Puppies on Vacation

The puppies took a little trip to IL today for their 2 week vacation. Joan Atkinson is taking care of the little punks while I go off to CA for my Team in Training event. Since they are gone, I may be able to have more time to edit some of the videos I have of them. There's more of the playtime video and we took some video at Joan's today. Of course, the puppies wouldn't hold still to be stacked for still photos, so Barb suggested taking video. Maybe I can pull a decent still from the videos. I will post the new videos when I are able to get them finished.

The Great Hayfield

Ok, so the lawn needs to be mowed... I did a little with the reel mower, but it's tough to get that to chew through the overgrown weeds.

The puppies were out today for about 3.5 hours. They're pooped now! :-)

I thought maybe I could put the litter box back into their pen and they would use it as a toilet and not a bed. No such luck... This is a photo from earlier, but the "toilet" has a similar appearance tonight.

The Great Outdoors

Tonight we took them out into the side yard. The lawn is in pretty dire need of mowing, so it was a challenge for them to move about well. I was going to take some more video, but my batteries were dying. I need to figure out where the rechargeables are and get them charged. Monday, the puppies move to Joan's house. She has generously agreed to take them when I am in San Diego for my Team in Training event.

We'll take some more pictures on Monday, when I meet Barb at Joan's. This will be the first time Barb's seen the litter. We'll see who she likes...

Puppy (Mama and Grampy) Playtime

I wanted to get the puppies across the living room last night, so I decided to let them walk. It was supposed to be like a little puppy parade. As you can see from the video, that plan didn't exactly pan out. Spot was in the other room for quite awhile after they were allowed out of "their room." Of course, at the end of the video, Marvin has to be where he believes he belongs - in the middle of things! :-) Sorry for the "Criminal Minds" audio in the background. There's much more video of the puppies, so maybe I will put more of it together and post it. Tomorrow we will try to take stills of the boys.

Finally New Pictures!

I tried to use their new-found luring skills to get them to "self-stack." Clearly, it didn't work well. :-) They were four weeks old yesterday.
Pictures from top (two shots of each): T-Bone, Jack, Spot, Girly Man

Puppy Playtime

Yesterday was the first time I witnessed the puppies' attempt at playing. Elapsed time was about 7 minutes before everybody was too tired to continue. The orange tint in the video is from the heat lamp.

More Pictures

We decided to take photos outside today. It was sunny and I thought that a light flashing in newly opened eyes might not be such a good thing. As it turns out, it probably wouldn't have been a big deal. Little Smackwater Jack is still the most active - the three big guys are slugs. Hopefully, things will be better when they can actually master walking!

Pictures at one week

The little guy remains quite small. He's still strong and is not losing weight, but he's not gaining at the rate of his big brothers. We took photos of the guys on the 8th day after their birth. (It was supposed to be on the 7th, but I don't think they really changed that much.)