We do love our beauty sleep. “The Wrong Turn” Chanel has always been an exuberant mom and she demonstrated this fact the other day. On her way back into the house from a washroom break, she marched right past her own whelping box and straight into Paige’s, settled in and began to nurse Paige’s two-day old pups in true Golden spirit. Fortunately, Paige didn’t seem to mind. It’s exciting for us when the puppies’ eyes open at around the 10-day mark. Many of the puppies’ critical organs including their brain are not fully formed and they will spend several weeks developing rapidly. Since the gestation period in dogs is short (63 days), the tradeoff is that puppies are quite helpless at birth. Biologists refer to species that produce immature dependent offspring as altricial, which means “to nurse, to rear or to nourish”. It refers to the need for the young of these species to be fed and taken care of for a long period of time. Puppies are born with their eyelids tightly shut because the ey...