Adrian and the babies

Once again today, it's sunny outside but only about 40 degrees outside, so the babies have to play indoors again. Adrian loves getting to sit and play with them at this stage.

Wild babies

The babies are SOOO ready to be out of their whelping box to explore the world that we couldn't resist them any longer. Normally at this stage we start putting them outside in our grass kennel, but it's been too cold for them to go outside so far. This was the next best thing, getting to run wild in our house. All the pups had a lot of fun and some even discovered you can't take corners full speed if your running on hard wood floors!

Meal time

The babies are now getting Purina Pro Chicken and Rice Puppy Chow twice a day and they are loving it. They are also looking very good now that they are getting solid food along with Jazz's milk. Jazz is still nursing them frequently but they were starting to look a little thin, so we knew it was time to supplement their diets. They'll need to be on Puppy Chow from here on out until they are 1 year old.

Chew pillow

The babies really love having chew toys now, they even play right up until they fall asleep - then dream about playing with their toys.

Growing pains

For some odd reason, all the puppies seem to go through this stage where they insist on sleeping OUTSIDE of their pool instead of inside. There is just enough room around the outside edge of the pool to squeeze between the x-pen and the pool. Soon they will be too big for this little trick, but meanwhile they spend as much time in this space as possible. Our four month old pups love this as well, it gives them a chance to lick the little pups through the fencing because they cannot get away from their wet tongues.

2nd Cousins

Hunter and Soggy are completely in love with the little puppies. Anytime they are allowed to, they are right in the puppy room, cleaning faces and even trying to play through the x-pen with the little ones. The little one's have chewed on each other's collars enough that we've had to remove them. We will put collars on them when we do their stacked photos or individual photos, but they will be living without from here on out. Thanks to their spots it's fairly easy for Adrian and I to tell who is who without their collars anyhow.

Cool clean water

Here's blue getting a drink (and washing her toes). Right now we just use a pie plate for their water, which works well seeing they like to walk in the water as much as drinking it.

Full bellies and a nice nap

The pups have been just a little bit on the thin side, so today they received their first solid meal. They dug right in as soon as we sat the bowel in their pen, as if they've been eating puppy chow for days. After their meal they were all very happy to take a nice long nap.

Once the pups woke up they had the full treatment: weighed, examined, nails clipped, hearing checked and wormed. I'm happy to report that all pups have brown eyes (no blues), all have complete eye trim, only a couple are missing a bit of nose trim, and all showed signs that they hear in both ears. This was also the first time I've got to see them in the daylight since they developed their spots ~ I was able to confirm this litter is 100% liver spotted babies. Although this is statistically not likely, it can happen (and has). We've been going back and forth on a few of them, hoping they were black spotted as I originally thought when born, but today in the daylight it was clear that they are all livers.

Visitors

The puppies have had lots of visitors lately, but today "Auntie Jordan" came for the day and got to have some puppy time while here. She helped us work on registration names for the babies and we had a fun day. The babies were all very excited to play, then suddenly they all fell asleep - just like babies, play hard, then sleep hard!

Prison Break!

Four weeks is apparently the age that Dalmatians can crawl out of a kiddy pool! Each time we walk by the whelping box lately there is a puppy on the outside of the pen. We're going to have to have to start keeping the door locked from here on out.

In this photo Ti is trying to help give Blue a boost back into the whelping box. The four pups from Izza's litter that we still have, all love Jazz's puppies. Since they were born they lick them and want to be in the whelping box with them (Although Jazz does not approve of this at all!).

Potty breaking

Tuesday night Adrian set up the 2nd stage whelping box for the babies. We actually have two kiddy pools, one with the foam noodles glued to the inside to protect the babies from getting squished by their mom and one without the noodles, that has a section cut out. By using this second whelping box we are able to attach a wire crate with a dog litter-box to the backside, giving the puppies a place to go to the bathroom outside of their sleeping space. Within 24hrs we have witnessed every puppy using it at one time or another. They are very quick to learn this when they are young and makes housebreaking much easier when they go to their new homes. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to photograph it until tonight.

New collars (again!!)

Last night the babies received new collars, they've outgrown another set. Too bad my camera battery was dead when we put them on, they were very bright and pretty, but this morning I can see that most of them already have snags where little teeth have been chewing on them. At least we can see these collars - the last ones would hide under their puppy fuzz and we had to pick them up before we could tell who was who. They are growing so fast, these collars will only be with them for a week at the very most anyhow. :)

First Toy

Tonight the babies got to play with their first toy, a stuffed moose with a squeaker ~ although they do not have large enough mouths to squeak the squeaker. Some of the pup were very excited about their new toy while others didn't seem to pay much attention to it.

Playing pups

Just a short video of the babies playing this morning while mom was outside for her morning jog.

Miss Pink

Miss Pink found herself a nice cozy spot to sleep with her mommy tonight. I couldn't resist this shot. It didn't faze her a bit that her mom was still busy cleaning her brothers and sisters, she was a happy little girl.

Playing babies

Everyone's eyes are now open and they are learning to growel, bark and play with each other. Click play on the video above to watch the puppies learning to wrestle with each other.

Week #3

Jazz's babies are now 3 weeks old. Their spots are starting to show through and a few eyes are starting to open. In another couple of weeks they will hit their peak of cuteness!! :) They are very sweet at this age, but my favorite is at about 4 weeks of age.

Enough to go around

It's very nice to watch Jazz with her 7 puppies - last time she had a litter she gave birth to 10 puppies and we were frequently worried that someone wasn't getting enough to eat. With 12 nipples and plenty of milk, these babies are all growing well and never miss out on a meal.

Getting bigger

The babies are all doing well tonight. Once again I got home from work too late to weigh them, but they are clearly getting bigger by the day still. Everyone is in their 3rd collar since being born except Miss Purple who is now too big for her stage 2 collar but too small for stage 3, so for now she is going without a collar. We can just start to see their spots through their hair.

Trim

We are really impressed with how much nose and eye trim this litter has at 1 week old! Only one baby is missing trim, and at this stage I have no reason to think her's won't come in as well. The first photo is of Mr Orange and the second is Miss Pink.

Mom and all babies are doing very well. Today they had their first 'viewers' - 3 very nice ladies from Walla Walla who came to look at the babies. We are just thrilled that we now have one puppy from this litter going to Milton-Freewater (about 15 minutes north of us) and now one going to Walla Walla (about 40 minutes north of us!) All of our babies in the past have gone far enough that they are 4 to 5 hours away at the minimum.