Ohmer's Westside Beagles: It's Hard to Believe, Puppies Nearly 4 Weeks Old!

Hi Everyone!

It has been a week since I last posted and I'm sure you are all anxious to hear how our puppies are doing. Thanks for bearing with me, as my schedule over the past 2 weeks has left me with little energy and even less spare time. I'm happy to say that puppies are cute and chubby and snuggly, and I'm thoroughly enjoying all of their puppy antics!

The past week has seen a huge amount of change in the puppies. They are much more mobile and I've expanded their space to include our entire kitchen. They run around, pouncing, stumbling, and tumbling all over the place. They seem to enjoy chasing each other and mom, and can often be found wrestling and chewing on each other.

Speaking of chewing, puppy teeth have started to come in and the puppies now have a mouthful of tiny daggers. They have put these chompers to the test, trying to eat food out of mom's food bowl, so we've started offering gruel to the puppies. Gruel is basically soaked puppy chow that is smashed in warm water to give it a soupy consistency. The puppies go to town on it and we are offering it twice a day right now. Hopefully the extra calories the puppies get from the gruel will give Rogue a little bit of a break, as we are struggling to put weight back on her since the puppies were born. We've been mixing canned food in with her puppy chow to encourage her to eat more, since most everything she eats goes straight to making milk for those ravenous little puppies of hers!

One of the most entertaining things about the puppies is watching them eat their gruel. They all dive into the plate full of food head first with little legs flailing and tails wiggling. When all is said and done, they are filthy from surfing through their food, but mama Rogue then cleans them up. They then wobble around like little drunks, headed back to their bed, where they throw themselves into a puppy pile to sleep off their stupor. I don't know why the puppies look like they are drunk after they eat, but it is pretty darn funny to watch! I captured some of this action in the video that posted to YouTube earlier this evening, so you should be able to check out some clips and see this for yourselves.

One thing to keep in mind when you take a look at pictures and video is that I got new collars for the puppies. As a result, the color of collars has changed. Blue boy and green boy are still the same, but yellow boy is now red, yellow girl somehow became pink, pink girl is now turquoise, and orange girl is purple. These collar colors will now stay the same until you all take puppies home, so hopefully this change won't be too confusing. Take a look at puppies in the pics below and I will get (tons) more pictures posted to Picassa in the next day or two.