Life with Puppies

I started out sleeping on the couch last night. I'm usually good for only 2-3 hours there, if I fall asleep. Then I have to move to the recliner. It was aboaut 2:30 when I woke up and staggered to the recliner. I could smell that the puppies had pooped, but I didn't want to see how bad it was because I didn't want to wake me and the puppies up. So I just climbed into the chair and went back to sleep.

It was about 6:30 when I finally got up to check how bad it was. I have now covered most of the floor with towels, so it's a bit easier to clean, but the flip side of that is that the puppies are now learning how much fun it is to take the corner of cloth and drag it around.

How to explain what I saw....

Well, ya know that scene in Bambi where he encounters snow for the first time and Thumper takes him down to the frozen pond and they both go to glide around on the pond, but instead they just kind of slide across it and twirl around on their stomachs on the ice it?

Like that.

The only thing that might have made it better is if they had a trowel and could have spread it a bit more thinly and widely.

Face it, puppies are going to have poop. There's nothing you can do about it. If they don't, that's when you worry. Cleaning it up is just part of taking care of puppies. But it's especially "fun" when they think you are playing a game and only want to grab hold of the cloth you are using to clean with!

This "bedroom/yard" system is wonderful. I have laid down the rule that the puppies come out of their fenced area ONLY if someone is either holding them or watching them. I'm not going to have any more of those furtive runs down the hall to the living room. The living room rug maybe a disaster already, but I don't need soft puppy stool on it too.

I thought it would be great to lock them in their bedroom area and clean up the yard, but I couldn't get the door unhooked from the fence, so I just did what I could while they were walking on my feet, chasing the rag, and trying to climb up my leg. The good thing about them is they have already trained themselves to go out of the bedroom area and out into the yard area to do their business, and then go back into the bedroom to sleep. Makes cleaning up the cage/bedroom MUCH easier!

Eventually the yard was kinda sorta clean and I could give them breakfast. They are now eating huge amounts of kibble at feeding time, which is great.

Polly and Shiloh went off to training with SPCA volunteers, and sometime in the afternoon, we took the puppies to Petco too. They are too young to be put up for adoption, but it was time for their first shots.

Baby's first shot. Awww....

The regular, wonderful SPCA photographer was not going to be there today, so I agreed to substitute, though my work is vastly inferior to what Ron does. And it drove Polly and Shiloh nuts to have me there where they couldn't get into my lap.

The puppies were the center of attention, of course. Walt carried them from the car into and out of Petco and everyone who noticed the carrier stopped him to look at the puppies.

One girl stuck her finger through the door to pet them and said she had never seen puppies this small. Of course, my reaction was "small? these guys are HUGE!"

Of course there were no nibbles on Shiloh or Polly. The woman who liked Polly two weeks ago, and who did not fill out an application form seems to have disappeared.

Sigh.

But the puppies aren't all poop and cleaning up. They are learning how to play. They now know how to get out of their bedroom area, they carry toys around, they bat at each other and "mouth wrestle." They pretend to growl and occasionally even sound angry.

I suspect that when these guys are ready for adoption it won't take a year to find them forever homes