Saturday, June 1 -- Pride and sleep deprivation

I continue to sleep downstairs in my lazy boy so I can hear if any puppies are in distress. Cocoa keeps waking me up, though, crying and I can't figure out why. I let her outside and she goes out but comes back in very quickly. I make sure she has water and give her a dog biscuit or a little food. I wish I could figure out why she is so frantic at night.

On a positive note my friend Don came by this afternoon to help me with the task of transferring all the puppies to a box and taking them to our veterinarian to have their tails docked. This is a standard for the soft coated wheaten terrier breed though many people think it's a bit cruel. I met a wheaten with an intact tail once and discovered the practical reason for this; they are the perfect height to wag their very strong tails and hit males in a particularly sensitive spot bringing tears to man's eyes if he's strong enough to remain standing. Since I've never met a wheaten who's tail was not wagging it suddenly made more sense to me. Our veterinarian insists that this be done when they are three or four days old; he says by the time they are five days old the nerves in the tail are beginning to develop and he won't do it. He put a drop of local anesthetic in each tail, docked it and put a stitch in to make sure the tiny wound was closed and minimize the possibility of infection. It only took him 45 minutes to do all nine pups and he gave us some really good news -- he felt that Cocoa was doing a fabulous job with the puppies; they were all incredibly clean and obviously healthy. At this point he does not think there is any reason to worry about supplemental feeding for any of the pups; even the smallest ones are a decent size for this age.

Kudoos to Cocoa!!

About three hours later all nine pups started to cry within a half hour and it took me a minute to realize that probably meant the freezing had come out. Within 15 minutes they were all asleep with mom in their bed and there haven't been any issues at all.

The vet also suggested that instead of nail polish we buy some nontoxic markers and simply colour a little bit of the inside of the pups ear. I'll be sure to get some before we weigh the pups again and we'll see if that works better than the nail polish idea.

We decided the pups and mom had had enough stress for today and we won't weight the puppies again for at least a couple of days if things continue to develop so well.

No new pictures either; from day to day the puppies aren't really changing enough to make pictures very interesting.