AuRoara (note the updated spelling) says that now that Christmas is over, there is no need to feign angelic behavior.
Like any child, she saves the worse (and cutest) temper tantrums for Mom. Mother Zenith does look like she can handle the pressure, though!
Even the human dads find it hard to ignore the snapping of teeth!
The pack doesn’t take its normal daytime nap when Geoffrey is home. Instead, today was mostly constant in/out/up/down. For Aurora, of course, the motivation for all movement was PLAY!
I went to church and by the time I came home and did some stuff it was late, so no visitors today. We did discover that Aurora doesn’t seem to want lunch anymore. She’s enthusiastic about breakfast and dinner, nearly cleaning a big bowl of wet puppy food and kibble.
Aurora also has discovered that she can use the human’s fixation on bodily functions to get trips outside whenever she wants. She runs to the very back of the bricks and often to the way back. She smells and does taste testing for everything!
Fortunately we removed dangerous plants — like foxglove — when we had our first litter in 1995. Now we just have to keep patroling for foreign objects and interloping predators.
So far so good.
We wound up the afternoon posing for a family picture. Sorry that we didn’t have someone at the camera to get the girls’ attention… especially Apex’s.
But, here’s what the Ozdachs looked like this afternoon.
Day 77 — The Ozdachs Pack
Metro is in the incubator at the emergency room where we brought him at in the middle of the night.
When we fed him yesterday afternoon, we hoped he had turned the corner. He sucked from the bottle, and the amount of fluid our vet calculated that he drank sounded good.
Unfortunately, the feedings at 6:30, 10, and 1 am had him eating very little. He kept losing weight, getting down to 4.97 ounces at 3 am from 5.39 ounces at 9 in the morning.
He was born at 6.31 ounces… losing weight the first day is normal, and he went down to 5.71 on Tuesday night. But, yesterday was his day to start showing gains, and he didn’t.
We didn’t know if he’d last until morning, so we went to the vet at 3:30.
The ER vet who checked us in said that his body temperature was low, probably in part from the drive over where he was wrapped in towels and had a heating stone… and still lost body heat!
At about 8 this morning the ER doctor called and said that Metro is holding his own. He’s being fed every 1 1/2 hours, being kept in the incubator, and maintaining both this weight and body temperature. They hope that he will start being more active and be ready to feed from a bottle again today.
In the first week, the doctor said, some puppies just don’t catch on and start eating. They fail to thrive.
The photo below shows Metro in his first hour of life. He was smaller than his sister then, and has continued to be thin. His failure to eat from his mother or the bottle is life threatening.
Caution! Fragile! Metro in his first hour.
We are rooting for Metro. Eat, boy!
MUNI, the girl seen here on the left, is gaining weight. The boy is losing weight and not staying well latched on.
The Midday Report today has to focus on getting nourishment to the boy.
The first week of their lives puppies aren’t very interesting, anyway. They eat and sleep. They crawl over mother to find a dining spot, but they don’t play, open their eyes, or generally act much more than consumers of milk. That’s ideally.
The girl, who we are tentatively calling MUNI, is doing okay. She is constantly on a nipple and sucking. She’s gained weight.
Since yesterday’s report Mother Zenith has started eating more (but not a lot), drinking some water, and peeing some. She likes cottage cheese the best, will eat a couple pieces of kibble mixed in.
Yesterday, Zenith was agitated much of the day. We believe she was in pain from the day-before surgery and the lack of pain pills available. (The universal wisdom in 2018 is to not give pain meds to nursing mothers unless it is absolutely necessary. This suggestion is endorsed by female vets, not just males on some Senate panel.)
But, today she is on the upswing. She seems to be gradually recovering from surgery.
Our third patient, however, is not following an ideal path. Metro, the boy, is lively and seemingly strong as he crawls along his mother. But, even when we lead him to a nipple, he will nurse for a very brief period of time before wandering off. He has actually lost weight in the last 24 hours. Losing weight in the first 24 hours is normal. Continued weight loss is not normal nor healthy.
We have armed ourselves with powered canine mother’s milk, pet bottles, and suitable sucking devices. Our local vet is coming over at 2:30 to show us how to get him eating from the bottles. If he doesn’t do that well, we have feeding tubes ready.
That’s all for the 2:15 report. Stay tuned!
A day for vigilance, or how to act like nervous grandparents.
Our major concern at the moment is that Zenith ate only a breakfast of boiled chicken breast at about 7 and has refused more, refused more with rice, refused more with rice and chicken broth. She also has moments of whining and nervousness, moving the puppies further back in the whelping box, especially if both Geoffrey and I are in the room at the same time.
The puppies seem fine. The girl continues to nap on a nipple and wakes to nurishment. We worry that the boy stays on a nibble only a minute or so before climbing further or wandering around. He is neither whining nor lethargic. But isn’t as a steady sucker as his sister. We bought Esbilac (canine milk replacer) just in case we need to supplement his intake from Zenith.
Zenith’s Puppies Together While Mom is Out
We have received a lot of advice and suggestions from friends — thank you!
I suspect that Zenith is in some pain, still from yesterday’s surgery. And this is all new and strange!
And, thanks to Geoffrey for his duty in the puppy room. He and Zenith are calmer together than she and I, but I worry about how little Geoffrey has slept.