the bulk of their time eating and sleeping, they spend
some of it exercising. While they lay there asleep, the puppies are constantly
twitching. These involuntary actions, referred to as “activated sleep”, help
strengthen their leg muscles allowing them to plod along on all fours. We also
put stuffed animals into the whelping box which forces the puppies to climb
over the obstacles to reach their target (usually the milk bar or a sibling to
sleep on) thereby building muscle mass.
Newborn puppies are unable to
regulate their own body temperature and for the first three weeks, their
temperature climbs one degree until it reaches the normal range. When mom is on
her break, we use a heat lamp to keep everyone warm and cozy, but when mom’s
around, they’ll either snuggle up with her or lay intertwined with their
siblings. We all need someone to lean on….
That’s it for now, but be sure to
join us next week for another riveting installment of “Puppy Tales”.
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