BACK ON THEIR FEET

A virus swept through the litter this week, starting with Stitch and ending three days later with GeeGee. Midge was the only puppy who didn't get sick. I think she is just too much of a tough girl to succumb to an illness.

The hard part of having a litter of eight sick is watching them to determine who threw up or who had diarrhea or who isn't eating. To make it a little easier, during the day I kept the sick puppies inside in the pen and the yet to be sick and recovered puppies on the deck. At night the well puppies went in the pen and the sick ones in a crate - yes foster homes, some of them have slept in a crate. This made it easier for me to monitor their progress. Fortunately this virus seemed to follow the same pattern with each sick puppy; they skipped a meal, threw up a few times, slept a lot, eventually we got some water down them, they had diarrhea (really horrendous by the way), able to eat a little and have some medicine, back on the deck playing like nothing had ever happened. The whole process took about 16 hours.

The decision was made that it would be better to delay the puppies going home day to make sure they are completely recovered before they have the stress of leaving their litter mates and starting on their new journey. So instead of leaving on Friday as originally planned they will go to their new homes on Monday. I feel bad for all of the foster homes who were expecting to spend a fun filled weekend with their new pups, but look at it this way - you get an extra three nights of sleep and with each day, the puppies are getting bigger and sleeping through the night better.

Here are the little darlings - back on their feet again.