Week 4

What a week it has been too!! This week I have been so busy. My two older girls went to Young Womens camp with our church group. So that took away two of my helpers. They left early Wednesday morning and I did not expect to hear from them until Saturday afternoon. However first thing Thursday morning I got a phone call from Alexis that she was sick. So I gathered up as much medicine as I could think to bring for her and headed up to camp. They were camping way up in the mountains above Park City. So it was about a two hour drive for me to get there. Once I got there she said she was feeling a little better and was really having fun so she didn't want to leave. So I just dropped off the medicine and headed back home. I was worried that she would call again and I would need to make another drive out there but she did ok. Then Callie got sick. Well an upset stomach anyway. Someone (no one will admit it) left a stick of butter on a plate on the table. You can imagine why Callie had an upset stomach. Just like a baby though when she doesn't feel good she just wants to be held. Then it was Fathers Day!! I hope all you Fathers out there had a great day. I thought that because it was Fathers Day I would get some pictures of Tux with his little girl Annabelle. It didn't really work out very well as he decided he had better things to do.

He doesn't really want to sit and cuddle with the little one but I didn't expect he would. He will potty her though just as well as Callie does. For some reason he thinks that is fun or something. Dogs are a lot different from humans. Tux has no idea that he is her father. Dogs have no Fatherly instinct. To be honest a lot of times Father dogs will kill there young. Or will upset the Mother enough that she will kill them. In the wild if a mother dog feels threatened and one of her babies is making noise she will kill it in order to keep the predator from finding her and the other puppies. This instinct is not completely gone. Cavaliers are a very gentle, laid back, breed though. So it has not been a problem for me. I would be very careful anytime you try to add a Father into the family. But just so he is not left out here is a great picture of him from last week after he got groomed. Poor guy really needed it too. With the new puppy he had been really neglected.

Some other things that have been happening this week...
I have tried to feed Annabelle some puppy mush. She has walked in it, face planted in it, and actually ate it. The first time she just face planted and sucked it up. The next time she walked in it then sucked it off her paws. Last night she actually tried to be more neat and clean about it. She put her mouth on the side of the dish and tried to just eat the dish. She still needs a lot of help but she is getting better at using her tongue to lap it up. Right now I am just using a mixture of Goats Milk and some baby rice cereal. When she is done it is a huge sticky mess. Callie & Tux really enjoy cleaning her up though.

I have expanded her home now too. She is still pretty wobbly when she walks but she does walk around her box. She did manage to escape the box once. She just climbed right over the little edge at the doorway. Once she did it once I knew she would do it again. I don't want her to be able to just wander the family room. She would get lost and never be found again in that room. There is always kids with blankets lying on the floor watching movies and laundry baskets getting filled with clean clothes to take upstairs and put away, not to mention the toys that get taken out everyday. So I built her a larger home. In her box she still has her bed area. Then I added a potty area in there. The yellow blanket there is where she goes potty. She has done really well with that. For the last 4 days she has gone pee on that each time. Puppies learn very young that they want to be clean and do not want to sleep in a potty. It is pretty gross though because the yellow blanket does not get washed very often. It has to smell like a potty. That way she is attracted to the smell of where to go. In this picture you can see that sometimes I look in there and don't see her right away. I think maybe she did escape. But no when I look harder I find her. In this picture her body is under the cream colored blanket and just her head is sticking out right by one of the frogs.

Then just outside the box is just another gated off area for her. Eventually I will be moving the potty area further and further away from her bed. You can see right outside the sliding door there is another gated off area for her. The potty area will someday be moved out there. I do not expect her to think that the green carpet is grass I am just using it because the deck does have some large spaces between the boards and I am afraid that her foot could actually go through. Also the wood gets very hot to the touch in the middle of the day. I don't want to burn her little paws. I still need a sliding door insert for her to use to get outside but I have some time before I really need to worry about that. For now she has still only gotten out of the original box once. It will make a nice play area for her. I also have a water dish in there. She has shown no interest in it yet but it is good for her to see Callie and Tux using it. Eventually her food and water will both be in there.

Now at night when it is time for bed I take her upstairs and put her in a kennel. The kennel sits on the bed right next to me so that I can still hear her when she wakes up and needs to be fed during the night. Hopefully this will make kennel training her really easy. She is learning that it is an ok thing to be in there. It is actually warm and comfortable. When she does wake up during the night I take her down to her potty area. I will set her in the whelping box while I go and make her a bottle. By the time I come back she has done her business and is ready to eat and go back to sleep until morning. She does have some really sharp little puppy teeth now. I know this for sure since one time when I was cuddling her she tried to nurse on my earlobe. They are very sharp little teeth. Normally when they get teeth the mother dog will stop feeding them as much and the breeder needs to start supplementing with the puppy mash. So I figured it was time to start trying it. Well, that's what has been going on this week. I am trying to find my video camera so I can get some video of her trying to walk. It is really cute and still pictures just do not capture it as well. Hopefully I can find it today, the kids were the last ones to have it though so there is no telling. Maybe I will add some video's in the next couple of days though. Until then have a great one!!