Day Seven

Mary-Ann Sontag January 28, 2021

Orion retains his Heavyweight title, weighing in at 2.54 pounds this morning. Here he is adventuring through Claire’s front legs…

Sparkle likes to come and check the babies when Claire is outside. Grandmas are like that, right? We just want everything to be okay.

This is Sun — he also has that black on/off button. Coleen says that comes from the Ferguson side of the family. Adorable!

Sirius…

Claire drunk on Oxytocin…

Mirak drunk on milk — and love.

This morning Dear Husband stays up a bit later so that I can run Daisy in to get a progesterone done to see if today is the Big Day. A Field Trip! How exciting!!

Also exciting and on the agenda for today — official one-week photos.

Day Six (Updated)

Mary-Ann Sontag January 27, 2021

The Heavyweight Champion of the Whelping Box this morning is…

Orion! He weighed 2.38 pounds (38 oz) at the morning weigh-ins.

Sun is very close behind at 2.36 pounds…

But watch out, Boys, because here comes Nova at 2.34 pounds (37.44 oz)…

Eight of the ten Bright Stars are over two pounds — at Five Days old. Unbelievable.

If I had started Claire on Fenugreek, I could easily be saying how well it worked because OMG! So much milk and in a girl who has to be begged to eat!! Clearly, it is the Fenugreek!!!

This is a common Critical Thinking error — assigning blame or credit because two things happened in a sequence. Should I say lack of Fenugreek is the reason for the bountiful milk and therefore, Fenugreek is a bad idea because clearly milk is plentiful in its absence?

Of course not.

I am a fan of trying hard to think in clear, logical ways and not falling for pseudoscience or critical thinking fallacies. Unless it involves Lucky Socks — and then I am a Believer.

And speaking of lucky, the Night Shift Puppy Nanny (aka Dear Husband) is amazing. When I get up at about 4:30, everyone is happy and alive…

How things look first thing in the morning

The laundry is caught up, thanks to him.

Dear Husband heads off to bed when I get up and I commence the morning activities — with my able assistant, Rosebud…

Rosebud wants everyone to know that SHE is the real Heavyweight Champion since she weighs 5.4 pounds, as she likes to remind me every time I turn around to get another puppy to weigh.

Rosebud says she is actually just keeping the spot warm for the next puppy.

After the weigh-ins, I change the whelping box — that involves a new pad, then a fleece, and then a towel that can be changed easily during the day. The folded fleece covers the whelping box’s version of a Heated Hut.

Claire is also an excellent heat source — this is Sirius…

Zaniah always looks happy to me — like she is smiling.

The noses! This is Mirak…

While we exist in a Puppy Cocoon (that is about to get even more crowded!), good stuff is happening out there in the world. Lucas, Claire’s littermate/uncle to the Bright Stars, earned his Novice Draft Dog (NDD) title over the weekend in Arizona…

Big Congratulations to Team Lucas!

South of us in Idaho Falls, Lucy Clover King of Wildflower fame, has caught up to almost-ten-year-old Clara — Lucy is eight months old.

SO cute!!! Thank you for the wonderful photos — we are not too busy to enjoy all of the Kaibab families.

I hope your day is relaxing and includes a kiss from someone who loves you — human, canine, and/or feline.

Evening Photos

Rosebud lives dangerously while Claire is outside

Day Five

Mary-Ann Sontag January 26, 2021

Our weight chart is getting a bit big to post every day but here is it for this morning…

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Note that Capella did not really gain in a 24-hour period.

This is not alarming — we are looking at trends and not a single day.

This morning I was able to weigh some of the puppies both immediately before they ate and immediately after. Capella was 1.84 before eating and 1.9 after; she had almost an ounce of milk in that feeding.

Sun gained the exact amount after a meal (.96 ounce)…

…and Heze‘s breakfast was 1.28 ounces. Interesting.

Yesterday was the removal of rear dewclaws — sad and hard (for me anyway). The vet came to our house, and used numbing agents to make it all less sad and hard. Suzanne was here to assist and shuttle puppies while Claire and I watched CNN — loudly. GEEZ — there are a lot of commercials! (I do not watch much TV).

Puppies nursed immediately after their little procedures. It all went as well as it could, and Dear Husband slept through the entire thing. FYI: We do not remove the functional front dewclaws.

WHEW — glad that is over.

Perseus was the only one with no rear dewclaws — good thing as he doesn’t really need an excuse to yell louder!

Puppies do not like being restrained — even when nothing bad is happening — and they scream like they are being assaulted. This is a survival thing — consider what being caught/restrained would mean if they were in the wild, so to speak. Nothing good.

Two views of Orion — one of his pretty head…

…and a tummy shot, showing of that handy button…

This is Sirius…

Mirak…

All ten…

While the puppies are eating like champs, Claire is not. Dear Husband observed that watching me try to feed Claire reminds him of what we do with little kids: “Here comes the train! Open up the station…”

She is getting enough but only because I am finding a lot of things to be trains. For example, Animal Crackers with peanut butter were a big hit yesterday.

Claire still has to be hand fed — Cindy H. will be so proud because yesterday I hand fed SARDINES to Claire. GROSS. Today I am going to try pancakes — a Suzanne suggestion.

Two pics for special people — a tummy photo of Zaniah for Jennifer G.