Shadow does not have mastitis, it is just that her milk has come back so strongly that she now has so much that she is hurting. You’d think there was an easy answer to that and she could just let the pups suckle, but sadly you’d be wrong. She absolutely refuses to get in with them, so if we don’t do something she is at risk of mastitis. You can’t win! Anyway we sat her on the settee with two of us making sure she didn’t move and then took a puppy at a time to her. She didn’t want to cooperate but even she had to admit she felt a little easier afterwards. The problem is that that got feeds out of the times we had scheduled, which meant that things didn’t work out neatly for bedtime. We also need to get her to feed them more regularly. We’d like her to go in after every meal until Sunday and then every other meal. As much to help her to stop her milk production slowly as to help wean the puppies.
In the meantime we are moving the puppies up to a mix which includes some baby food in their porridge. We have found some new food without any of the toxic things in it. However, we have already found that the puppies do not like potato and parsnip! They are fussy little things. I said I’d happily eat it, but I wasn’t given the option.
We’ve put the water trough in the pen for the first time now too. So that they always have fresh water. Because they are still very young and can fall asleep half way through eating and drinking the trough is actually a hen feeder that there is no risk of little puppy heads falling into.
They are as happy to sleep away from the whelping box now, which is good news as it means they are on camera more often. They’ve been playing with their toys more too. We’ve at last finished removing the last of the squeakers so they can have their remaining new toys when they are cleaned out in the morning.
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