Re-Max

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Guess Who We Saw Today

Yes, that is Max, the teeny puppy I used to be able to hold in one hand.

I had to go to Trader Joe's this afternoon and Walt suggested we stop by Petco and see the puppies.

It's hard to think of these mooses as "babies" any more! I couldn't believe how big they were.

I'm not sure if Laverne recognized me, but Patty definitely did. Which makes sense since she was the last to wean, and the one who spent the most time with me. She wagged her tail a lot and licked me and then when I backed up and moved off to the left to let others get up front at the fence to look at them, she kept moving down to the left so she could keep her eyes on me and try to climb up the fence, just like she always did when she lived here.

Max was his usual blasé self.

Even when he woke up and we petted him, his attitude was "ho-hum...who are you again?" But then that was how he behaved when he was here too. Excitement is not in Max's vocabulary.

(Max and Patty)

While we were re-visiting the puppies, we also had some official business to take care of;

Yes, it's official. She's ours. I noticed wryly that her immunizations expired a week ago, so our first job with her is to take her to the vet and spend lots of money to get her up to date. But since apparently after you foster a dog for a year, the SPCA will waive the adoption fee, it's not so bad.

I sure would like to know what it's like to be a dog, with that sensitive nose. Lizzie has always "taken inventory" of wherever we've been when we get home sniffing and sniffing and sniffing our clothes, but my god, she followed me around the house and sat next to me for about 20 minutes after we got hom from Petco, trying to sort out all the smells!

Puppies Gone

Walt got hold of the camera this morning when I was surrounded by puppies. It was our last day with them.

I loved being mom to these little guys and when they all crowded around me whenever I moved, it was really kind of fun...but I knew that the time had come for them to go.

They were going to a foster family in Woodland, with a house and kids and it sounded like exactly the kind of transitional home they would need until adopted.

It was a sunny (if cold) day and I took them outside to run around. They have been having such fun discovering all sorts of things.

After they came in for a nap, I went and met my friend Ruth for lunch. My plan had been to go to the store afterwards, but I found as I sat there with her that I was just totally exhausted (as a matter of fact, she asked at one point if I was OK) and once I got into the car, all I wanted to do was to come home and have a nap, which I did--for two hours.

Marta and a friend came over shortly before we had to take the puppies to the SCPA shop. She was needing a puppy fix and the puppies obliged nicely. Then we loaded them into the car, the girls in the carrying crate and Max in my arms.

We were there to meet the new family and I think it's going to be a good fit. I stuck Max in the crate with the others and Walt said his goodbyes. Notice that I packed their tiny bed to go along with them. I figured it would make them feel better tonight, having a familiar place to sleep, albeit hopelessly small for them!

We stopped at Steve's Pizza on the way home and had a salad for dinner, since I had not gone to the store earlier, and then came home to take down the fencing around the dog crate and clean up a bit before going off to Sacramento to see Cirque Dreams Holidaze, the new show at the Community Center.

The show was enjoyable -- like the Ed Sullivan Show on steroids! My favorite is still the quick change artists. I am completely fascinated by how they DO that, especially changing outfits in a shower of confetti.

However, the show had a bizarre finale that a woman I spoke with afterwards found offensive. Two scantily clad acrobats do this marvelously athletic, beautifully sensuous routine to "Oh Holy Night." I had to admit that rather than "this is the night of our dear Saviour's birth" it looked like the night of our dear Saviour's conception...and it certainly would not have been a virgin birth. The singing was nice and the routine was beautiful, but they definitely did not fit together.

The woman I spoke with said that she was by no stretch of the imagination religious, but she found it offensive. I suppose I will mention that in my review!

It seems lonely around here with "only" 3 dogs. But it's nice to know that I won't have to tiptoe around the house for fear of waking the puppies up if I wake up in the middle of the night.

I sure did like those little guys. I hope they all go to wonderful homes.

Those BIG Puppies

It was nearly 5 p.m. before I realized I was still in my pajamas. I had been working on photos and videos from Christmas as well as videos of the puppies ever since I woke up and hadn't even thought about getting dressed.

I will soon be flooding the internet with mind-numbingly boring Christmas videos, but--hey--I'm a grandmother now, and I gather that's one of the perks! Who's going to deny me the opportunity to bore the world with videos of the back of Bri's head and lengthy discourses which are totally unintelligible because of the combination of baby-speak and bad video microphone? I can feel the anticipation in the reading audience already.

However, I start the flood of videos with what is probably going to be the last video of the puppies (though I may take more tomorrow). They are moving to a new foster home tomorrow afternoon. It was with heavy heart that I made the request to move them, but there was so much potential serious trouble brewing with the big dogs, who barely tolerate the puppies and the puppies, who are now big enough to demand rough play (plus Polly who just stood in my chair, whined pathetically and tried to get me to pick her up!) that I could not see trying to ride herd on this crew for much longer. The puppies need more room to run around in. Luckily today it was not raining and they had some good runs outside, but inside, they need to be locked up and that doesn't seem fair if there is some better solution.

We can separate the big dogs from the little dogs, but that presents a problem if Sheila and Lizzie want to go outside.

The decision of When To Move the Puppies is always a difficult one, but it's even more difficult when you have thoroughly enjoyed a particular litter.

The girls are such fun to watch, and so inquisitive that they have learned a lot on their own very quickly.

Patty may have weaned last, but she was the first
to figure out how to get through the dog door!

And everybody is in love with plotzy Max, who just wants to go limp in your lap but isn't terribly bright.

Laverne lording it over her brother because she and Patty
have come into the house thru the dog door, and he
can't figure out how they did it.

So we will miss them, but it's time to tell them goodbye. My plan is to take a break from fostering for awhile (and there's still Polly in the mix) but I know that all it takes is a good sob story, or a litter of orphans and that resolve will go by the wayside.

(Shhh...don't tell the SPCA that!)

Season of Miracles

My entry a year ago is called "The Christmas Miracle," referring to the fact that I seemed to have gotten over a cold overnight, and would not be spoiling Christmas.

There was another miracle on this date this year, only a very different one. Mid-morning, two trucks pulled up across the street...

It was the AT&T guys showing up, after nearly a week, to finally bury the electric wires in our neighbor's driveway. They were here a couple of hours and when they finished, they asked me to check to see if everything worked. It did.

Several hours later, it still works. Be still my heart.

The other miracle of the day was watching President Obama sign the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't tell. As emotional a ceremony as that was, it didn't affect me as much as this video shows.

I was wiping away tears as Harry Reid returned Choi's West Point ring to him. God, let's hope this whole thing is behind us now!

---

The only problem with today was that Walt and I had forgotten to coordinate. When he went off to work I thought he would be on his bike like every other day, but he was going to the post office and it was a grey day, threatening rain (which hasn't arrived yet) and so he took the car.

My plan for the day had been to do some baking. I'm bringing dessert to my mother's tomorrow's early Christmas dinner, and pumpkin pies to Walt's sister's house in Santa Barbara for Christmas. I also wanted to do some baking to leave goodies for Ashley, who will be staying here while we are gone.

But with no car, there was no way to get to the store to buy all the stuff I needed to do.

I did get something baked for Ashley, and wrapped all of the Christmas presents. I finally got to the store at 7 p.m., after watching Jeopardy. So as I write this, there is a pumpkin cheesecake baking and when it is finished, I can get some sleep so we can start our multi-day Christmas festivities.

I will have the laptop with me, but wifi is iffy at my mother's, so I don't know if I will post an entry tomorrow night or not. I will WRITE one and then see if it can be posted.

---

Puppy Update: I swear I weighed these puppies 3 days ago and Max was about 10-1/2 lbs. Today he is THIRTEEN pounds! He's getting too heavy to lift over the fence in the doggie yard!

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

Screwed by Technology

I have no bad feelings about the Kaiser operator. She was only doing her job, but I wanted to scream.

Kaiser has this neat system where you can e-mail your doctor, get your lab results, refill prescriptions, schedule appointments, etc. You have to register on line first.

I decided it would be peachy keen to get my mother an account so I could follow up with her doctor on her meds and lab tests and all that so I could explain it to her by telephone, without having to always drive 80 miles to go with her for a simple lab test.

So I started the registration process, but unfortunately I didn't realize I would need the last four digits of her social security number, so I had to stop the registration until I could get it from her.

When I got it, I went to continue the registration, only I got the message that because the registration had been discontinued before it had been completed, they couldn't give me a password by e-mail. I would have to get the password by regular snail mail.

Well, OK. No problem. I just let my mother know that a message would be coming for me and to let me know when it got there. It did, she did, and I went to complete the registration only I made a stupid mistake. I thought I had set the account up in her full name (initials and last name). But the password didn't work. I did it twice, thinking that I had put in the password wrong. Then I realized that I hadn't used that name at all; I had used just her first name. So I tried that, and got a message that because the account had been accessed 3 times, they could only, again, give me a password by snail mail.

Sigh. OK. Once again, no problem. Just a delay before I could finish it. Today I got the new password, entered the right log-in name and the new password and AGAIN got the message that they could not let me onto the account unless I got another new password.

I called the help line and explained my plight and yeah, yeah, I know all about HIPAA regulations. I helped to implement them for our office ten years ago. The operator was very sympathetic and said she, too, was helping her own mother and was not able to access her mother's records either. She said the only way that could happen was for my mother to talk to the operator directly.

Well...my mother talking to anybody about anything having to do with the internet? Not gonna happen. Ever. Not in anybody's lifetime. So I have to drop the whole idea and just drive 80 miles if I want to read her lab results and explain them to her.

Yeah, yeah...I know it's for her (and my) safety...but it's sometimes so damn frustrating

We've had a rearrangement in the family room. The puppies are so darn big that they can't be locked away in the cage all the time...and they're sleeping less so awake more and they don't need to be fed every time they wake up.

But as they become more mobile, they are getting into more trouble. Laverne, for whatever reason, figured out that when she gets out of the cage she should run down the hall and poop on the living room rug. They still have soft stools, so it's not quite as easy as cleaning up the excrement from the older dogs.

I know that puppies often live in cages, but I can't stand to think about how little space they have to play in. So I remembered that I still have an SPCA gate that I borrowed some time ago and figured I could connect it to the cage, so that they have a sleeping space and a big playing/pooping space. Since this picture was taken, I've moved a rug to the fence space and put their water on that, so they don't keep getting water on their bedding. I also added a few toys and they have started playing with them, which is very cute.

The overall arrangement is one I'm happy with. Of course they only want to get out and haven't noticed that they have all that free space, but at least I don't feel they are cramped any more.

Of course it means Walt and I have only about a 12" strip of floor to walk in, but what do we matter anyway?

A final fun thing about today is that when I was putting the 6th load of poopy towels into the dryer, it refused to start. The dryer is not working--well at least not working because the door won't close. I already have another load of towels in the washing machine waiting to be dried.

This is my work-around for now:

Another use for duct tape!!!

The puppies are not always sweet and cuddly.
Two of them looked like they'd body-surfed in poop.

In the Holiday Spirit

Once again I am all imbued with the spirit of Christmas. I've seen three Christmas plays and have only one more (A Christmas Carol) to go and I will have done my Christmas duty once again.

The first play was the stage version of It's a Wonderful Life at the Winters Community Theater. I just love this group. They define "community theater" and don't claim to be anything other than community theatre, but they are having such fun and are so earnest about it, you can't help but love them.

Some in this cast were excellent and overall the play was enjoyable. Plus, how can you not love a company that gives you dessert before the play? This time, in keeping with the season, it was pumpkin pie--usually it's cheesecake. All that and champagne too.

The second show was Miracle on 34th Street at the Woodland Opera House. Another enjoyable production, though a show with over 30 scenes, most of which involve changing scenery, does tend to drag just a bit. The Santa hats on the tech crew was a nice touch.

Miracle on 34th Street was always my very favorite Christmas movie. I loved the hope, the magic and the mystery at the end. When little Natalie Woods finds Kris Kringle's cane at the very house she asked Santa for for Christmas, my tears start flowing.

The movie was made in 1947 and has been remade four times, three times as a made for TV movie once as another feature film. There was a Broadway musical and in 2006 someone adapted the movie for the stage. It's obviously a timeless classic and the audience really seemed to love it.

I saw the third show, Every Christmas Story Ever Told at Capital Stage tonight. I think this is the third time I've seen the show and I still love it. It's a three-man play. I'd seen Eric Wheeler and Gary S. Martinez in their roles before, but this time Peter Mohrmann (Capital Stage Artistic Director) joined the cast and added a marvelous element to it.

The three cover, as the title says, every Christmas Story Ever Told, from How the Grince Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, It's a Wonderful life, A Christmas Story. They also manage to get in the history of fruitcake, obscure christmas traditions around the world, and (almost) every Christmas song ever written. The whole thing is great fun.

Pictured is Gary S. Martinez playing Gustav the Green-Nosed Reingoat (renamed for copyright reasons, we are told). I can't seem to write a review of this show without mentioning that Martinez seems to be the heart of the piece. He just has this wonderful, gentle manner about him that touches my heart. I was glad to see he was in it again this year.

Shortly after I returned home, the puppies woke up to eat. I'm also letting them out to wander around the house, which is confusing all the dogs.

I managed to get all three of them onto solid food today.

'm still offering a bottle at the end of the nighttime meal, though, so they will sleep all night. But I have to watch Shiloh. He is entirely too eager to grab puppy paraphernalia and run off with it.

My very best nipple and now it's gone. Damn dog. He also followed one of the puppies to where she was going to relieve herself, while I was bottle feeding another pup, and he ate all the feces before I could get up and clean it up. That's a bit of "modified rapture." Not too keen on Shiloh having poopy breath, but it was nice not to have to clean it up.

Gimme That Bottle

The puppies' siblings started on solids 2 days ago, when their family ran out of formula. The report is that they took to it like they'd been waiting for it all their lives. We've had puppies like that, who dove into solid food and never looked back.

Patty, Max and Laverne are so big (Laverne 3 lb 12 oz, Patty 4 lb 6 oz, Max 4 lb 12 oz -- it seems like only a few days ago when I was amazed that they were 2 lbs already!) that I figured they, like their sisters, would take to solid food easily.

I didn't want to start them yesterday, Thanksgiving. For one thing, it would be entirely too complicated to start them at my mother's, and for another, where would the cute "baby feeding puppy" pictures be then?

The puppies woke me up around 7 this morning and I decided to just give them the usual bottle and deal with solid food at the next feeding.

I mixed up some puppy kibble, warm water, a bit of formula, and some canned puppy food I had bought for Shiloh last week. Shiloh and Polly were thrilled to see all this action going on, and very disappointed when they found out it wasn't going to be for them.

I put all 3 puppies in the big cage with the bowl of food and sat back to see what would happen.

The Great Solids Experiment from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

Polly sat outside and whined and tried to stick her paw through the bars of the cage to reach the bowl of food.

Max discovered it first and while he didn't attack it like it was chocolate and he had been waiting for chocolate all his life, he did eat steadily at it. Patty was a bit less interested, but did work at it for a bit.

As for Laverne, she cried, she walked through it, she sniffed it, she sat in it, she cried some more but took not a single taste. I finally gave up and gave her a bottle. She sighed in happy relief.

All the puppies slept their normal amount of time. At the next feeding, I omitted the formula (on the suggestion of the other foster parent, though I've always used formula with the puppies I've weaned). Had significantly less luck this time around. Max and Patty were disinterested almost immediately. Laverne again had no interest and I gave her a bottle. I did hand feed her a couple of bites of food and she took it, but didn't want more than a couple of tastes.

Walt and I went to the theatre tonight, and when we got home, all the puppies were howling for food, so I just went with formula--so much easier. They are, however, starting to play with the nipple more and more and suck less...the suck reflex seems to be less strong now. So tomorrow I will get serious about getting them onto kibble full time. I think I'll go back to mixing with formula, which is a familiar taste to them.

I always was slow to wean...babies, puppies... I enjoy the time feeding them myself rather than giving them a bowl of food to feed themselves.

We are letting them out of the cage to wander around the floor when I start to feed them. Two explore, one eats. Can't really call these guys "toddlers," but "waddlers" fits quite nicely. They are learning how to get up on their feet/legs on the Pergo, but mostly they slide along on their stomachs.

It was very helpful to have Xena and her babies here earlier this year because I observed the mom-puppy interaction and was able to see that puppies with mothers emit a whining sound all the time too. It's not so much a whine, I don't think, as it is an instinctive way of letting Mom know where they are at all times. Max did get a little more frantic out in the kitchen all alone when he didn't know where I was. When I stood up at the door to the kitchen and called him, his head popped up and he scrambled over to me.

They are learning how to come on command.

Very soon they will be eating on their own and we will have taken the first step toward finding them forever homes. Much too soon to start publishing their pictures, of course, but weaning marks the first step.

Doo Doo Nice Puppy

It was so good to see my mother with the puppies today. (That's her with Laverne at the right.)

My mother has always been one of those cloying people who talk baby-talk to animals. I remember when my sister had a hamster named Tang, because he was the color of the drink.

My mother would hold him in her hands at night and croon "ooo...doo doo nice Tangers..." over and over again. (To this day we still tease her about that.)

Today the puppies made their ?third trip to San Rafael and this is the first time she's even really noticed them. The first time I brought them down, she did help give them a bath, since they were so poopy. And she's held one or the other of them in her lap to calm them down while was feeding the other puppy.

But there was no baby talk and no real cuddling and interacting with them.

Today she was scheduled for a blood test and I packed the puppies in the car around 7:30 and we headed off to her house. She still didn't remember what she was going to get or where she was supposed to get it and I probably had to explain a dozen times that her doctor is going to call her tomorrow.

My heart also sank when I got there. I had told her on Sunday and yesterday and this morning that this was a fasting blood test and as we were walking to the hospital she confessed she'd had a glass of orange juice. "That's ok," she laughed. "I'll just lie about it..." So I explained again the purpose of blood tests and warned that they might not take her blood. The receptionist had the same reaction, but apparently the phlebotomist decided to take it anyway. Fortunately. Next time I'll be more specific--no food OR drink!

But she is obviously feeling better physically. And when she took a puppy in her lap while I was feeding another puppy, the old baby talk was there. Of course how could you not? They are almost growing visibly each day. Their fur is growing out so that they feel fluffy, and they are sucking on each other less (possibly because they are drinking 6-8 oz of formula at each feeding and are too sated to do anything but lie on their backs and sleep).

(I can hardly wait for Brianna to see the puppies on Thursday. What is a better photo op than babies with puppies?)

If my turkey thaws out by tomorrow, I plan to try brining a turkey this year. I've never done it before, but people rave about how good the turkey is. Of course, the turkey right now is still mostly frozen, but definitely thawing. They say three days eis enough to thaw a frozen turkey.

Also going to make pumpkin pies tomorrow. I tried out the new pie crust maker that I bought a few weeks ago. Despite making pies all of my adult life, and proclaiming myself an "expert" especially at making crust, for some reason, using the same recipe, the same ingredients, the same procedure, I cannot roll out a crust to save my soul. They crack and break and sometimes I even throw them away because I've worked them so much I know they are going to be tough--and I hate a tough crust.

So someone told me about this pie crust maker, which is a plastic zippered pouch into which you put your ball of dough. Then you zip it up and roll it out. It was the first pie crust I've rolled out perfectly in a very lng time, so I am convinced that my pumpkin pies will go very well this year.

Condo to Dorm

Well, the great "Dorm to Condo" experiment was a bust.

The mother of our puppies' siblings said that for her it resulted in the puppies sleeping longer, the beds staying less messy, and going longer periods between feedings.

None of that happened for me, except the beds staying cleaner (of course, because only one was pooping and peeing in any given bed at any given time!).

In one respect, it was very nice because I am well aware of the soothing properties of sucking and didn't want to deny my puppies that crutch, so I spent most of the day either feeding puppies, or taking them, one on one, into my lap and letting them suck on whatever uncovered body part of mine they wanted. (Fingers, mostly, but some arm flesh was sucked on as well)

While Max and Patty didn't seem to mind their lonely cages, Laverne hated her cage. In truth, she had the smallest one, since I only have two cages and so she was in the plastic carrying crate, which only has one small side you can look out of. She did the most complaining.

At their mid-day feeding, I switched Patty to the traveling crate and put Laverne in the larger cage and that seemed to work better.

But then I started getting messages from people encouraging me to put the puppies back together again, talking about the value of that interaction with siblings and how adult dogs who had been raised as singletons often had emotional problems because they didn't get enough sucking as puppies.

Someone told me about using pacifiers to help and I decided I would get some tomorrow.

But in the meantime, after their evening feeding, I put them all back together into the one big cage. Within 5 minutes, I had taken this photo, thinking what a great Photo of the Day it would make

But only a few minutes later, I got an even better Photo of the Day, as I think you will agree if you check it out below.

I think that they are glad to all be together again.

---

I did something today that I never thought I would ever do. I unfriended someone on Facebook. In fact, three someones (one got unfriended by being the spouse of the person I was really angry with).

While I don't want to go into details about what prompted the unfriending, suffice to say that the main reason was that I didn't want these persons to be reading anything I write again. At least one of them, and possibly two, have infuriated me beyond belief, and hurt someone I love very much. I learned this from a third party today and I just don't want to ever have anything to do with any of them again.

It has been a very long time since I've been this angry at any individual.

Dorm to Condo

As the puppies grow bigger, their sucking reflex gets stronger. They now eat more (usually) and they are sucking on everything, especially since they are also teething. "Sucking on everything" includes each other. If they had a mother, they would be permanently attached to her underbelly, but since they don't they have attached themselves to each other. Max is a logical subject, having a prominent body part, of course. The girls have smooth bellies, so it's more difficult to find something to latch onto.

I've had this situation with every litter of pups. Originally Ashley told me to keep them separate, but then she checked with a vet years ago who said that the comfort they received was more important than any "bad stuff" they might be ingesting.

So I've let each litter suck on each other ever since.

The family hosting the 3 siblings of this group said they had to separate the puppies because of sucking. I told them what I had been told a few years ago and got the following response:

It is true they do get comfort from the sucking and the urine is sterile, so the one doing the sucking is just fine. However the one being sucked on is the one in danger of a few things... puppies can suck very very hard so the pee-pee area gets swollen and pretty inflamed. The sucking is not pleasant for one being sucked on, it is painful. After some time going to the bathroom burns. The saliva from the one doing the sucking is definitely not sterile and can cause an infection... this is especially true for males. Through the years dealing with kittens and puppies alike I found that if you separate them they actually calm down and stay asleep for longer periods of time. They do not whine as much. They also stay much cleaner and dryer.

I figured she could do it her way and I'd do it the way I always had, but then I took a look at their bottoms and bellies.

It was clear that these guys sucked much harder than any of our other puppies and I decided that the other mom was right--they needed to be separated.

So our little one-cage, puppy dormitory has now become a 3-cage puppy condo.

Each unit comes with its own mama teddy bear.

Unfortunately, so far this hasn't resulted in them calming down more or sleeping longer. In fact, just the opposite. Laverne put up such a fuss after being fed and letting her suck on my finger for a long time, that I finally decided to put her in with Patty. The two immediately took after each other like they were both in heat and the sucking began immediately, so I moved Laverne back to her own condo.

Then Max, who had just finished a full bottle, set up a cry too. Now that their eyes are opened, they can see us and I guess that reminds us that they want to be with us. I finally got them all calmed down to covering the cages with towels so they can't see what's going on.

As of this writing, all is calm and quiet. I'm hoping that in a day or two, the bellies and bottoms will start looking normal again. Heck, my arm is all scratched up from those sharp little claws--I can just imagine what pain it causes to tender bellies, along with the powerful sucking!

When they get a bit bigger and able to play with each other, I'll give them periods of time when they will be together--and when they start eating solids, they can be together, because the sucking reflex will start to disappear.

I hope.

So...?

Continuing the saga, the puppies and I left my mother's house around 9:30. She was looking exhausted and coughing a lot and just wanted to go to bed. She admitted to feeling achy as well. She wouldn't go to bed as long as I was there, so I wrapped up all the poopy puppy towels and got out of there as quickly as I could.

It was really almost funny arriving home. Ever since my bike accident in 2003, my knee has been "funny." It hates to be bent for long periods. Driving in the car usually doesn't bother it because it's my left knee and I don't need it for the gas pedal, but as I went to get out of the car, I had sharp pains in my knee so that it was difficult to walk. I was trying to get through Walt and two dogs at the front door to the bathroom, since that was a pressing need as well.

Walt answered the door bent over. Part of his bike broke while he was riding it the day before (no danger to him, but the bike wouldn't work) so that he had to carry it two blocks to the bike shop and twisted his back so he was having a hard time getting around too.

Having just left my mother looking like death warmed over, I was beginning to think that everybody was falling apart around me.

Shiloh and Polly were not at home. They had gone to training classes and their handlers had taken them to Petco afterwards, so we didn't have to immediately get into the car to get the dogs to Petco.

I spent the next couple of hours getting yesterday's journal entry written, after which we went to pick up the dogs (I no longer think of going to Petco to "find out if either of them has been adopted." I think they are just there at Petco for window dressing. They'll be with us forever.)

The two dogs were asleep in a cage and as we were about halfway down the sidewalk from them, Polly's head came up and she cocked it to the side quizzically. Then her head came up farther and her tail tentatively wagged and by the time we'd reached the cage, both she and Shiloh had furiously wagging tails and were climbing the sides of the enclosure to get out.

And no, nobody had expressed interest in them.

We got home from Petco and I took a nap to prepare me to go and see "The Owl and the Pussycat" in Sacramento that night.

Polly is being very weird lately. She trembles and cringes when she looks at me and she has stopped sleeping with me at night the last few nights. She started out sleeping with me during my nap, but got down soon after getting up. I don't know how much of this is because of my spending so much time with the puppies and how much is because of a couple of incidents which have happened lately. She went to jump up on the recliner with me just at the time when I was moving one of my feet and accidentally kicked her in the face. Then yesterday we took the two little guys for a walk around the block and she got too close to my foot and was kicked yet again. But even before that, the whole the we were walking she was walking in kind of a half-cringe position, hyper alert, and looking around furtively the whole time. I don't know what is going on with her and I am worried about her.

As for the puppies, I can't believe how quickly they are changing. They arrived here Monday night and on Tuesday at each feeding they, collectively, took 2 oz of formula. By Thursday they were collectively taking 4 oz of formula a feeding, and yesterday and today they went through eight ounces of formula per feeding. They are growing so fast it seems like you can watch them get bigger and it seems that hourly they are becoming more mature. Still no eyes or ears opened, but they are no longer crawling around their cage slowly, but walking around confidently, climbing "mount Mama" (the teddy bear) and letting me know LOUDLY that they want to be fed NOW.

I think this is the fastest maturing set of puppies we've had.

We don't know their story or their parentage. Someone at the post office found them in a box outside the door and the best guess at their breed is Australian Shepherd/pit bull. But the way they are growing, I would guess that they may end up at the large end of both of those breeds. Their three sisters (who have been named Greta, Mona and Sadie) seem to be growing quickly too, as their moms wrote, "Our puppies are still in a laundry basket but only for one more day as they are rapidly outgrowing it!!"

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.

Time Flies

I didn't have any "jobs" to do today, but it sure seemed like I was busy. With all sorts of stuff, all day long. Fun stuff, mostly, but time-consuming stuff. Not that I had anything else to do, of course.

It started with waking at 3 a.m., very mindful of the newspaper deadline I hadn't completed yet. I got up and finished my article by 5 and then sent it off to the paper. Still plenty of time to go back to sleep, and I did. Until 8 a.m. Yay me.

I was doing a bunch of things on the internet simultaneously. I was checking out other people's pictures of the Lamplighters Gala last night, answering e-mail and Facebook messages, trying to catch up with things that had been posted to the Compassion site, confering with Kim about whether or not I would be taking puppies this afternoon.

It's also Monday, so I was putting together letters for all six Compassion kids. Three of them have only been with me for a few months, so I copied the Thanksgiving letter I created last year for the first three, which explains what our holiday is and is illustrated with clip art I found on the net.

The other three kids got more personalized letters, since I've "known" them longer. All of them got religious bookmarks, since I had so many of them left over after I got the Christmas cards put together.

The mail came in the middle of things and brought four Postcrossing post cards. Two cards were from the same 14 year old girl in Switzerland. Apparently her family creates postcards and sells them on the net. She gets more information on a postcard than I thought was humanly possible!

The new postcards had to be logged in and two of them (one from the Smoky Mountains and one from Helsinki) had to be scanned so I could post pictures on Postcrossing.

I heard from Kim that she would be picking up the puppies and asking how many I wanted. There were six. I said I would take 3 and she said to meet her at the Thrift Store this evening.

I finished off the Compassion letters, got them packed up along with a big envelope full of Christmas cards for non-sponsored kids and started to leave for the post office.

That was when Shiloh and Polly decided to go on a little adventure. They ran out the front door and across the street. I had this horrible thought that what if after all this time Polly ended up being killed by a car.

The two dogs were having such a glorious time there was no way they were going to come when I called them, so I finally started jogging away from them and Shiloh started to chase me. Polly went another half block, but when she realized she was alone, she ran back and joined us. On the promise of treats, they were both very happy to come back into the house.

I went to the post office and mailed off the packages,just in time to get over to the Thrift shop on time. I met Dipika and her partner, who were going to take the other three puppies.

Kim arrived with a car load of a pile of puppies whose eyes weren't even opened. I scooped up three and Dipika took the other three. We thought all six were female. I decided I'd call my three Patty, Maxine and Laverne.

When I got home, there was the usual sniff-a-thon with all the dogs. Sheila, as always, sniffed, rolled her eyes, and then walked out to the patio to lie down. "Not again," she was saying eloquently. We understand each other.

The other dogs sniffed the new arrivals thoroughly.

Polly, surprisingly, discovered she was feeling maternal and after a few minutes, she growled whenever any of the other dogs went near the puppies.

When I went to move the puppies to their cage, Shiloh leaped from the floor up and into the playpen so he could get near the cage where they were going to stay...which showed me that these puppies won't be able to live in the playpen while Shiloh's here!

In transferring them to the cage, I checked for sexes again and discovered that only two of the pups were girls. The other was a boy, so names had to be reconsidered. I think I found a nice compromise.

The first bottle feeding was a bit iffy, with Patty taking almost nothing and Max eating the most, but by the time the second feeding rolled around, all three dogs ate more and collectively finished off half a bottle.

When I went to get the puppy food and bedding out of the car, Shiloh escaped again. This time Walt was home and came out with Polly on a leash and Shiloh easily came to Polly. Whew.

When I put the pups down for the night, I got all of the towels from the first two feedings washed (the pups have no intestinal difficulties!) and found my Mother teddy bear, who needed washing before adding to the cage. This white bear has raised many families of pups and they never really warm up to any other stuffed animal I've tried.

(note the little paw I circled)

So we're off and running once again (Shiloh literally, me figuratively). The puppies seem healthy little guys and time will tell how they adapt to bottle feeding. Polly seems to be OK with them, but Shiloh wants to be in my lap too when I'm feeding a puppy, and that could get awkward after awhile.