The Puppies Are Seven Months Old Today!

I read that smaller breeds tend to be fully grown between six and eight months, so pretty soon I'll have to stop calling these guys puppies and start calling them dogs! They reached another grownup milestone this month when the boys got neutered and Lizzie and Mama Ginger (who's still with my parents, who still adore her) got spayed. I was really worried about the surgeries, but it's been 10 days now, and the puppies are as happy and energetic as ever.

Here they are a few weeks before their surgeries:

My sister objected to the puppies being allowed to chew and eat the cardboard barrier I'd been using to keep them in the kitchen. But after I replaced it with this plastic bin, they started in on the cabinets, so I'm afraid this phase was short-lived, and now they're banned from the main part of the kitchen forever. It was cute while it lasted, though, being able to see them through the plastic:

(If you've been following along, you may recognize that as the plastic "day bin" that they were supposed to have their playtimes in when they were small but that they ended up outgrowing in a week! I was glad to be able to use it again.)

Closer to the operations, the boys began harassing Lizzie to a fairly dangerous degree, even when I was around to separate them, so I had to start putting the boys in one place...:

...and Lizzie in another. Here I am keeping her company in the playpen:

I would go back and forth: play with the boys, play with Lizzie. Here, the boys are asking me to play with them again:

(Joey loves to stuff his face into my pockets, down my shirt, up my sleeves, up the back of my shirt, down the back of my pants. His FAVORITE thing, though, is to put his head up the leg of my pants and bite at his siblings through the fabric. I've never been able to get the camera and get a good picture of this, though, because there is a dog's head in my pants.)

Silly boys:

After registering the dogs with the city and buying them collars for their new tags, I finally began to get comfortable with the idea of taking them for real walks in the neighborhood. Each puppy responded differently. Max is terrified of everything and likes to stay close to your feet:

But he's also curious about "the big world":

Walks became especially important after the puppies had been banned from the kitchen for the cabinet chewing incident and had to share a divided playpen (they eventually began chewing splinters off the plywood divider, too): 

When Lizzie's collar is on, the tags often drag on the ground. I guess the city has a one-size-fits-all tag policy:

Lizzie was scared at first, but she got used to walking very quickly and by her second or third trip out she was nearly as good at it as her mom is (which is to say, charging ahead and barking at everyone we meet):

Joey is the funniest one to walk. He darts here and there, zig-zagging in front of you and behind you, barking his funny bark or growling. For a while he was even making sounds like the man-grunt from "Home Improvement":

My sister didn't want to be in any of the photos, but these were too cute to leave out. I cropped them as much as I could:

Here's a picture of Max standing up in the potty pen:

And then making a funny face:

Howling:

And here's everybody just standing around like creepy little people:

Max is chewing on something in this picture:

He still likes to jump up at the camera:

Funny face:

Before the puppies' surgeries, I wanted them to get some good playtime in together (since they would be separated for 10 days afterwards), so I supervised them closely:

Well, sort of:

This is a little series in which Joey tries to eat his sister's tail:

I wanted to make sure to get a good picture of Joey's tiny balls before they got cut off. This was the best I could do, but it doesn't do them justice:

(It was like he had a fuzzy cotton ball stuck to his crotch!)

Joey weighs as much as his mother now, and takes up almost as much space:

He was feeling poorly in the days leading up to the surgery, so I insisted on a checkup first. The vet took his temperature and said he was okay. I think he just plays harder than the others and gets much hotter than them because he's furrier:

He's a happy boy (with a distinct case of ADHD):

After the surgery, Lizzie had to spend playtimes alone in Max's new larger sleeping crate:

While the boys played in the divided playpen, which only aggravated their jealousies. Here, Max wishes my sister would play with him instead of Joey:

But now that everyone's healed up, the boys at least are playing together again:

Lizzie's still a bit too delicate, I think:

Remember when she looked like this?:

Ciao for now!