I am bless to be able to see my grandchildren durning Covid restrictions because I provide child care for them. I so enjoy sharing our puppy raising process with them. They just love to watch the puppies play and cuddle them. This is good for both puppy and child – the puppies get socialized with young children and I get to teach my grandchildren to love and respect animals by being gentle and caring with our puppies.
Today Ruska’s babies are 24 days old. They are now mini dogs and getting cuter by the day. The puppies hind legs have become much stronger and they walk with that cute wobbly “puppy walk”. Some of our puppies have even learned to climb.
Early this morning while still dark, I awoke to a commotion in the whelping box. Ruska had just nursed the puppies, hopped out and was resting at the bottom of our bed. When the puppies didn’t settle after a couple minutes I had to check things out. As I often do, I grabbed the flashlight from the bedside table and shone it into their box. I did my puppy count and discovered we were one puppy short. I quickly discovered our 10th puppy……he had climbed out after Ruska and was now lying on a carpet beside our bed. Yes, it was now time to put the final door panel into the entrance of the whelping box. I always put off doing this because Ruska won’t jump over the full door. She will now bark for me to remove the panel and let her in. LOL
The puppies have reached another milestone – their milk teeth have started coming in. Some mothers stop nursing when their puppies get their sharp teeth (I can only imagine how much they can hurt). Not Ruska though; she is such a devoted mama! Ruska will continue to nurse her babies and gradually wean them after they start eating solids at four weeks old.
Pics of our sweet puppies on day 24
