The puppies are all slowly gaining weight. Unfortunately Shadow really doesn’t seem to have very much milk yet. We’re hoping that will improve but for now our Mistress is having to top them all up with bottle feeding. She lets them suckle for as long as possible first but when they are crying because they aren’t full and can’t find any milk she steps in to help. She really is hoping things pick up with Shadow’s milk, otherwise it is going to be a very long three weeks until they can start to lap from a bowl.
The picture is Duchess being weighed. She is now 655g an increase of 55g on yesterday, which is a good improvement. D’Artagnan has really worked hard and added 70g to reach 630g. Della and Dixie’s increases were much less. Dixie gained 35g to reach 615g and Della added 30g to reach 550g. Putting it in context, Aristotle was only 374g by this stage and didn’t reach 550g until he was 9 days old!
Duchess is off to the vet to have her dew claws removed from her back paws this morning. She is the only one born with them this year, which makes things a little better and it looks as though all umbilical cords are healing nicely which is also good. They don’t need to be on the heat pad quite so much when Shadow gets out of the whelping box now too, which is a good sign as well. Little by little they are growing up!
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