At four weeks old, the puppies are halfway to their going-home day!
In the last two weeks, they have reached new developmental milestones at a rapid pace. Every few days they are doing or learning something new! They have started walking, playing, teething, growling and yipping, wagging their tails, eating softened puppy food and drinking goat’s milk to start the weaning process, they have had their first bath, and, (my proudest update), they are going potty on their puppy pads!
Their coats have grown out more, so we are starting to see more of that lovely doodly texture, from waves to curls, even on the ones that started out with straight hair.
They are at such a sweet age; just starting to play and interact, but very cuddly and sleepy most of the time.
This morning I took some individual shots of the babies and they all posed beautifully for me.
I added their weights to the captions; yesterday I had to weigh them to calculate how much dewormer to administer. (They don’t have worms that I know of, but it is a good practice to deworm them regularly in early life.) They all weigh between 4 and 5 pounds now! Luna and Aurora are our lightweights, closer to 4 pounds, and Sadie Mae is our heaviest puppy at 5 lbs 1 oz. Most everyone else is around 4 1/2 lb.
I’ll be tracking their weight as they wean to make sure that everyone is gaining weight and getting enough food.
They’re eating and drinking regularly on their own now:
Up until now they have also been nursing from Shiloh.
We introduced softened puppy kibble at three weeks. Shiloh absolutely loves it (it’s just her regular dog food soaked in water but for some reason she thinks it’s amazing) so she tries to eat with the babies.
After reading up a bit, I decided to try following the “Misty method” of early potty training, rather than just letting the puppies mess everywhere. You provide a potty area right next to their sleeping area, so when they wake up and crawl out of their bedding area to relieve themselves, they go on the puppy pads. As they get older you can give them more play space between the two areas and they will still be able to find the potty area from habit.
You can see the potty area and the sleep area in the following picture. (Warning: it’s a little gross! But I’m so proud of them!)
They are far from being fully house-trained, of course, but I know this will provide a great head start for their future!
Weaning and potty training can be really messy. We are doing a LOT of laundry, and when they were three weeks old the puppies had their first bath! It was the first time they had encountered water. It was warm and gentle and they all seemed to love it.
Churro was so relaxed by his bath that he fell asleep in my lap while I was toweling him off.
With all the learning, playing, eating, and growing, they get tired out quickly and they can and will fall asleep anywhere...
... including on the scale.
We are counting down the days til October 9th when these sweet babies go to their new homes.