Dog tired – and that’s just me!

The pups are now 4 and 1/2 weeks old and growing fast. In the last 10 days, they have put on 1kg each and now weight approx. 3kg each.

I have to say, I am totally exhausted. I move from sheer joy to wondering why on earth I ever do this in a matter of minutes.

Last week, I went to my spin class as usual on Thurs evening. I normally come home afterwards and crash in front of the TV. The difference is that now I have pups to feed, mess to clear up, kitchen floor to mop, etc. As I was mopping the floor at 9pm at night, I could feel my thighs getting tighter and tighter. the next day, I felt as though my right thigh was going to snap every time I bent down. Thankfully Paul was home that evening and over the weekend, he had to do all the work whilst I sat on the kitchen worktop directing him to mess that needing cleaning up as I couldn’t even stand on my leg at one point without it being agony!

I remember now how physically demanding this job is. Fortunately, after resting for 2 days over the weekend, my legs feel ok again. Good job as Paul went away again on Monday and won’t be back until Friday.

I now have “Moppers back”. It’s probably a bit like tennis elbow although I imagine tennis is more fun than mopping a kitchen floor!!!

the pups are now waking at 6am every morning as the sun comes up. Which means that I am up within minutes because the noise is horrendous. Then it’s downstairs to feed Pepsi, let her out and then onto the pups.

I start my day by boiling the kettle before feeding the pups which means that they now associate the sound of the kettle with being fed!!! Oh, the puppywalkers will love me for that!

It takes about an hour for each feed because I feed them, then clear out their sleeping place which involves removing the soiled newspapers, hoover the floor, mop the floor, prepare their next meal (involves weighing out and soaking dried puppy food), washing their bowls up, cleaning the floor again because as soon as I clean it, they mess it up again. then there is vet bed to wash twice a day, toys to wash too as they get pretty dirty.

Feeding them is a job and a half with 7 pups. Normal breeders might put one large plate of food down and allow the pups to feed. the problem with that is that they feed at different rates so you end up with a runt of the litter. As all of these dogs are destined to be guide dogs, it’s important that they all get a good start in life. So they all have a separate bowl and the challenge (should I choose to accept which mostly I do and sometimes I give up on!) is to keep them on their own bowl.

Usually in seconds, they move from bowl to another. So I sit on the floor with them and move them back as fast as they move. It basically looks like an upper body arm workout because as fast as I move one pup onto its bowl, the next pup has moved and I pick that one up and put it back on tis bowl… and so on for about 4-5 minutes.

Finally, I kneel on the floor with my arms around Beacon fighting off the remaining 6 puppies. Beacon is such a lovely laid-back dog. He’s a slow eater. There is always one in the litter who is slow. He eats quite happily but he just takes his time. Which means that when the others have finished eating, they want to push Beacon out of the way and eat his food too. So I sit with my arms around him fending off 6 lively, determined puppies.

Then, I stick the bowls in the sink, ready to be washed, grab the blue roll of paper because as fast as you put food in one end of a puppy, it comes out the other end. So when all 7 are making a mess, the challenge is to get the mess cleaned up before they stand in it and get covered in it and smear it round the kitchen floor.

Usually, Pepsi is hovering at this stage dying to come in and clean up any remaining puppy food. Which of course, she can’t because she doesn’t tolerate meat very well so it’s back on to my hands and knees to clean up the puppy food before I let her in to feed the pups.

So Pepsi feeds the pups, then she wants to play with them and rushes round the kitchen with pups flying everywhere. She’s a bit of a boisterous dog when playing so her version of playing with the pups often leads to them flying about and smacking their heads on the floor. So there are squeals from the pups and from me shouting “Be gentle!”

Oh this is so much fun.

In about 5 mins, Pepsi gets dizzy from running round in circles (I do too when she does it!) and I let her out of the room again. We have a child gate on the kitchen door so she lies down the other side of it and watches me clearing up.

If there is time I like to sit on the floor with the pups and they all leap up at me, barking, growling, trying to eat my hair, biting my legs and arms, chewing my clothes and biting my shoes. Yes, I’ve learned to wear shoes all the time when they have grown their teeth

This morning, Blade had some kitchen roll in his mouth and when I tried to remove it, he sank his teeth into my nail. It brought tears to my eyes!

eventually, the pups start to fade and I put clean vet bed down and they fall asleep on it. We have 6 panels of puppy fencing up that keeps them contained so I close that off and put clean newspaper down as soon as they have gone to sleep. Then mop the floor. Usualy Angus or Blade don’t want to go to sleep so they squeal at the fencing. I’ve discovered that if I pick them up and carry them in one arm and mop with the other, they usually fall asleep within a bout 1 minute. Then I put them back with the other pups and all is quiet and I can carry on!

This week, I’ve been playing a noise CD with the pups which has every kind of noise on it that you can possibly imagine. So they are now used to the noise of traffic, steam trains, police sirens, hairdryers, pneumatic drills, thunder, heavy rainfall, children squealing (although I often fast forward through that one… it’s soo piercing!). All in all, there are 32 different noises. There is a man laughing which sounds very sinister and scares me but the pups don’t seem to mind him!

For the last 3 days I’ve been coughing very loudly and fake sneezing. At first they were a bit scared but now they barely notice. They seem to quite like my singing!

I’ve also been playing lots of different radio stations. the last litter we had didn’t like Classic FM but this litter fall asleep to it and they also seem fine with Radio 1, Talk sport (not my favourite) and Radio 4.

Crikey. We have done a lot in the last week! We’ve also had lots of friends with their children to play with the pups so they’ve been well socialised. Oh, and they also had their first trip outside yesterday. Most of them managed to climb over the doorstep and onto the concrete path and didn’t seem to mind the wind blowing their fur (other litters were freaked out by this at first).

All in all, they are pretty easygoing and pretty chilled out puppies so I hope this continues. I like to think that all the hard work we put in is worthwhile. Of GRacie’s 22 pups, 21 passed so I like to think we had a small part to play in that.

sorry no pics.,.. I just can’t hold a pup, a mop and a camera! Paul is home on Friday and off work next week so hope to get lots of pictures of them next week.

Next week, the local infant school are coming to see the pups so that should be fun!

Hope you enjoyed reading

Jude. x

 

 

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