Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Happiness is puppy with a full belly

Not much other stuff is going on around our household in the past three days, but taking care of the puppies, and mainly "Lucky".

It reminds me of what our friends that have children say, that your life gets turned around and upside down.

Not that this is our first puppy experience, we´ve had some dozen litters since 1993, but this is quite intense experience, when you have a baby that needs all your help and care. It reminds me a lot of when Sparky was born and had to be bottle fed entirely. I had to take a 3 week leave from my office and spent basically 24/7 with them.

Lucky the puppy has been doing quite well basically since Sunday evening, but there was one thing that worried me a lot and was a reason I didn´t want to share any news about her yet. Despite drinking well from Star and getting the extra boost from the supplemental feeding, she lost 20g the first day and 30g the second day. I was quite worried. She looked happy and satisfied, no crying, but she started to look skinny, comparing to her siblings with full bellies, which so much remind me of the little mumin trolls from Tove Janson´s wonderful childrens books.

Good thing is that I keep my notebook, which I had since our very first litter was born. I have all kinds of information about each of the litter in it, including the daily weighing, and that helps me a great deal to keep focussed and calm, as to Lucky´s weight loss. Sparky (who had been also through a traumatic birth) and a few other puppies had lost weight the first couple days, so we do not need to panic.

Yesterday I finally saw her belly "filling up" and nervously waited for the late evening weighing of the puppies. And then a big relief came, when I saw 500g on the scale. Lucky gained 50g during yesterday, which put her back on her birth weight! Another little victory has been achieved!

Now the new goal is gaining weight every day, like the others, and actually getting over that 500g mark, and catching up with her brothers and sisters. We will keep her on the supplmental feeding for some time for sure. The good thing is, that she is not any smaller in size than others, she just lost the weight due to the traumatic experience, I believe.

We take it all one step at a time.

So now I finally dare to post some more individual pictures of the little fighter, including a few pics from yesterday, when the whole bunch formed this cute line-up.

Enjoy and please keep Lucky in your thoughts. Thank You!

The only face showing is "Lucky". Happy in the puppy pile

A close up of the "L"

Drinking from the mom all by herself

Resting after a good meal

Look how great my children are!
Star sure likes to show her family off :)

The line up

Note that we have two sets of twins: the puppy on the very right and the last puppy in the line, on the left are one pair, and the second and third (from right) darker gray ones are another one. Both are girl/boy twin couple.

Hmm, I wonder how we will deal with the litter theme this time :)

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah! Lucky and Luke :) No I guess they will all start with an "I" but you sure come up with something!

I think that neming puppies should come from the breeder if not the breeder are absolutely out of control and seriously destroying the reputation of the breed ;)

Once again; good luck(y) with all of them and take care!

Katerina said...

Actually, this litter will most likely start with "CH", as it is an official letter in the Czech alphabet, after H and before I. It is not necessary to follow of course, but we might be sticking to that, as we already have a few name ideas that we play around with :)

P.S. If Lucky was a boy, Lucky Luke would fit her quite nicely :)

Unknown said...

I meant Lucky (the girl) and Luke one of the boys :))

Anna said...

Lovely puppies!
Canucks & Dunis puppies are growing every day, the grey one is a bit smaller than the others. They have opened their eyes and are now beginning to recognize the big, big world around them.
Best wishes from all of us to all of you!

Elodie said...

Happy to finally see the new pups ( of the father of my small Holiatsok ) of Canuck . Congratuation with Star . I am in a hurry to see their evolutions .

Selma said...

Awww! Cute puppies!Good luck(y)!
They're so cute!Wanna come over to your house and steal them all :)
Aww! they are cute!
Good luck with the names

ClaireWalter said...

I was actually looking for a post about Nordic Walking to reference on http://nordic-walking-usa.blogspot.com, but somehow cyber-stumbled on this one. I'm glad that I did, because your posts and your pictures are wonderful.