Puppies!!

Puppies are here! On Thursday morning (February 1st) I could tell Shisa was getting restless, so had her come with me to our basement where we had set up a whelping pen. Shisa is a very loving and social dog, but I thought that having a place out of the way, and where Raiju wouldn't go (he doesn't like stairs) might be for the best. Shisa continued to be restless, unable to get comfortable, but she was quite insistent on laying against me. Since any time I tried to leave the pen she followed me, I remained sitting there with her. Late that morning, the first squealing little one arrived. Shisa wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but quickly cleaned it off, and eventually the little thing was able to eat. By the end of the day there were three noisy little pups happily taking up all of their mother's attention. I had a terrible time getting any rest that night, constantly waking to go check on them any time their whines were loud enough to reach our bedroom (which was every time they were hungry, or Shisa tried to get up to get some water).

Shisa is such a good mom. She stays with her pups far better than I expected of a first-time mom. She didn't even like leaving the pups to get something to eat or drink. Instead, she'd step over to the food (1-2 feet away) grab a bite, then check on the pups again, then go back to the food, and then back to check on the pups till she'd eventually eaten most of the food. For a dog that loves food, and normally can't be distracted from it, she definitely cares for those little pups. The first two days I even had to force her to leave them in order to go outside just a couple times each day. And she was determined to spend as short a time out there as she could, whining at the door the moment her business was done. This attention, while wonderful for the pups, made trying to get any sort of pictures hard. It wasn't that she minded me being around, or picking up the pups, but she had to start licking them the moment they moved.

With the pups all looking alike, not even gender a way to differentiate them, I resorted to temporary 'tear-away' collars made with a little yarn and tape. One different color per pup. Of course, the first time I made them they were so easy to tear away that they were off by the time I checked on them next. I have to check the collars regularly, as the pups are growing so fast that the first set I made already had to be replaced.

It has been so much fun seeing the changes just in these couple days. The pups sleep most of the time, as opposed to making noise and wanting to eat (or waking each other up) all the time like the first day. You can tell they already dream, just like their parents, as they sometimes look as if they are running in their sleep, whine, or start rolling around, even though they aren't yet awake. They're starting to explore just a little too, crawling away from mama, only to have Shisa whine and fetch them back close, or at least monitor them until she decides that it's time to come back. Once their eyes open, I'm sure they'll be even more interested in exploring their new world.