Day One

It's Day 1 of our life with the Andrews puppies. Pretty much it's going well. I fed them around 11 p.m. and they woke up around 4. The mid-night feeding wasn't terribly successful. Only Max took any significant amount of formula, but by the 7 a.m. feeding all three ate very well and, together, consumed half of the 4 oz bottle. It doesn't seem like much but they aren't very big!

If it's true that what goes in must go out, they are eating a LOT. With newborns like this, the mom is always stimulating their genitals to teach them how to pee and poop. It only takes a very light pressure on either to make them release copious (relatively speaking) amounts of both. Laverne is a veratible pooping machine. Max doesn't respond quite as well to stimulus, but as soon as you put him down, you have to get all three out of the cage and change the bedding because he's turned it orangish. Patty, who was my problem eater at the first feeding, is now becoming a little barricuda.

At least I'm not worrying about any of them squeezing through the bars of the cage and falling to the floor this time.

Patty

They have all bonded with my "mother teddy bear"

I don't know what I'm going to do when she isn't able to be used as a Mom any more. Other stuffed animals just don't cut it the way this teddy bear does.

Shiloh and Polly as dealing with the puppies all right, though when things get rough and there is no "mom" lap to climb into, they have found other options.

(notice how they look like they are waiting for my lap to be un-puppied!)

So, so far it's going pretty routinely. Puppies seem to eat better with each feeding. I'm doing about six loads of laundry a day and changing my clothes at least twice if not more times a day, but they are very sweet and I look forward to watching those milestone moments, when they occur.