Hi Becky, 

I hope you had a good trip to Arkansas.  I sent you pictures on snapfish a few days ago of the puppies during week 6 of their lives.  We have had a good week.   

Rain was really having a hard time nursing them due to all of the teeth.  She was only nursing a few times a day and she would have to really bare down to stand there to let them nurse.  You know what a good mom she is and she loves to play with her pups, so I put her on a 24 hour fast to help speed up the “drying up” process last Tuesday.  The pups were eating whole kibbles softened slightly in water at that point for all of their meals, so I knew they didn’t really need her milk any more.  She is not completely dried up, but the fast really helped and she won’t let them nurse when she is with them.  They are on dry kibble now and I free feed them.  I pick up all food and water by 6 p.m. and they hardly ever wake me up at night.  If they do make noise at night, it’s not much and they go right back to sleep until 5:30 a.m.  Then I get up and move them into another pen and give them water and food while I clean up the mess on the newspaper.  Several mornings this week we have even had no poop until after 5:30.  These little guys might be even easier to kennel train than the last litter. 

Another thing I did was start to shave faces when we were outside last week.  Well, I did Vortex first because he’s pretty easy going, and he did quite well.  Then I did Katie because I just wanted to see what she looked like under all that fluff.  She is so petite!  In the last picture on snapfish of them all peeking over the side of the whelping box you can see how much smaller she is than everyone else.  She’s a little doll baby with the girls and me.  She seeks us out to be held and even lets the girls put little shirts on her.  I just got a picture of that yesterday, I’ll have to send that one in the next batch of photos.  Any way, I stopped shaving faces because Biscotti needed a little monitoring with the pups.  Then I didn’t shave anyone else because Morgan and I decided that they don’t look like babies anymore after they are shaved and we want babies just a little longerJ   Chach came over yesterday and said she will help me groom them all before you come to get them next week, so we will get it done.  We are just enjoying their baby faces as long as we canJ 

We also got out the tunnel for the first time last weekend.  You can see Rain and Biscotti showed them what to do with the tunnel, and they love it!  Okay, Katie still thinks it’s really fun to pounce on the outside when her brothers are running through it, but she likes to run through it tooJ  They are just so fun to watch! 

We weighed them on Saturday to give them accurate doses of the dewormer and here are their stats and the number of their individual pictures on snapfish: 

Lightning – 10 lbs. photo 3578 

Sky – 10 lbs. photo 3570 

Vortex – 10 lbs. photo 3572 

Thunder – 11 lbs. photo 3555 

Katie – 8 lbs. photo 3586 

Radar –  9 lbs. photo 3554 

 

Lastly, we took a little family poll while we were playing with them the other night; very informal and unscientific but fun (remember Halle is only 6 and is inclined to vote for Katie for almost everythingJ).  Here are the results: 

Well, that’s all I have for now.  We are looking forward to seeing you next week and especially to meeting those two beautiful babies in person!  I’m sure I’ll have at least one more set of pictures to send you before then.  Also, Chach said we could use her house for you to do the temperament testing.  That’s great because it is close.  You’ll have to remind me what you need for that.  I remember you need an umbrella, but I don’t remember what else. 

Stacey