How to make a finicky eater in 4 easy puppies...

Mynie is our "Mayday Malone"

 The puppies are just over a week old. Fat little sausage rolls with Mr. Potatohead knobs on top every one. Cute as, well... puppies. Soft and cuddly, they spend half their time slurping down milk and the other half dreaming of slurping down milk. When they're awake, they paddle around their dry pool like they're doing laps, mewing and bumping into everything looking for their mommy and the goodies therein.

She is the consumate mom, her wonders to perform; endless patience for their needs, nudging them here and there, washing their little bums clean and taking it all in stride. She's made our job too easy. All we have to do is sit back and watch them.

Them - not her. She needs constant attention. Six or more rich meals a day to keep up milk production, potty breaks in between, exercise a couple of times  a day, some personal "me" time where we take her aside and pet her and make her feel like a dog again (all moms need that), etc., etc..  The result is I haven't hadmore than an hour's sleep at a stretch since they were born. One way or another I'm up to make sure she's okay.

Kit feeding Bunnie while the pups sleep

Meals are the real treat. Before the babies she was a wolfer. You know, put down any kind of food and she'd gobble it up before she knew what it was or might even taste like. It was as though she and Gully were in a race to see who could finish a bowl of food in under 60 seconds. Now we're giving her ice cream for calcium, eggs and meat for protien, tinned chow mixed with rice and burger - and she turns her nose up at it half the time. (Well, not the ice cream). So there I am at 4 in the morning spoon feeding her poached eggs and toast like she's the puppy. The irony is, before I got sick, I was up until 4 am as a matter of course. Now I have to drag myself up to attend the dog!

Kit is great with them. He likes to spoon feed Bunnie and watch the pups. He's getting all warm and fuzzy with Mayday, the one we're keeping, so he can help train him. He's really hoping that Mayday will become his dog and want to follow him around and sleep on his bed and look to him the way Bunnie looks up to me.

I don't see why that can't happen. But in the meantime we have another couple of weeks of spoon feeding momma until the pups are on solid food.