fat and fast

The first job of the morning every day for at least the first week is to weigh the puppies.  You have to be sure each puppy is growing at an adequate rate and no one is getting left behind or - horrors! - losing weight.  Although I have never known it in a normal puppy who had no problems, it's apparently not unheard of for puppies to lose a little weight in their first 24 hours but then start to grow normally.  As a rule, though, if they are losing weight, then there is something wrong, either with the puppy or with the milk supply.

I am relieved to report that all these puppies are gaining weight.  Phew!  I look for a daily increase of approximately 10% of their body weight.  By monitoring everyday I can tell who the greediest and strongest (most determined, er, stubborn, dominant...) puppies are.  They tend to muscle their way to the best, most productive teats at the rear and they grow the fastest.  So what do I do?  I perform one of my mean puppy-abusing duties.  I pull those puppies off their cosy rear spot (with a great noisy liquid pop as the suction breaks) and replace them with the smaller puppies.

In some cases, if one puppy is getting left too far behind, I give him 10 or 15 minutes alone at the milk bar first thing in the morning so he doesn't have to compete with his brothers and sisters.  The puppy getting this treatment can change from day to day.

So who is getting special treatment at the moment?  Socks.  He is the smallest, and although he is gaining weight, it is not as fast as his siblings, so he gets some solo time at the milk bar each day.  And although she is not the biggest (yet), Mini is the one who is, shall we say, in no danger of going hungry.

As you can see, at only 24 hours old the puppies may be deaf and blind, but they can motor around even on the slippery paper and they have no problem at all finding the milk bar.