Drumroll please....

Almost two weeks old!

Updates this week:

• The puppies have opened their eyes
• They are trying very hard to walk on all four legs and look like wiggly giraffes
• We will also turn off the heat lamp we've had on constantly for the first two weeks as the puppies are now able to better regulate their own body temperature.
  

Today was an especially big day for the pups and their mama:

• Went to the cleaners and the tailor (had their collars washed and adjusted)
• A puppy manicure (nail clipping)
• A puppy spa experience (first bath)
• An internal cleanse (worming treatment)
• A massage (puppy time with the kids)

Bathing that many puppies is a fine-tuned operation; if you've ever bathed an infant, it's about the same amount of prep, but times 7. The kids deliver the puppies one by one, and I bathe the puppy with Johnson's Extra Conditioning Baby Shampoo, while the kids wash the collar with soap and water. After bath, they're handed off to dad for a rinse in a separate tub and a towel dry. Then they're whisked off to the hair dryer "station" where they're dried on low heat until they're absolutely dry so they won't chill. Since they have a newborn coat, the drying only takes 10 or so minutes each. Then they get to go into a nice clean bed under the heat lamp with their mama for lunch. After they've eaten and slept a bit, they're weighed, their nails are clipped and they're given the appropriate dosage of worming medication (a two-person process).  Mama also had a bath today, too, so we have lots of towels to wash tonight.

Mama is doing great feeding her little ones - they're getting roly-poly! A few graphs of their weight below, with the first showing their respective collar colors. I will try to post photos and maybe a few videos tomorrow. With the weather today and the tornado watch, I was worried we'd have to make it into our shelter with 9 dogs! Luckily it was just rain and a lot of wind, or as my husband would say, "The tears of the Texas fans after their team took a walloping today"

Although it is a little early, we have retrieved the stethoscope and have begun listening for tiny heartbeats on the tummy of our sweet girl. Around 25 to 35 days of pregnancy, a skilled ear can hear the tiny tick-tick-tick of puppy heartbeats, and soon there after the puppies can be palpated from outside the abdomen in their individual gestational sacs.  Hearing the heartbeat for the 1st time is so exciting! Some breeders claim that they can count a number of females and males in a  litter by the differences in the individual heart rates, but of course ultrasound and x-ray confirmation of pregnancy is the best way to determine the litter size.