The Name Game

edited to add: Just because I named them doesn't mean I'm keeping them or that these have to be their forever names!!! Haven't decided what I'm doing yet....

When you only have three puppies it's pretty easy to tell them apart. So it seems kind of silly to keep calling them Green, Yellow and Blue. And once Blue's new parents told us what his call name was going to be, we decided to name all of them.

Reintroducing....


aka WhiteStar's Road Warrior
They really have developed personalities over the past two weeks. Sam (yes I know what a DUMB name it is for a Samoyed but it fis him) loves his great-grandmother Kachina and will play with her as long as she will tolerate him. Sam is also the cuddler in the group, he loves to be held.


aka WhiteStar's ???
Amigo is a really fun (and funny) puppy. His name fits him *perfectly*. He is the one who loves to play, never burns out and is always the first one to come running to the side of the ex-pen when someone enters the room.


aka WhiteStar What's Luv Got T'Do With It
Tina is just like her grandmother Raven was at this age. She simply refuses to acknowledge whe is till ababy and want everyone to treat her lie the Big Dog she really is. Brave and fearless, Tina goes out into the world yard exploring every corner.

Aliy: 3, Rodentia: 0

This morning, sometime between 7:30 and 8:30, Aliy snuck yet another kill in to her kids. This time she left it on the far side of the ex-pen fromthe door where no one would easily steal it. Her last kill, she left inside the ex-pen (while the puppies were outside and the ex-pen was open for ceaning) and Pumpkin made off with it much to Aliy's great distress. Also my great distress as Pumpkin insisted on standing in the middle of the living room *crunching* on it, refusing to "take it outside" no matter how hard I begged.

Meanwhile, we have a winner.... Yellow girl has an ear up. Pictures later today.

6 Weeks!!

All the puppies gained a HUGE amount of weight the past 3 days.... 12 ounces for Green, 10 ounces for Blue and 13 ounces for Yellow!

Instinct

The most amazing thing about having a litter of puppies is watching the mother dog's instinct kick into high gear.

My dogs are hunters.

What do those two statements have to do with each other?

Tonight Aliy brought both into play.

My dogs are not sport hunters. They don't catch and release. They don't just catch and kill. They catch and eat. Mice. Ground Squirrels. Rabbits. Skunks.

They also don't share. Whoever catches it gets to eat it. Except, apparently, when maternal instinct comes into play.

Tonight just before I went to bed I checked on the puppies one last time. Aliy had just come in from outside and had gone to check on the puppies as well. Or so I thought. What she was actually doing was delivering dinner. I found a freshly killed ground squirrel on the floor next to the ex-pen where the puppies are now housed.

This is nothing new. When Aliy had her first litter she brought her kids multiple ground squirrels. It's the kind of thing I should have been expecting, given what Raven did last year. But you tend to block things like this out of your mind, you know?

Under normal cirumstances there would have been no consideration given to sharing with anyone. But those maternal instincts are so strong that they override all normal behavior and cause a dog to bring in such a prize and just give it away. But only to her kids.

How cool is that?

Edited to add: NO!! I didn't let the puppies have the ground squirrel!!!

Not a Care in the World....

5 Weeks Already!!

It's hard to believe these little guys are five weeks old already. In just 4 short weeks they will be leaving for new homes... I'm not yet sure if I am keeping one, but we do know that one has a definite home already, I'll be talking more about that in a post later this week.

The puppies are now very aware that there is life beyond the whelping box. The room where the box is set up is right off of the main entrance/kitchen area of my house. This morning my husband was making breakfast and talking to several of the dogs that were in the kitchen with him. As you can see, the puppies could tell that something was going on.


But they do still spend alot of time sleeping....


There is always at least one in every litter that thinks sleeping behind the litter box is a cool thing to do.

Grandma Kachina

I thought it would be appropriate to tell you all a little about the puppies grandmother Abakan WhiteStar of Tundra Winds WSXM HIC, bred by Darlu Littledeer of Abakan Samoyeds and co-owned by me and Donna Dannen of Tundra Winds Samoyeds.



For a number of years Kachina was the lead dog on the WhiteStar sled team. She was also an amazing weight pull dog, earning awards in weight pull at two different Samoyed Club of America National Specialties including Top Novice Puller in 1998. Kachina is also trained in agility, although she has never competed. She loves obedience work and one day I do hope to get her CD title.

Aside from producing a beautiful litter of puppies 6 years ago, the accomplishment of Kachina's of which I am most proud is that she earned her Master Working Samoyed title at the age of 4 years. At the time she was the second youngest Samoyed to ever earn the title. She was also only the 10th dog to receive a WSXM.

Read more about Kachina on her web page.

I bring up the subject of Grandma Kachina because of an interesting habit she has where the puppies are concerned. Each time one of her daughters has had puppies, starting when they are about 4 weeks old, Kachina decides she needs to keep an eye on them and make sure her daughter is doing a good job caring for her grandkids. Each morning when I let her out, before she will go outside she has to come into the room where the puppies are, count each nose and make sure they look healthy and happy. Only whan she has done her inspection will she then go outside.



Daddy Max

What a goofball he is! A couple days ago he found a chew bone out in the yard. He's been carrying it around for two days now.

Smartest. Puppies. Ever.

I put the litter pan in the whelping box yesterday.

Tonight after eating both Yellow and Blue went from the food dish to the litter box and pooped.

How do they KNOW what it's for????

I'm sure we'll have "accidents" in the days to come, but still, we were 4 for 6 earlier today and tonight so far we are 2 for 2.

Amazing.

They Say You Can Never Go Home Again....

.... but Green Boy tried this morning!

I put the puppies out on the deck early this morning. About an hour later my husband said he'd just looked out the window and saw Green Boy heading for The Hole.

By the time we got outside, Green was nowhere to be found. Neither was Aliy. I began calling her and she popped up out of The Hole. Green had to be down there, but he had gone far enough in that we could not see him.

My husband went inside to get a flashlight, I stood guard at the hole entrances.

Then I had an idea.

I went back up to the deck, grabbed the ice packs and put one just inside the entrance to each hole and made a bunch of noise to attract Green's attention. Within 2 minutes Green had made his way out of the depths of the hole and settled himself down on the ice pack for a nap.

I scooped him up and put him back on the deck. We then reinforced the gate to the steps that one of the other dogs must have knocked down.




The really surprising thing? That a 4.5 week old puppy went down a flight of steps! And that he had some kind of instinct to head straight for the place he was born. How did he know the hole was there?

Blue Boy Naps

This is pretty much what the puppies do most of the time. Nap.






Of course there are times of wild play interspersed with the napping. If you're lucky you may catch them tearing up the whelping box on the Aliy-Cam.

Actually they are still being pretty good about leaving the bedding alone. I doubt that will last much longer. Green was trying to pull it up last night. I plan to go out tomorrow and buy some puppy litter. They are still a little young toget the idea, but I need to get them used to the idea before I have to take up the bedding.

If you happen to catch the whelping box looking like this:


It's because the puppies are spending part of each day now out on the deck!

4 Weeks 1 Day Old

Mine. ALL MINE.

The White Torpedo

Aliy got a bath yesterday, now she's as clean as her kids!



Comments From the Aliy-Cam!

Carlotta said "I like that whelping box, did your husband make it???"

Can I stop laughing now? My husband has many talents. He is an excellent cook. He can quote sports statistics from the past 40 years. And look what a fantastic job he did handling Aliy's little surprise. But he is neither particularly good at designing things nor at building them. That's my job. In fact my degree is in Architecture although I don't use the skills in my real-life job. The whelping box is my design, I built it whan Kachina hadher litter 6 years ago. More details can be found right here.

Carolyn and Leo said "Which one is the energizer bunny?? I've watched them on and off for part of the morning and there is a designated trouble-maker. Poor blue boy gets no peace."

Hmmm.... I would have said that Blue is the Energizer Bunny. Any time there's trouble int he whleping box he's usually involved. Maybe I need to pay a little closer attention the next few days, maybe Yellow and Green have decided it's time for paybacks!

Janette said "can I say again how gorgeous these little fluff balls are!"

Sure you can say it as often as you like, Aliy and I love hearing it! But they are not so little any more. They now all weigh over 4 lbs!

Milestones

The puppies polished off an entire plate of mush this morning. I think it's time to start regularly scheduled supplemental feedings now that they are past the "learning how to eat" stage.

The puppies trashed the whleping box last night. Mom Aliy is slacking off on her clean up duties so it's time for me to start working harder!

Blue Boy joined in the group howl this morning!!! Every morning at some point (and every evening as well) all my dogs will start howling together for about a minute and a half. It's always fun when the baby puppies join in for the first time.

Next big things coming up in the lives of the pups? Probably early next week they'll go outside for the first time. It's also time for me to dig the litter box out of the garage and go get some puppy litter. They are still a little too young but I'm thinking by the middle of next week I need to be prepared!

3 Weeks 1 Day

They get cuter and cuter everyday!



They have gotten very fond of the ice packs, in fact my husband is picking up a couple more today so we can make sure we always have frozen ones!


Breakfast time....


Look! The puppies have new toys! How long until Pumpkin steals them and trys to take them out into the yard?



I may not have mentioned that I put up a Gallery Page for the pups. There is a link in the right sidebar. I update it each week when I put up the weekly "birthday photos". It contains all the pictures that have been on the blog so far, as well as the weight chart and the progress chart.

Speaking of the weight chart, we've reached the point where the pups will only get weighed a couple times a week so there will be no more daily weight updates.

As always, the Aliy-Cam will be running 7 x 24 except for when it decides to freeze up. I do check every morning and several times during the day but if it goes down, feel free to let me know!

Growing Up

Not only are they starting to look more like puppies than gerbils, they are also starting to act like puppies. They are starting to play with each other and today Yellow Girl ate a little mush!





It's not like Aliy's first litter, where if they did not have fresh ice packs at all times they screamed their heads off, but they do seem to like them.

This weekend I will be in Boulder with Max and Babe at a show, while there I'm going to look for some puppy toys to keep them occupied. The Aliy-Cam should get lively over the next few weeks!