Next Day After Vet & Before Baer Testing

The crew already ate and won't be eating till they get back from their hearing test. The lone gal is sore today and expressed it vocally this morning. No one else has. She is staying away from the others and this is highly unusual for her but we figure the soreness will go. No fever, no signs of anything else but soreness where the microchip is.

Mommy Wasabi is almost done weaning the pups (it means they are allowing her to play with them now - hooray) and she likes their food (Merrick's Wingaling) mixed in with softened Fromm's kibble that she ate it all so fast that we had to take her out of the room. This is the 2nd time she devoured this particular meal and the pups love it too. Wasabi - no fair - you are stopping feeding them so leave their food alone. :-)

Today, one by one I am going to work with each dog and see what they can do and how fast they comprehend. I tried tiny pieces of chicken as treats from my hand and they went CRAZY for it. So, now I know I can use chicken as a treat when training. Over the last few weeks, I will try other things.

We have found the dogs DO NOT like Fromm's salmon or duck but adore Fromm's chicken thigh, the Merrick's Wingaling, Puppy Plate, Grandma's Pot Pie, Thanksgiving Day Dinner, Cowboy Cookout and we will try them on others. We do know they like the Fromm's dry food softened with our own chicken and steak cut up or shredded in the food processor and mixed in and these two things also do well as training treats as noted above. We will try a few others but really like the quality of the Merrick and Fromm's foods plus adding our own rice, veggies, chicken, steak depending on what you have on hand. We are also giving them goats milk by itself and they rather enjoy that. Do not worry but we put together a package with things they do well on to hold you over for a bit with all the instructions on how much.

We are not finding they have any issues with bowels that some dogs experience with a variety of foods. Even the duck, and salmon that they did not like didn't create a problem but they simply smelled and ate very little.

After the Baer, I will post all weights and results. If anyone else is looking for a puppy, please let us know. We *may* have one available and our good friends had puppies from our Risa's daughter. We saw them yesterday - well I saw them and dogs stayed in the heated car and Nathan snoozed and then Nathan saw them. I am hoping Yvonne posts some photos. In all my excitement, I got some great photos and some not so great - figures. Well, we were tired after the vets. This vet takes a long time checking, ears, eyes, lungs, knees, weight, doing nails, teeth, bone structure, shots and microchips etc. that a couple of hours later we were out the door after 6 pups. We are hoping the hearing test goes much quicker. Pups were amazingly good and the vet staff loved their crate and toys and bumper pads I created just from blankets etc. Toys R Us has some great baby toys that hang on crates or go on mobiles etc. and we are finding they rather enjoy the comfie environment. They initially fussed when they got into the car (they are not used to being in such close quarters with all 6 together) but they soon played and travelled well. I even brought an extra crate pad just in case we had an accident but it wasn't needed. Still, I will bring one today as it's that Murphy's law - if you do not bring it, you will need it.

More later....