Today is the day. The day I’ve been worrying about for months.  Today is the day where I leave the comfort of my house, Sugar, and the puppies and I fly to Arizona for a couple of days to celebrate some family milestones with my 3 sisters and mom.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this-Sugar wasn’t SUPPOSED to go into heat until November and babies were supposed to be set for January.  I was thrilled because it’s that time of year that is so cold, dark and dreary that I couldn’t think of anything better than a couple of months surrounded by beautiful puppies!

So I booked a flight with my family to go to AZ for one week. Two days later, Sugar inexplicably came into heat.(like I really BELIEVE that dogs have any sense of schedule when it comes to these things?  I had calculated everything meticulously and then Sugar decided to show me who was REALLY in control!) All of a sudden the dates were changing in front of my eyes, and I had a paid ticket which we had all planned so we could be back in PLENTY of time for important things regarding Sugar.  I guess the best-laid plans……

Then I started thinking-can I even go on this trip anymore?  I certainly won’t be able to be gone a WEEK (nor would I want to if puppies were in my home).  How are we going to arrange to have Ken home with the pups and away from work? Will he know what to do?How is this possibly going to work and maybe I should just cancel going. What I thought was going to be a great trip away with family suddenly turned into a cause for panic. Ken and I discussed the options and we decided I would keep the ticket and we would just play it by ear.  If everyone was healthy, then I would consider going, otherwise, the trip was off.  I figured I would cancel my plane ticket and rebook at the very last minute if it was doable. Then the waiting began. I can tell you that this one little plane ticket caused a whole lot of stress leading up to this point!

But, right before Sugar delivered the pups the flight I was going on had to be changed by the airlines and so I gave them a call saying the new times didn’t work with what I currently had going on in my schedule and so we worked out an arrangement where they changed my ticket and moved it to a return date of Wednesday early morning instead.  This I felt was going to be the best chance to actually make it on the trip.

So I leave tonight for a trip and I don’t return until Wednesday morning.  Ken will take over the care of the puppies and I will do my very best to have a good time and not worry about Sugar and her puppies while away. If you know me, you know that this task will be a difficult one….

Today I thought it would be good to research a little about the puppies and where they are at developmentally at this stage in the game, around 2 weeks old.

Puppy Seeing Ability
Their eyelids remain closed for the first 10 to 16 days of life. Puppies are, to a degree, color-blind. Dogs see in a dichromatic spectrum of colors that consist mainly of blues, grays, white and pale yellows. You see more colors than your puppy and you can also see better closer up. On average, your puppy has 20/75 vision, while humans (with correction, if needed) should have perfect 20/20 vision. Your puppy will see better in the dark and also can track moving objects much better than stationary ones. Remember, dogs in the wild must hunt prey. Their eyesight is based on that premise. Their field of view is larger than ours, they have a special reflective layer in the back of the eye that allows them to see in dim light, and they have both monocular and binocular depth perception. Puppies who are 2 to 3 weeks old and older can judge distance and track fast-moving objects relatively easily. The canine eye is very good at tracking moving objects, especially in dim light.

Puppy Hearing Ability
Unlike their eyes, which are born functional but not fully developed, puppies are born deaf. They cannot hear until 3 weeks or so of age. During this initial 2 to 3 weeks, your practically blind and deaf pup must navigate the world using scent. However, once fully developed, your puppy can hear four times the distance you can! Puppies can hear sounds in the frequency range of 60 to 60,000 Hertz can be detected by puppies while our range is only 40 to 20,000 Hz. Anything over 20,000 Hertz is considered ultrasonic. That’s why we hear nothing when a dog whistle is blown, but your puppy will cringe and cock his head to the side. However, puppies don’t hear low frequencies as well as we do. That’s why puppy toys make such loud, high-pitched squeaks.

Another adaptation that puppies have is the large number of muscles that control the ear. Can you wiggle your ears? I can’t, but a puppy can turn her ears “up” and actually turn the opening to focus on a sound. The canine ear has about 18 muscles that control its position, while we have about a third of those muscles. Breeds with upright ears hear better than breeds with ears flopped over. The distance between their ears is also important. It helps them to localize a sound, and puppies with big heads do that better.

Puppy Smelling Ability
The most important sense for puppies is olfaction or the sense of smell. A dog’s sense of smell is up to 100,000 times as acute as ours. Certain breeds have even more sensitivity, like the proverbial police Bloodhound.

Olfaction is a puppy’s only major sense for the first few weeks of life. Puppies must find their siblings, mom, and milk by using smell, not with vision or hearing. A large part of the puppy brain called the olfactory bulb is much larger and more developed than that of people.

Puppies also have an additional advantage regarding scent: the vomeronasal system. This is basically an additional organ that can interpret scent, and its main use is to detect pheromones.

Dogs’ sense of smell is so sensitive that puppies at the age of 4 to 6 months will be trained to search for drugs, explosive chemicals, and even cancer! Yes, there are a number of researchers who were able to teach dogs to detect cancer, just by scent.

The information above came from the following link: How well does your puppy see, hear and smell?

 

 

Last night I had a treat that was offered to me by my husband Ken.  He called me during the day yesterday and said he would switch places with me for the evening.  I could get the “5-star bed” and he would take an overnight shift on the “Boundary waters accommodations” of an air mattress under our office desk:)  My initial reaction was-“no, I need to be near the puppies”. But then I realized my real “requirement” was that SOMEONE was near the puppies, and since I had to train him in anyways because I was going to be gone in the near future I accepted his offer figuring one good night’s sleep after 16 days would be a treat! Yes, I am married to a wonderful man!

And so the training began-tonight I chose that he would have the honors of just a couple of tasks.  He would change out the whelping box and put fresh linens down; he would do the weights and record them; and finally, he would spend the night to learn Sugar’s cues for wanting to go in the box, go outside potty, or respond to the puppies needs through the overnight hours. And so the evening began……..

 

First, I explained to him how to change the whelping box with all clean materials all the way down to the base layers. Ken wanted to try to “redesign” the changing system but realized pretty early on that it’s a system because people who have whelped puppies for Can Do Canines have figured out how to best deal with this project. I remember the first litter trying to navigate this “chore” and it took awhile but I feel like I mastered the process pretty well 🙂 I had to leave the room because he wasn’t appreciating all of my “tips” on how to do it right!

 

Then on to puppy weights!  He learned how to fix them in a small basket with only a couple of near tip-overs, which of course gave me the opening to tell him ALL about what the puppies need and don’t need and that tipping off of a scale is one in the “don’t need” category. 🙂  After he got them all weighed in and “cataloged”, it was time to get ready for bed, and he went and got the air mattress…….then came in to ask me why we couldn’t just use the baby monitor and he could sleep in the regular bed! 🙂

I woke up at 3am with my ears peeled to make sure everything was going okay-and then I realized that Ken had forgotten to email Dora the nightly update!  Not terrible, but once again I realized that once you get into the rhythm of things it’s hard to change up the process or it throws off your whole game.

Morning came, and he woke me up around 630am (or maybe Sugar came and woke me up!) When I asked him how his night went he said he barely got any sleep and he was going to be worthless for the rest of the day!!! It was all I could do not to burst out laughing! I realized at that point how I could pat myself on the back for being adaptable at the very least; I had been on this journey for over 2 weeks, operated some nights on no sleep at all and until he said that I hadn’t really spent a lot of time thinking about how much different these last 16 days had been!  When you are really enjoying something, I guess you don’t notice the things that take away from that enjoyment if you focus on them instead.  I think Ken got at least a small TASTE of what it is to be a whelping home and that it’s not all about playing with puppies. In fact, although playing with puppies is a definite bonus, providing a caring, learning, safe environment for these puppies and their mom is what’s at the core of why I personally do this.  Cute puppies are just the part that seals the deal!

I think next I will train him in on the laundry portion of this journey……… 🙂

 

Well, I knew it was coming-I just didn’t know when.  Today was the day that Miss Purple figured out that there was a doorway that she could go through to get out of the box!  I don’t know if it’s mere coincidence or if it has anything to do with the fact that their eyes are now open, but now it’s time to put the door panels on all of the time instead of occasionally 🙂  For some reason in my mind I had figured it would be closer to 3 weeks when they figured that little nugget of information out. They must be thinking that things are getting too chaos free in this house, so they had to up the ante a little bit!

So, now is the time where things get fun and interesting!  They are starting to  react to when I go in the box, and they are getting better at walking, they are just beginning to play with their littermates, and they are starting to determine what it is they want.  Pretty soon they will be clamoring at the whelping box door when they hear someone so they can explore their world at large!  I can’t believe we are already at that stage in the game, and although I know there is a lot of work ahead I can’t help but be excited for the cuteness that will be overflowing in that box in just a few days! Every morning is like Christmas morning as a kid, waiting to see the treasures that awaited me in my stocking!

They have received their first dose of worming medication, which went MUCH better than the first litter that I had!  This medicine I guess tastes better so they really didn’t fuss at all when I gave it to them. That’s great news since we have three more sets of the medication to give to them 🙂

I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but I can’t wait to see!

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, today was AMAZING!  It was crazy busy and yet filled with wonder!

The first amazing thing was that the repair was done on my dryer!!!!! I have never been so happy to do laundry in my entire life!  I think the song says “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” and boy was that ever true for my broken dryer. The laundry has been stacking up in preparation for the repair appointment today as we were without a dryer for over a week, and I watch as he was ripping apart my dryer hoping I wouldn’t hear the words that he couldn’t fix it….after about 1 1/2 hours he had fixed it and said “you can try using it a little longer until it gives out”.  That didn’t sound promising to me, but the best part is that I’ve ordered a new washer and dryer that will arrive mid-December.  So as long as it works for a couple more weeks it’s perfect!  After I ordered the new washer and dryer, Ken said the puppies were getting a little bit expensive for his tastes! (With a smirk of course:)

Then a friend stopped over and brought some treats for breakfast and a visit-knowing that she would find me at home, probably in the whelping box, and thought I could use some company:)  We had a great chat and it was fun to catch up and talk about life and puppies!

Around noon, Mark came to do some filming of the puppies and Sugar for the documentary and we (as in Sugar, puppies and I) had a blast in the box-second to last day of bio sensor training, nail clipping, adorable puppy faces, eyes opening…..really, it just doesn’t get much better than that 🙂 I’m amazed that someone who has traveled the world for amazing opportunities, documentaries, and interviews is taking precious time to come and film this process of whelping assistance dogs and is sincerely amazed by it, and I am humbled to think that he chooses to further the mission of Can Do Canines with his incredible skills and talents and that I get to help tell the story! In our conversation, I told Mark that I’m sure one day someone will discover that being in the presence of puppies will cure some disease-there is just NO way I will believe that the feelings I have when I am around them do nothing in the long run and only make me feel good for the immediate time frame.

Green had opened his eyes yesterday, and today Miss White and Mr. Blue followed suit! If it’s even possible, their faces get more adorable with the eyes peeking out at you from a wrinkled face.

This afternoon I got the first strong scent of puppy breath!  It’s been a “hint” of smell before but this afternoon Ken got home from work, picked up a puppy to greet it as part of his daily routine and all I heard was “Puppy Breath!”.  I came in and sure enough there was a definite aroma that for me is incredibly endearing, calming, and all of those words that make you feel warm and fuzzy 🙂

According to care.com this is what a vet says about that sweet breath that many of us fall in love with:

A puppy’s sweet breath may be the combination of a couple of different things. “Puppies are still drinking their mother’s milk and are not yet exposed to the sometimes stinky foods that larger dogs eat,” says Dr. Thomas E. Catanzaro. “Their breath has that sweet mother’s milk smell because their mouths are clean and haven’t yet developed any bacteria or plaque, which typically causes odors.”

Dr. Catanzaro also notes that some vets believe sweet-smelling puppy breath is “the result of gas leaking into the puppy’s stomach from his developing esophagus.”

 

And so it’s already past 2am,  and I don’t know where the day went-but I’m sure I will drift off to sleep thinking about the oh so sweet aroma of everything wonderful on this journey 🙂

Today the breeding coordinator came out for her weekly check of the puppies and Sugar-and it was nice to have someone ELSE in the box for a change!  The puppies are doing great, are plenty “healthy” in their weights, are scooting around the whelping box and generally getting into mischief slowly but surely.  All signs that everything is great:)

Blue and Orange are continuing to try walking when they move to a new destination and the others are right behind them.  Blue has continued the trait of bugging his siblings when they are sleeping soundly, so I decided it was time to create some timeout rules.  Unfortunately, Blue outsmarted me as he figured out how to climb out of the timeout area that I was so proud to have established-it’s a hit on your self-esteem when a 2-week old puppy beats you at your own game!

Sugar bear(our nickname for her:)) had a good check-up as well and was able to have her stitches removed!  She has really endured the road to recovery remarkably well and every day I feel a sense of relief that she is doing so well! She officially was able to be removed off of all of her medications other than her antibiotic that will be finished at the end of this week! I can officially erase all of the timers and alarms I had set up on the various electronic equipment that I had created so that I would remember to give her all of her various medications at the right time each day 🙂 You have NO idea how good that feels!

Although I didn’t see any signs of it this morning,  by afternoon what had made an appearance was the ever so slight slits in the eyelids-telling us that the eyes are just about to open! From the looks of it, in the next day or two these little pups will be able to see the world in front of them, although a very blurry version!

It got me to thinking about why their eyes and ears don’t develop until after they’re born, so of course, I had to check out what Google had to say about it! I think it’s pretty fascinating to learn about all of the things that are either taken for granted or considered insignificant simply because we don’t know the reason behind it. When you think of all of the nervous system things that had to develop in just the past 14 days for these pups, it sort of boggles the mind-even though their eyes are open, clear vision still is down the road a little bit longer.

According to a variety of veterinary websites, here is the basic information about their last two senses to develop and how that is part of the canine evolutionary process:

Puppies lack two senses at birth: sight and hearing. It takes a minimum of 10 days to two weeks for their final two senses to develop. Although lacking their sight and hearing might seem odd to human beings, puppies develop in a way that is advantageous to their species.

Eye Development

Puppies’ optical nerves are developing along with the rest of the central nervous system, making them very sensitive to light. In addition, the eyes themselves are still forming behind the lids. Sealed eyelids protect the nerves and membranes of the delicate organs from hazards such as light or grit. Once the eyes have fully matured, puppies’ lids start to open.

Appearance

Newborn puppies bear little resemblance to adult dogs. They have massive heads with pronounced muzzles suited to nursing. Their legs are short and possess only enough power to scoot their bodies along the floor or ground. Newborn puppies cannot stand. Neither can they hear; their ear canals remain sealed shut. Finally, they cannot see because their eyelids are also sealed. 

Dogs as Predators

According to Stanley Coren, Ph.D., this helplessness makes perfect evolutionary sense. Newborn herbivores emerge fully functional after their mothers’ long pregnancies because they have to be able to run with the herd, in part to escape predators. However, long pregnancies would interfere with predators’ ability to hunt and to survive. Puppies continue to develop after leaving their mothers’ wombs because doing so is in the best interest of the canine species in terms of survival.

The Nervous System

Puppies’ central nervous systems are incompletely formed when they are born. The brains, spinal cords, and nerves are all present in their bodies, but the nerves cannot transmit electrical impulses in an efficient way because they have not been coated with enough myelin yet. Myelin is the fatty layer that carries messages along the nerves. In normal, healthy puppies, the myelinization process takes several weeks, after which puppies can make more purposeful movement.

Today for the first time I noticed that Yellow/Happy/Chunky:) wagged his tail!  It was really subtle, but after Sugar came into the whelping box and they were fed, Mr. Yellow started moving away, stopped and WAGGED his tail for almost 5 seconds!!! It was SO amazingly adorable!  I called my husband into the room to witness the big event (of course he wasn’t quite sure why I was so excited…) and I felt like I did back when my kids would do something amazing for the very first time!

So, is there anything interesting about tail wagging?  I think there is!  I looked into the science behind tail wagging and BBC had an article based on research about tail wagging and if it has any significance:

So, based on the articles below, I feel justified in my excitement about witnessing Mr. Yellow’s first tail wagging extravaganza 🙂

Link: The Science behind a wagging tail
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“Scientists have shed more light on how the movements of a dog’s tail are linked to its mood.

Earlier research had revealed that happy dogs wag their tails more to the right (from the dog’s point of view), while nervous dogs have a left-dominated swish.

But now scientists say that fellow canines can spot and respond to these subtle tail differences. 

When the animals saw an otherwise expressionless dog move its tail to the right (from the tail-wagging dog’s point of view), they stayed perfectly relaxed.

But when they spotted a tail veer predominantly to the left (again from the tail-swishing dog’s point of view), their heart rates picked up and they looked anxious.

Prof Vallortigara said he didn’t think that the dogs were intentionally communicating with each other through these movements.

Instead, he believes that they dogs have learned from experience what moves they should and shouldn’t feel worried about.

He said: “If you have several meetings with other dogs, and frequently their tail wagging one way is associated with a more friendly behaviour, and the right side is producing a less friendly behaviour, you respond on the basis of that experience.””

Another article on the internet says this about wagging tails
Link:  why do dogs wag their tails?
“Interestingly, a 2013 study found that dogs understand the asymmetric tail wagging of other dogs — a right-wagging tail relaxes other canines, while a left-wagging tail makes them stressed.”

Today the puppies are really starting to become more active-they are working hard at getting all four legs underneath them to get around quicker and they are starting be able to get over the tubes (“snakes”) that are in the whelping pen to help them build muscles and hopefully to develop cognitive and simple problem solving skills.

Their personalities continue to develop, and I love seeing them gain what appears to be confidence in their surroundings.  I am continually amazed at their swiftness in discerning when Sugar is close by.  They are just starting now to stir when she even comes in the room CLOSE to their whelping pen and as soon as she steps in, these little balls of fur go into action trying to get to her as fast as they can! It becomes frenetic for a moment until they all get situated (which isn’t always an easy task for 7 pups to get a prime nursing spot!).  They grunt, groan and struggle for positioning with some squeals and trilling; and then the moment happens where they stop and drink, at their most content, and their tails tell the rest of the story! A moment of pure bliss for me to watch, no matter how many times a day I get the opportunity to be a bystander of the process.

I still spend a LARGE amount of time in the whelping pen or just outside of it watching them.  The Bio-sensor training is coming along nicely, and I’m noticing that they are getting much more comfortable with the handling as each day passes, falling asleep during the exercises or becoming like putty into a relaxed state, even when being held upside down!  I take a moment to wonder  what’s going on in their brains while these exercises are happening.  They say that handling the puppy by the main caretaker is good stimulation at this point for the puppies, with one reference stating the following:

“A puppy that receives gentle human handling tends to have improved cardiovascular performance and disease resistance. He also matures faster, develops better problem-solving skills and is better able to tolerate stress as an adult” 

I’m curious about this information and of course it causes me to read on the internet about studies and research that has been done with regards to this.  To me, it’s pretty amazing to think that my activities during these first two weeks as well as the process over the next 6 weeks could have a lasting effect on their cardiovascular performance, reducing disease and helps to make a more resilient adult dog. I realize why it’s so great for visitors to come when they are older to give them the skills and interaction to help them on their path. While people are always thrilled to come visit the puppies when they get old enough, they probably didn’t realize that it’s not a one way street-they are contributing to the potential success within each of the dogs by their interaction!

As much as my husband tries to be the “watch from a distance” kind of person when it comes to this whelping process, he loves these puppies!  I will be coming back into the area after doing something, and there he will be in the room-talking to the puppies, filming them on his go pro, or holding them and calling them sweetheart 🙂  It’s very tender and heartwarming,  and I love that he can enjoy this process as well.  He may not be as “all in” because his days are filled with going to work and picking up some of my responsibilities so I can take care of the puppies and Sugar, but none-the-less it’s an experience for him to enjoy as well along the way!

I don’t take anything I do while working with these puppies for granted; knowing that all of these puzzle pieces fit together for the benefit of the puppies to become the best dogs possible, regardless of whether that means they make it through the whole program and become assistance dogs or it makes them a career changed pet for someone due to extenuating circumstance.  A great dog is the only thing I’m working to attain when I invest my time and energy in these little bundles (although a great ASSISTANCE dog is the jackpot of wishes!) and hopefully what I do while they are in my home gives them enough building blocks to create a future full of promise!

 

An interesting part of being a whelping home volunteer is that you get to experience “first hand” the Global Mission of assistance dogs for those who need them.

Sugar came to Can Do Canines from another organization.  It was determined by that organization that she had what she needed to be a great breeding dog and so conversations between Can Do Canines and them began and soon Sugar was on her way here after being bred out east.  We received a call from the Training Director asking if we would be interested in becoming a breeder host family for her.  We agreed, and it was a month before we were able to confirm her pregnancy of 6 or more puppies!  The news was fantastic and we were thrilled!  And then we were nervous, scared and worried that we wouldn’t be able to do the job right.  After all, these puppies are valuable; they are not ours and yet we were accepting the responsibility of being their caretakers to successfully get them to a set age where they will take the world by storm!  We wondered whether we were up for the challenge and whether or not despite our best efforts if the outcome would meet our expectations for ourselves.

Once Sugar had her beautiful 1st litter of 6 female puppies in August of 2015 we were elated! As the weeks passed, we learned many new, incredible things; like how the program worked, how her puppies would be distributed between the 2 organizations as part of their contract and what that meant as well as how to care for a litter of puppies and her mother.  It was a huge learning curve, but it allowed us to learn more about how these organizations work with each other to increase their breeding program and what that entails.  It was determined that 2 of Sugars puppies would be going with the other organization to another country to help start up a program there.  There were many decisions within that larger decision, and it tweaked my interest in learning more about how organizations operate within those boundaries.  I had no idea when I first started learning more that it was such a complex and intricate series of decisions and agreements that makes this a well oiled machine. Dogs come into the program, new breeding dogs arrive, and some dogs leave the program for other organizations.  I can only imagine the paperwork needed to keep all of these happenings in order!

In the end, Sage and Nutmeg who were 2 yellow females, went to Hong Kong for the program.  They stayed with Great Start fosters here until they were old enough to fly such a long distance, and shortly after the beginning of January 2016 they were on their way to be the change for someone.  They had to learn a new language and everything that goes with that, and reports are that they are doing great! However, raising a litter of puppies and then having some of them go off to faraway lands isn’t easy if you get attached like I do, so it takes a little adjustment in my thinking to convince myself that not knowing how these puppies are doing on a regular basis is just part of the process.

A couple of puppies from this “L” litter will also be designated and chosen from the other organization to become theirs. These organizations help the breeding program within Can Do Canines be strong and diverse and keep their breeding lines at the highest standards possible so that more incredibly high quality assistance dogs can be developed. Where will they go? What will they do? How will they be chosen?  I can’t answer those questions, but it certainly adds an interesting perspective to the whelping home experience!