Update on my dogs

I swear dogs will do anything to get something to eat. Winston has been helping me when I load the dishwasher. He starts “pre-cleaning” any dishes or utensils he can reach. Winston is a real champion at responding to a “leave it” command except when it comes to the dishwasher.

Winston has been getting accustomed to dealing with the newest dog, our Yorkie male Gus. My son and daughter-in-law will be moving in September and Winston and Gus are going with them to the new apartment. Usually Winston does not react well to dogs jumping on his back. He has figured out that Gus is just a baby (about 5 months old) and is not challenging him. The day will come when Winston will let Gus know the behavior will not be tolerated any more.

That will leave me with 6 dogs. Three Shih Tzus, a Yorkie, a Corgi and a beagle-dachshund mix. This bunch will be manageable for me since they fit in one room and are well behaved together outside. They do bark a lot. The Corgi is a barking machine! Kippy can bark non-stop for hours. It amazes me. The beagle-dachshund mix is also a barker. I can tell her voice because there is a distinct hound baying sound to it. The Yorkie, Raina, thinks she is queen of the yard. She thinks she is queen of everything. When there is something to bark about, she does it from the top of a tree stump. The Shih Tzus are much more easy-going and are usually playing around while the others are barking. I wish there were some way to translate the barks into English. Would Kippy be yelling “if you come near my yard, I will gnaw your ankles”? I guess in English her threats would not be as effective.

I will be glad to move back upstairs. Right now the new puppies are in my bedroom. I am very fatigued during the day and I wonder if it is that I am not sleeping well with the puppies near me. Upstairs I will be able to put the puppies and their mother in a room of their own, away from my bedroom! I may find out that I don’t sleep worrying if the puppies are alright. I may start spoiling my Yorkie again. Raina was accustomed to sleeping in my bed until I moved Kitty Cat into my room during her pregnancy. Since I will have a room set aside for the pregnant dog, Raina will be able to sleep with me all of the time.

I am going to end up being the weird lady with all of the dogs!

Miss Kitty skips the rails

The new puppies are 5 days old now. It's amazing how fast they are growing. I haven't weighed them since Aug. 16. In just those 2 days they went from weighing between 5.4 oz. and 6 oz. to 6.5 oz. to 7.2 oz. Kitty isn't gaining any weight, the puppies are getting it all.

I think Kitty has skipped the rails because she gets stressed out easily. It only seems to be in the morning hours though. She will feed her babies and then get under my bed and dig on a plastic container. She sometimes vocalizes while she digs and I mean yodeling! At other times she will hear the babies cry out and runs over to them to bark as if to say "Shut up!" By the afternoon she is cuddling with them and nursing them. I took the picture of her and the pups around 3:00 pm. Maybe it's because they are afternoon babies.

When we all move upstairs, I am going to turn the office into a puppy nursery. It has a gate to protect the pups from the other dogs. I can also put a low fence across the doorway that will allow Kitty to escape from the puppies when it comes time to wean them. I like to start crate training the puppies at the age of 7 weeks and they will be far enough from my bedroom that they can yell all they want to and not bother me!

It's been a while AGAIN

I know I haven’t been very regular in updating my blog. It seems to take a major announcement with the dogs to do it. Well, we are having Shih Tzu puppies sometime in the next 2 weeks. If feel for Kitty Cat, her belly is huge! She didn’t gain any weight this week, but I also have not noticed her eating a lot. She has to be eating because she still poops! She is getting a little stir-crazy. I’ve had her in my room for about 2 weeks. She is accustomed to spending part of her day outside. We just don’t want her out there unsupervised right now. The temperature has been in the 90’s. Plus we don’t want to risk her having pups under the shed! I guess I need to walk her a little more. It should help move the puppies along too.

At the same time we are getting ready for son and daughter-in-law to move into an apartment. It’s not like they have much time to work on it. My daughter-in-law changed jobs and works 50 to 60 hours per week. My son is headed to California next week for a seminar. And their moving date is September 10. It’s a good thing they are living here and not somewhere they will have to vacate quickly. Then I will be moving back upstairs where the bathrooms are! That is the one thing I have not liked about having my room in the basement. The privacy is great, but to take every trip to the bathroom under consideration due to my bad knees was getting old.

Some of our dogs are getting new homes because only 2 can go to the apartment and I can only handle so many. The ones I am keeping are all small and for the most part very well behaved. Hopefully a couple of the dogs will be going with family members so that we can visit with them. My dogs are such a big part of my life, but life seems to be changing and so it is best that things change for some of the dogs as well.

08/18/2008

From what I read, I started this around the first of August. I write on MS Word and then publish to my blog. Every time I do start writing something interferes. Since I started this Kitty has given birth and I turned 54. I have to tell the family no more birthday cakes for me. I had a gastric bypass in 1999. Sugary stuff like decorated cakes causes “dumping”. It is very unpleasant and painful. I decided in spite of knowing what dumping feels like, to eat some cake. It has finally passed, but I still feel yucky!

Kitty had 5 puppies; 3 males and 2 females. She was very frightened with the first and cried out. It scared me to death since the puppy was in a breach presentation. Luckily she pushed hard and out it popped. It was mostly white with black spots on its head and back. I think I am going to nickname him Domino. She waited a couple of hours and the next 2 came back-to-back. One is black and white and the other is brindle and white. The girls were born last. One of them is black, gray and white like her father Ozzie. The last is the most beautiful. She is white and golden brown. I think Kitty has post-partum psychosis. She looks for hiding places and digs on top of a plastic container under my bed. Fortunately she is leaving the puppies where they belong when she goes off on one of her forays. She is so thin and bony since having the pups. I feed her boiled beef liver and puppy chow softened with puppy formula. I hope she gains some weight. The puppies certainly are.

By the way, Hamburger had a false pregnancy. Too bad, her puppies would have been really cute. She has been spayed now and lives with my daughter-in-law's brother.