Flame/Dutch puppies

Flame has had a rough first week.  48 hours after an easy delivery, she developed mastitis and was briefly hospitalized to get the infection under control.  She came home Monday evening with IV antibiotics and a regimen requiring nursing care every 6 hours around the clock.  Since we want to keep her with the pups as much as possible, we opted to do the nursing care at home.  The babies never noticed she was missing for a few hours, by the way.  Despite feeling AWFUL, and having a temperature of 107.4 (normal is around 101 F for a dog), Flame continued to feed and clean her pups.

Here are some pics of the babies, almost one week old:

    We do our best to post photos every week...please be patient!                           

These photos were taken when the pups were about 10 days old.  Flame is doing great; she seems to be fully recovered from mastitis.  Today the first attempts to bark were made by some of the babies!  Their eyes should being opening any day now.

Here the pups are at 3 weeks.  They are rapidly growing up...we've had to put a taller piece across the opening of the whelping box - we kept coming in to find puppies scattered around on the floor!  The pups started on their first "solid" food (not really solid, but the beginning of weaning) - what a treat!  Of course more food gets on them than in them at this point!!

The pups are beginning to recognize when people are around, barking and milling about when they hear us talking to them.  They're also starting to play with toys - slow motion wrestling is taking place and they bite each other.

Now this is a happy puppy!

Now 5 weeks old, the babies are really fun.  They bark, play, try to run (mostly unsuccessful still, but their coordination is improving) and have been weaned onto "real" food.  We have moved them to a specially-built room in our barn (affectionately referred to as the "puppy palace"!), where they can go in and out at will (excellent for getting a jump-start on housebreaking!) into a spacious shaded yard.  We make sure to spend lots of time with them every day and this is when we really start to see personalities come out.

After a little break, we're back up with pictures!  The puppies are doing super, and are unbelievably cute.  All of them have sweet personalities.    Each pup is now identified with a mark of some sort, so if you see "butt", don't worry!  That just means he has a mark above his tail  :-)  Click here to see the stacked photos with identifying marks.