Four Weeks

Duvel at four weeks of age.

There's been a lot of changes in the past week. The puppies are much more active and playful now. Their legs are growing. They are looking like puppies now rather than small loaves of bread. We had one day of stagnant growth, even a couple who lost weight, because Della got sore from the puppies teeth. You certainly can't blame her, but we also couldn't let the pups go without eating, so we have taken over most of the feeding with puppy gruel/mush made from dry puppy food pulverized in the blender with added milk and water.

Modelo

The pups really love it and it has taken the pressure off of Della. She can still feed them when she wants or needs to, but we don't have to worry when she gets up after just a short feeding session. All the food we are feeding her will hopefully benefit her now, not just the pups. I hope she'll begin to put on some weight. She still goes in to check on them and she will feed them periodically, usually from a sitting position rather than laying on her side for maximum access.

The switch to solid food is resulting in solid poop, and some significant weight gains too. By Friday all but two of them will be over five pounds. My promise to Della was that we'd help her get through this and so far we had been mostly watching from the sidelines as she did it all. She seems happy enough to outsource at least part of the feeding to us.

Chimay

Peroni

Killian

Sierra is the largest of the girls and she and Paulaner trade the top position overall from day to day.

Paulaner

Guinness

Allagash probably took the best photo this week.

Carlsberg is dear to my heart because he looks the most like Della with that black leg.

Stella was not the most aggressive eater at the teat
so the switch to puppy mush has really benefited her.

Did I say Allagash had the best pic this week? This one of Abita is definitely in the running.
We are entering the cute, playful puppy phase and I say bring it on.

We moved from one to two feeding troughs after just one day.

I think Della is happy to no longer be the
sole source of puppy nutrition.

You can see that the switch to solid food has increased the rate of growth
over the last two days. Before that it was leveling off.