Baby Farming Again

It was a message I hadn't had at all in 2008:

"2 poodles, 2 days old and mom wont nurse. interested (god I hope so! )"

Well, how do you say no to a request like that?

So they arrived around 5 p.m., two tiny, tiny little things just barely the size of my cell phone

The story is that they were born two days ago and Mom won't nurse them. The mom is owned by a couple of UCD students who aren't interested in hand raising two newborn puppies, so called the SPCA. There is one male and one female.

I set up the puppy cage, complete with heating pad and the "mama bear" who has helped me to raise several other litters of puppies.

It's always important to me to name these little guys soon after they get here. I toyed with paired Christmas names (Holly and Jolly) but that was too cutesy, and I thought for awhile that Beau and Peep might fit, but on Says You the other day someone used the term "Poochini" and I loved it. And what better name for a toy breed than adding "-ini" to "pooch."

But what to go with Poochini? There just are no other composers' names which lend themselves to dogification nearly as nicely as Puccini.

I started thinking of Puccini operas and thought briefly of "Turandog." I still like that name, but it just seems to "grand" for someone who is going to be a toy poodle when she grows up. So I finally settled on Tosca. Still a force to contend with, but more a name suited to her adult size.

Of course I realize that the chance of these names sticking with the dogs after they are adopted is slim to none. So far the only dog I've ever named who seemed to keep the name I gave him was Bissell--and that was the dumbest name I ever chose! (Of course not quite as bad as "Appleberry," which was the name Sheila came here with.)

I still have half of a small can of powdered puppy formula here and when we looked at the size of the puppies and how much formula there was, we decided that there was no emergency in getting more stuff.

When the pups first started squirming and I settled in to feed them, I mixed up 1 tsp of formula with 2 tsp of water and together they almost finished that. It's going to take a long time, at that rate, to make a dent in this can of formula.

The first feeding went sort of OK. I used the same syringe that I always use, but could see right away that it was going to be too much for the puppies and that there was a danger of getting fluid in their lungs, so for the next feeding I switched to an eyedropper. It's also easier to measure how much they are taking. And the feeding went better, though these little guys are SO tiny that the best you can do is drop some formula on their lips and hope that they lick it off. They still, between them, took about 1 tsp of formula. And both peed. Good puppies.

This is the first batch of pups that I'm going to be feeding by the alarm clock, instead of letting them sleep till they wake up. First of all, they are too little to be HEARD when they start crying, and secondly, they are so tiny, I don't want them to go too long between feedings.

And so we are off on another pup adventure. Suddenly Nicki seems HUGE to me!