I almost titled this entry "I Am a Crazy Dog Lady!" because, as much as I go on and on here about Ginger and her three puppies, you might think I am starting to lose it. I keep waiting for someone to say, "Enough with those stupid puppies! Why don't you get a life already?" Instead, I've gotten several friendly replies about the puppies through twitter, and even requests for more photos!
In another way, though, I am kind of starting to lose my mind. You hear a lot about people hardly sleeping when they have newborn babies, but those are their own, human babies. I didn't think I'd be up half the night every night for at least three weeks when it's Ginger who gave birth, but I was wrong. I usually try to go to bed at 10:30. I take Ginger out "one last time," wash my face, brush my teeth, and turn the lights out. But Ginger and the puppies need this and that, again and again, and before I know it, it's 1:30 AM! Then she wants to go out again at 4:30 AM. And again at 7 AM. And that's just the overnight hours!!
If you read my last entry about the puppies, you'll remember that my mom and sister asked me not to take pictures of them (even without the flash) until they were used to their new eyes (which only opened eight days ago). I lasted only until five days ago, when I saw Spot and his little sister snuggling and decided that if I was careful, maybe I could take just one picture:
Then the next day, I couldn't help myself when I saw Brownie doze off during lunch. Her eyes were closed, so she wouldn't even notice, right?:
Likewise I rationalized the photo below because everyone was facing away from me. I wanted desperately to take this picture because it shows their little paws and tails:
The day after that, Brownie had fallen asleep on my chest, and when I needed something in another room, I didn't want to disturb her by setting her down. The other rooms are colder (I keep my bedroom heated to between 74 and 78 degrees just for the puppies, though I've been enjoying it myself), so I closed my jacket around her. Photo op! Too bad I wasn't as camera ready as our little Brownie. I could have at least combed my hair, right?:
Once I'd gotten started taking pictures of Brownie, I wanted to get a good one of her face. When she woke up, I tried, but gosh does she wiggle a lot now that she's seeing and walking! Here I tried once:
Twice:
Good enough!:
I've been trying to make sure Ginger gets fed enough. The day the puppies were born, the vet advised me to feed her as much puppy food as she wants since he often sees gaunt, nutrient-depleted nursing mothers. So Ginger eats four or five meals a day now, and each meal is what a dog her size should ordinarily eat in an entire day! Every day she eats entire can of wet puppy food (divided into two meals), plus a cup and a half of dry puppy food (divided into two or three meals). Both are high quality (though I've seen more expensive brands in the store), so this comes out to about $3 a day, nearly half as much as I spend on myself!!
Anyway, I weighed Ginger two days ago, and after nearly three weeks of eating like this, she's still only 1/3 pound heavier than she was 2 weeks after I found her, before anyone (even the vet!) realized she was pregnant. Here she is in her sunshine spot, a couple of days ago, looking pretty healthy:
(When she was pregnant, Ginger liked for me to put her soft blue bed in the sunshine spot, and whenever the sun moved and no longer shone on her bed, she would find me, lead me to the bed, look at the bed, look at the new sunshine spot, and then look up at me with disappointed eyes so that I'd move the bed. When she wants something, she can be a very good communicator!)
The puppies have made a lot of progress in the last week or so. In addition to opening their eyes, they have begun to stand, walk, and occasionally even bark! Now that they're more mobile, they clobber one another even more in the name of good snuggles. Por ejemplo:
And he goes for it!:
Poor Ginger has begun to feel the effects of their increased mobility as well. Here she is "hiding" from the babies in her blue bed. Notice how they've stretched out her nipples:
Yesterday, I even caught Spot chewing on her ear, while Blackie gnawed on her back leg. Luckily, they don't have teeth yet, but it's only a matter of time.
Now that they're up and walking a bit, the puppies have begun spending daytime in the large plastic bin I recently purchased (42" X 19", with all-important 6" high sides), while continuing to spend nights in the box they were born in (22" X 19", with three high sides and one low side in the front that they climb out of if I don't block it).
In these pictures, I tried putting Spot on some newspapers on top of my bed. Where once he was merely "highly photogenic," he is now "incomparably adorable," with his new little eyes that make him look like someone you're used to seeing in glasses wearing contacts for the first time. Or something like that. Also, he looks like my mother's father, who was someone I liked a lot. As with Brownie, it took a few tries to get a clear photo. Once:
Twice:
Good enough!:
(In the above picture, you can see a legg'd bookshelf I designed and built myself. I wanted a place to set my phone while it charged that could also hold books and would leave the electrical outlet easily accessible. It does all those things very well, and the materials only cost something like $35, including those fancy pre-cut jigsawed fol-de-rols.)
The black puppy doesn't get a lot of facetime on my blog, does he? It's because his fur is so dark, he's nearly impossible to photograph. Here's one of the better pictures of him I've taken so far, and you can still barely make out his features:
Here I cheated and used my webcam, which has a screen-flash. It didn't seem to bother him, and you can actually see his face, though it still doesn't quite do him justice:
Everyone says Blackie is the handsomest. Spot is very conventionally cute, like he could be on posters or even on TV, but Blackie looks like he stands a chance of becoming a fine, large dog. His paws are the biggest of the three of them, and he weighs the most by a lot. At nineteen days old, he was the first to weigh 2 pounds. Today, on their three week birthday, the other two have yet to pass that mark, and little Brownie is nearly 1/2 pound behind!!
Here's another Spot photo shoot. His mom jumped up on the bed to join us, so when I tried to take his picture, he wouldn't hold still. He ran away:
And snuggled up to Mama:
I think the picture below turned out incredibly well considering I simply rested the camera on my knee and pointed it back up at us:
Even though I bought the large bin for the puppies to play in during the day, the thing they do most of all now is sleep:
Even when I put them on a disposable puddle pad on the carpet to play and explore, they ended up going to sleep. Here's our giant chunk o' puppy, absorbing all the light in the room again:
I thought this was just a different angle on the same scene above, but it turns out Brownie and Spot happened to strike the exact same pose again:
Brownie tends to snore more than both of the boys put together. I worry that her respiratory tract is underdeveloped, and I especially worry when the boys try to sleep on top of her since she is the littlest. So it warmed my heart this morning when I found the boy puppies keeping her warm without crushing her (though, given their track record, it was probably just a coincidence):
So as you can see, I'm quite crazy about my little dogs. Although I'm not alone. Yesterday, when I was searching for some info on a message board, I found this:
Have I gotten to this point yet? Am I a Crazy Dog Lady?
More importantly, is it too early to open a college account for Brownie? I think she's gonna be the smart one.
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