During the night the puppies wanted feeding about every 90minutes and took about half an hour before going to sleep. My Mistress does not look good today. However, there is no opportunity to stop. Whilst Shadow felt well enough to have a little food this morning she is still very under the weather and only has a very small amount of milk in some teats. My Mistress needs to let the puppies suckle at least a small amount in order for the milk flow to continue, but there certainly isn’t enough there to feed them and it is time to start weaning them anyway.
To begin with through the night the puppies weren’t getting what was required at all, but by 5.20am my Mistress had started to develop a little routine with them all whereby each got a little milk and was then put in front of the bowl of gruel while the next one got some milk, then she kept rotating through the five of them until they had all eaten. By then they were hungry enough to both take from the bottle and try to puppy mush. My Mistress has received lots of sound advice from other Entlebucher breeders who have gone through similar times and managed to add the things she needed to the Tesco order that has arrived this morning. You will now see another bowl appearing with a sort of baby gruel that will help to make sure that they don’t get constipated as well.
Now that they are eating a little more my Mistress is going to try to regularise their feeding to every two to three hours. However, all is not well with the puppy weights, so some will need more attention than others. Noone gained more than 30g, Britannia and Bossanova – taking them to 1720g and 1680g. Beethoven added 10g to make 1560g, Bumble stayed the same at 1590g and Boadicea lost 30g and dropped to 1570g. We are hoping that now they have the hang of it a little better that we can stabilise things today. It does mean that worming them is being delayed as that can cause a small weight loss at the time and last year ended up with some of the puppies being sick, which we can’t risk right now.
On a brighter note, Aristotle has now seen his brothers and sisters and is disappointed that they aren’t ready to play with him. Shadow has been quite happy for us to be around, although I’m keeping my head down for safety.
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk
Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com