Get ready for some cute puppies. This week we crossed the barrier from adorable lumps to real little dogs!

I’ll post a long episode of puppy TV below, which has a series of longer clips from the puppies over a few days. They grow and change fast at this age! In the last post, I talked about how puppies will raise their heads up to the light just before their eyes open. Now, you’ll get to see what happens when their ears open- they start to grow their vocabularies! Instead of just little grunts and squeals, puppies start to bark and howl once they are able to hear. Commonly, people will say ‘oh, they are so noisy!’ and worry about the puppy growing up to be a big barker. I’m here to tell you that ALL puppies make these little new noises as their hearing develops and it doesn’t at all predict future vocalness. It’s a developmental thing. There is nothing at this age (besides parental behavior and pedigree) that predicts how noisy a puppy will be when they are full grown.

That brings me to another point. Very young puppies, when they are healthy, are not wildly different from each other. Yes, one might be slightly bigger or smaller than another, one is brown and one is black, but behaviorally, they all do sort of the same things each day, perhaps not all at the same time, but their behaviors are not super unique just yet. Until about 4-5 weeks of age, you don’t really see baby puppies doing anything specific and repeatable that their siblings aren’t also doing. This is critical to remeber if you are invested in the litter and watching videos- only a tiny snapshot in time each day- but it’s also true for me, who is there with the puppies for hours and hours each day. We don’t spend anytime this age trying to evaluate personality or making temperament predictions, because it’s just not that stage of development yet.

Some interesting behaviors that do emerge at this particular age are pottying behaviors. When babies are very young, they cannot potty on their own. They need stimulation- momma licking them- to pee or poop. But by about 2 weeks of age, they can go on their own. Usually, as soon as they wake up, they take a few steps from where they were sleeping and pee right there. Pooping may take a bit more walking around (and they still prefer to have a bit of help with that) but with enough motion, they can poop on their own. This is a big milestone because it means they are not uncomfortable if mom chooses to spend a few hours away from them at a time. And she does! The boring days of laying continuously with the puppies are over, and Mayhem is still very doting and motherly but also able to pursue interests away from the whelping box.

In the Puppy TV episode below, you’ll get to see two other interesting behaviors towards the end. First, you’ll see the puppies become really active whem Mayhem enters the whelping box. This is normal anytime she has been away for a bit – her precense immediately wakes them up. They can see and hear her now, though I’m not sure either of those senses are highly specific just yet- but they can definitely smell her and respond to ‘feel’- When she moves around in the box, they can feel her movement on the floor. They also know that the smell of mom + fuzzy/soft texture is usually the perfect combo to get milk- so you’ll see a couple of puppies that become activated when she enters the box but start rooting around in their soft dog bed instead of going towards mom. That’s strictly because they are still working on instincts- Smell + soft = mom!

The other interesting thing you’ll see is a bit of a battle for nursing spots. I don’t help healthy puppies (especially really plump ones like this) find a boob to latch onto. They have to do it themselves. This rooting and pushing action is what helps build their muscles- both for the puppy doing the pushing and rooting, and the ones trying to hold onto their spot at the milk bar. You’ll see a puppy that eventually wins a great battle, and the puppy that gets knocked off the boob has very little trouble going to find a different one. There is more milk than these 7 puppies require and more mammary glands than puppies- no one is going hungry here, so working a bit for their food provides great natural exercise and mild stress- both of which are important for healthy development.

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