Wednesday June 5 -- Increasing confidence and joy

It has now been almost a week since the day Cocoa surprised us with 10 little miracles. The nine who remain continue to grow and Cocoa is settling into a rhythm. She is increasingly comfortable with the puppies and with leaving the puppies for a 1/2 hour or an hour if she needs to lie down and have an uninterrupted rest. The puppies spend a great deal of time sleeping, pretty much 100% of the time they aren't eating.

As you can see from this picture they continue to grow and there are a couple of different colours; the vet noticed when we were there last Saturday that the darkest ones are the 3 boys; though I think it's still hard to tell. We weighed them all today and the weights are up across the board and I got non-toxic coloured markers so I coloured the inside of each puppies ear flap while we weighed them. I hope this will prove to be more successful than the nail polish was! 

Weights today I just sorted from smallest to largest and attached them from smallest to largest to the previous values since there wasn't anyway to tell which was which. Not a big issue though since they all seem healthy and growing.

1. Red right ear; started at 225 grams now 410 grams an increase of 82%
2. Purple right ear, started at 255 grams now 425 grams an increase of 67%
3. Purple left ear, started at 260 grams now 425 grams an increase of 63%
4. Blue right ear, started at 268 grams now 468 grams an increase of 75%
5. Blue left ear, started at 271 grams now 522 grams an increase of 93%
6. Green right ear, started at 271 grams now 525 grams an increase of 94%
7. Black right ear, started at 285 grams now 550 grams an increase of 93%
8. Green left ear, started at 290 grams now 555 grams an increase of 91%
9. Red left ear, started at 300 grams now 575 grams an increase of 92%

Not bad at all. Cocoa is doing a fine job of caring for them all and they seem contented, clean and healthy.

To give you an idea of where we are headed this is a picture of Chai taken when we first got him; less than 8 weeks old.