Four weeks have passed so quickly! It always amazes me how fast the puppies go from helpless newborns that crawl, can’t see or hear, to the active four-week-olds they are today. Luna’s puppies have grown so much and are learning and experiencing new things each day. It has been another busy week for sure!
Potty Training Started
The puppies are now able to void without their mother’s help, so it’s important to start potty training. Since puppies have a natural instinct to move away from their sleeping area when they need to go, I want them to learn “where to go” before they start on solids.
It is important for puppies to learn that they cannot “go” just anywhere. Therefore, we teach them that “there is an acceptable place to go potty.” Teaching this at a young age will prevent the development of bad habits that later need to be corrected. This effort benefits forever families by making housebreaking easier when they go to their forever homes.
We start by dividing their whelping box into a potty area and a sleep/play area, adding potty pads and bolster beds. When kept in a small space (their whelping box), their success rate is higher because they don’t want to soil the area where they play, eat, and sleep. Too much room to explore means more accidents. Once the puppies are consistently going on the potty pads, we decide to enlarge their area.
An addition to the Whelping Box
Tuesday we expanded our puppy area with the addition of a designated potty area. I took one of the used potty pads to encourage the puppies to go in the new potty area. The whelping box is their sleep and play area where Luna will feed her puppies. When they wake up and need to “go” they need to move to the potty area to void. I was impressed that in the morning, the potty area was well used.
Puppy Teeth are coming in
Now that the puppies’ teeth have started coming in, it is a good time to begin offering them puppy mush. Sometimes mothers don’t want to feed after their teeth come in, but Luna continued nursing. Such a good mama.
Looking back at week four
Looking Ahead to Week Five
- Puppies will move to the main floor
- Puppies will continue learning to use potty area
- Puppies will start on puppy mush
- Awake time will increase
- The puppies will continue to socialize with each other through play
- Toys will be added to our whelping box for puppies to explore
- Enlarging the puppy area, giving puppies room to play and explore
- Mama will now add the invaluable teaching phase to her caring & protecting responsibilities over the next weeks.
Puppy four-week singles coming soon
