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Teddy and Surrey Litter - Week Two

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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