What a difference a week makes! Last week at this time we had 14 foster dogs, 12 of whom seemed to be pups barely a week old. Now we have 13 fosters (Grace found her forever home!!!) and it seems those 12 pups are more likely 3 weeks old (or a little more). Instead of fuzzy little kidney beans - we now have a dozen healthy, barking, running, playing little puppies. They now wake up between feedings just to play or practice the new "skill of the day". Today's skill was running (in short bursts) and yesterday's was licking (everything!). They have totally mastered swatting each other with their paws, barking, howling and whining to get attention and many of them are working on dominance stances. We have been working on socializing them and they now run to the side of the "puppy pit" to get a cuddle when we come in the room. Some of them are beginning to cut teeth - so soon we'll begin introducing them to puppy gruel. Maggie is still a great momma, but she isn't going to be able to responsible for all nutrition for all 12 for too much longer. All the pups are gaining weight nicely including, Tinkerbell, the runt. They are actually getting big enough that the pit didn't look like it could hold them much longer - they were going to be able to crawl out soon. But we turned the edges on the baby pool up and hope it will hold them for another week. We've attached a few photos, but our camera isn't good with action shots, and these pups are always in action!
[caption id="attachment_378" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Pups happy after a big meal."][/caption]
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