COMSTOCK PUPPIES - Page 2
Caroline decided that it was time to wean the pups from the bottle. Yesterday we set up their special dining table and introduced them to solid food. In the case of our special pups (who lounge on Martha Stewart quilts) this meant fine-ground top sirloin. They each got 3 small meat balls and they loved it. The first meat ball was hand fed. After that it was just drop it on the floor in front of them and they figured out what to do. That part was easy and quick.
The next step was teaching them to lap milk out of a tray. It took awhile for some of them to get the hang of it. By today they all knew what to do. Of course some were neater than others!
The puppies are starting to play more. In particular, Green likes to make the rounds and stir up the sleepers like Turquoise. We now lower the front of their playpen during the day so that they can get out onto the kitchen floor area and have more room to play. We still contain them within x-pens so that they don't disappear under the furniture.
The pups are getting taller now so I increased the leg length on their feeder stand from 2 in. to 4 in. in hopes of limiting certain pups from crawling into the food tray to eat.
Well they were actually just moved out to the garage to more spacious accomodations. We set up two X-pens with a 700 crate at one end and various sleeping (or peeing?) pads, newspapers and toys scattered throughout. This set-up gave the pups more room to run around but more importantly allowed us to hose things down in the morning. (You wouldn't believe the mess 10 pups can make overnight.)
Even though the pups had all sorts of places to sleep you can see that they like to curl up together after eating.
The pups may do fine sleeping together but eating together at a common trough didn't work out. As the pups got bigger they tended to be more pushy at the eating tray with some pups getting more than others. Also there was a tendency to gobble up the food as fast as possible since there was another hungry pup at their elbow trying for their share. We went to separate feeding bowls-feeding 4 at a time. Feeding has become much less of a circus and we know how much each pup is eating.
In the meantime I will provide a few shots taken this morning (~6 AM) at breakfast time. The first thing we do is put the pups in a temporary "holding-pen" so that the main pen can be cleaned (i.e., hosed-down). Caroline then randomly selects the first foursome for breakfast while the rest wait patiently for their turn. Actually it is not quite random selection. Usually the pushiest, loudest pups get picked first. While Caroline oversees the breakfast I scrape poop off the concrete prior to wash down (the stuff sticks better than some adhesives used in the Aerospace Industry). Somehow most of these guys miss the paper we put down.
After breakfast things are just a tad quieter (left photo). Once the main pen is refurbished with clean bedding, paper, etc. the pups are put back. Caroline then usually sits on a pad in the middle of the pen (if she can get there before a pup pees on it) and has her morning "puppy-fix".
Finally selected and edited the pictures we took yesterday evening after the pups ate. The pictures didn't come out as large as I would have liked. I should have been closer or used the High Quality setting on the camera. I tried enlarging digitally but the pics came out blurred. Next time!
After the pups outdoor meal, Calli likes to help clean up the pups. She works on the rear while Caroline takes care of the head. The pups really enjoy the outdoor setting and running around on the grass in the evening when it has cooled down. Caroline took off the colored yarn a couple of days ago as it was getting caught in the pups teeth as they rough-housed with each other. She claims she can identify them all without the yarn. I can pick out a few like Red (whom we have nicknamed Tiger for obvious reasons) or Purple (our only Apricot) and Lt. Blue who has a smudge type mark on one side (we call her "Smudge"). Some of the others are not so easy for me to identify.
After their outdoor dinner yesterday I took a pile of pix. Caroline selected three for todays web page contribution.
Caroline headed north just after the pups breakfast to our grandson's birthday party (4 years old). She won't be home until about 8 PM so the weekly weigh-in and photo shoot will be done late this evening. Hopefully I will have the 6-week photos with weights uploaded to our page by tomorrow afternoon. I think I will have to go to a Page Three since I've just about used up my allocated 2 MB per page.
In the meantime I have included a few pix taken yesterday afternoon/evening. We bring them out of their garage pen about 5:30 PM when it has cooled down a bit. They love to run and play in the grass. Caroline and Calli keep an eye on them while I scrub out the garage. (I think they got the better part of the deal.) After a while they fall asleep but reawaken when dinner is served about 7 PM.
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