"8" and "Weight"

I know it is a strange title but these are two things I can be obsessive about. When you looked at the picture did you immediately count the puppies to make sure there were eight? I bet most of you did. This is what I do all day long. Every time I look in the whelping box I count to eight. I can't imagine how many times a day I count to eight. And yes, there have always been eight. I am fortunate that Tiga is not one of those moms who moves her babies around the house.

The other thing I can be obsessive about is weight. We weigh the puppies every day to make sure they are gaining appropriately. The rule of thumb (according to Inver Grove Heights Animal Hospital) is that they should gain one gram for every pound you expect them to be when they are full grown. For example if the expected adult weight is 65 pounds then they should gain 65 grams every day. All of the puppies are gaining weight and healthy so I am not so fixated on the numbers this year. Last year I was a bit neurotic about it.

In Tiga's first litter there was one puppy who had trouble swallowing (this is Loti). She would grab onto a nipple and nurse like a wild thing and all of the milk would come out her nose or mouth. She was barely gaining any weight. The vet determined that she did not have a cleft pallate and that if she were to survive we would have to tube feed her. Well I am here to tell you that it is possible to snake 6 inches of rubber tubing down a puppies throat. I was a little nervous (okay, really nervous) about doing this, but after learning how, I discovered that it really wasn't that difficult. Because Tiga was ill she was not making enough milk and some of the other puppies were not gaining as much weight as they should either so we ended up tube feeding a few of them. Because of these issues, I was fixated with the scale.

Last year I used a little kitchen scale and had to convert the pounds to grams. This year Eileen purchased a new scale and it is a beauty (see below). It says HELLO when you turn it on, displays the weight in pounds and grams and has a nice blue light in the display area. The sad thing is, I have this beautiful scale and I am not even concerned with weight this year. But yes, I am still dutifully weighing them every morning.