As of last Thursday, all of the puppies' eyes and ears are open and they are all walking. They spend much of their time still sleeping and eating, with intermittent bouts of practice barking, howling and growling. They have also started playing with each other. Their noses have all changed from pink to black and their paws are also changing colors. Several of them are starting to get patterns on their heads as well.
They are still super cute.
(To clarify, the puppies are NOT eating dog food yet...this was Angel's food)
Angel spends much of her time cleaning up after them. When she comes back after taking a break, first she cleans the box where she intends to lie down, then she cleans each individual puppy. By the time she is done, some of the puppies have managed to latch on to nurse, so she has to maneuver around them to try to find a new spot to lie down and do the job right. (Which usually means all the work that I do every morning laying down fresh puppy pads gets undone as she pushes them off to the side.)
For those of you who like data and charts, I went through and charted all of the puppies' weight gain for the first 2 weeks. I put it in a Powerpoint presentation for you since Ms. Paula thought some of you might like to see it.
And that's about it for updates! We're hoping to keep them in the house for at least 2 more weeks, but we'll see how they do. As soon as they are able to climb out of that box, they will be moved out to the dog run. Once they have their first set of puppy vaccinations, we will begin introducing them to the pasture for some official Livestock Guardian training--about 6 weeks old.
This has been a fun adventure!
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