Puppies, puppies, puppies

It seems like I spend a lot of time thinking of puppies these days - can't imagine why!

It is truly a lot of work and a full time job raising a litter of puppies, especially nine of them.  I can really see myself doing this only rarely.  However I can't imagine not making my own puppy after doing this.  It is amazing to know this much about my puppy before I really start working with it.  I have gotten puppies from breeders where I knew very little about what life was like for my puppy before I got them. 

Creating and maintaing an enriched environment is a lot of work.  I change out all of the stuff daily so I have to have clean sets of toys and obstacles available as well as rugs.  Today we are taking a break from the tube because the puppies are ready to start running.  The pen is long and narrow and they are getting up some speed running back and forth!  We also added plastic tape hanging from the ceiling and dangling down over the puppies.  With the various fans going it blows around a lot.  A couple of pups noticed it hours later but so far not much response to it.  One of them noticed the door to the room shutting today for the first time.  There is the start of some startle responses.  They had a good day in their crates today because Myra was back and fed them baby food while I cleaned the pen.  If anyone was watching the webcam today you may have seen I had many happy helpers while I was cleaning the pen.  I was trying to do what I could do while waiting for Myra to show up to help.  The puppies went wild running up and back in the empty pen and tearing up the papers.  A few wanted to get into the garbage bag!

Sinco is not much interested in feeding the pups anymore.  This is about a week and a half to two weeks earlier than expected.  Fortunately the pups have been eating softened puppy food for several days.  I guess Sinco is really ready to get back to agility!