My brother and sisters are now four weeks old and doing wonderfully well. We aren’t sure if they are seeing the grass as a play thing rather than a toilet, but either way they seem to rather like it. Today marks the beginning of a lot more new experiences for them. Quite apart from the fact they can look forward to lots more puppy visits, including a family who are in the process of importing a puppy so have missed the early puppy stage with their boy and of course the human families for Della and Duchess are coming to visit later in the week. On top of that they are starting to move onto puppy food. They were not impressed this morning and did leave a little more than they have been doing, but they will get used to it. At the moment the mix is only a quarter soaked puppy food to three quarters of their usual baby food milky mix, but the ratio will change each day with a spoon less milky and a spoon more puppy food until all twelve spoons in the mix are puppy food. Mum (Shadow) is still going in after every meal so they get a milk top up as well.
Then they are getting used to lots of new noises so they are not surprised by things when they are older. They have already met the vacuum cleaner and yesterday they tried the new Bryan Adams album. They didn’t seem overly impressed but our Mistress thinks it might grow on them. She has also got a cd of lots of different types of noises that she is going to start playing to them. Her biggest risk is that with things like car horns and door bells we’re all going to start barking at intervals and drown it out. We’ve had to promise to be good but to be honest that’s not always easy.
We heard from Wilma yesterday. She’s been to her first puppy class and apparently did very well. She enjoyed playing with the other puppies and was very well behaved, which is great news. I can’t believe Alfie is going to meet her four weeks on Monday. I have to wait another week after that.
The weight increases were not good. Our Mistress isn’t so sure they are happy with their five meals a day and will see how they go. They did all gain weight and to be honest they have gained so well that she is not at all concerned at this stage but she will monitor the situation. If necessary she will offer them an extra bowl of milk right at the end of the meal to make sure they have had enough. Anyway, D’Artagnan added 60g to reach 3110g. Della added 40g to reach 2870g. Duchess added 45g to reach 2665g and Dixie added just 15g to reach 2570g. It is almost certain our Mistress will be offering extras to Dixie later even if not to the others. However to put it in context only one of our previous brothers and sisters (out of eighteen puppies) weighed more than Dixie at this stage and that was Bumble (Dickens) who was more by just 30g! It was another 8 days before I reached Dixie’s weight!
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Hi Ari and all the gang. So pleased the puppies are doing well. I just had to dash to the computer to tell you all that I passed my Good Citizens Bronze Award Test this morning. There were lots of dogs there, quite a few I did not know so I soon introduced myself. One was a Burnese puppy she was very nice. I am off to have a quick nap now before my afternoon walk, I do not think I will go too far today as it is now raining.
Lots of love to you all XXXXXXX
Congratulations, bro. That’s really good news. Can you not tell our Mistress though she may get ideas about making me do it! Have a great rainy Saturday. I tried to dodge the mud on my walk, but it wasn’t easy.
love
Ari