o'cockaigne

Christmas. How fun can it be! Standing out in the cold in your pajamas at night to ensure that the puppies do not do their business in the house but outside. Of course they don’t all go out at the same time and they don’t do everything at the same time. After this they have to eat and play extensively. All in all, it will take you almost 2 hours before you can go back to bed! But rarely do they put anything in the whelping box, so things are going in the right direction. Hopefully they will be completely housetrained in two to three weeks. But the door has to be left ajar so that they can go out, and we have made several adjustments to this. Fortunately, they understand the small crack through which to go outside, even at night, but they also feel how cold it is there and for some that is the signal to turn around and to relieve themselves on the corrugated cardboard inside. So there is no other option than to persist to go out in my pajamas in the middle of the night!

Then that litter of 2 puppies in May was a lot easier!

Just a few more days and then they are already 6 weeks. In the meantime, they make the whole house their playground and they know where to find Cytaugh when they feel like a sip of milk. They are doing well, the largest is still the largest and the smallest the smallest. There is more than a kilo difference between the two, but not in their brains! The two smallest females, Caira and Chasslynn, are the two smart ones and the most enterprising. Charlaigne and Caoimhe are a bit calmer and the males, Calum and Crumbaugh are real males; occasionally playing the boss but mostly lazy.

After the meals of steak tartare and puppy milk, they now mostly rely on meat and they like it the best. Very soon they will have their first day-old chicks, sprats and little chicken necks. Line training has started and the car is no longer strange to them. Next Monday they will be chipped and on Tuesday they will receive their first vaccination.

Cranston absolutely loves them and loves to be with them all the time. In his way he is very gentle with them but now and then a puppy flies through the air! Fortunately, they are still made of ‘rubber’ and can withstand a lot. Especially Caira is his favorite and she really lies down to be chapped! Brandir and Cearrean think they are still a bit too small, although Cearrean is very interested, but he thinks it is a bit much, 6 puppies.

Yes, Cearrean, a chapter on its own. After a period when things went reasonably well, things are going in the wrong direction again. You can clearly see that he has a lot of headaches and he takes it out on his housemates. Two and a half weeks ago I had an MRI scan of his head after Judith Adriaansens, the naturopath which is treating him, said there was ‘a’ process going on in his head. She was right! There appears to be a cyst between his large and small brains. This presses on the cerebellum and causes pain. It is also known that the cerebellum is not only responsible for motor skills but also for emotion, aggression, empathy and so on. So Cearrean’s behavior is very explainable, but also almost no longer tenable in recent weeks. He can very unexpectedly attack one of his housemates and especially Brandir does not accept this anymore. Cearrean’s behavior causes a lot of stress and tension and we had hoped that the medication he is now on would change this. Unfortunately this is very disappointing.

And when this was the only problem, but he also has problems with his right knee and his back very regularly. The pain relief that he receives is not sufficient for all these things and it especially occurs in the evening. Everything that comes within a radius of 4 meters is grunted. Really not fun. We still have to look at it, his behavior is very variable at the moment, but all in all I see it gloomy for him.

And Cranston, he is a very beautiful puppy but … his lower jaw remains too short. After having his lower puppycanines removed at a very young age in the hope that these would not hinder the growth of the lower jaw, I unfortunately had to decide to have the lower canines shortened. This happened 2 weeks ago.

All in all, not such a good time. Fortunately the puppies make us laugh regularly and we enjoy them a lot.

It is now Tuesday December 29th. The storm last weekend was not conducive to housetraining! How they hate that dirty weather! And annoying that they are! It was also a short night. After they went to sleep with a full belly at 11:30, I only at 12:30, the first one woke up again at 1:30! Then it took until after three o’clock before they decided to go back to sleep. But at 7 am the alarm went off again because my car had to go to the garage (Simon was allowed to do that). After the puppies had eaten and had a mini nap, it started again. They really went out of their way to drive me crazy and squeaked, screamed and screeched the loudest. Even after they ate a pound of meat and had dessert at Cytaugh! And while I was trying to sort things out, they immediately reorganized it into a mess! If someone had said that puppies are FUN at the time, I would have strangled that person!

Yesterday the chipper came and they all have their number and their DNA has been taken. This all went very well.

This afternoon they will receive their first vaccination and will therefore have to make a longer drive than they are used to so far. The times they were in the car it went well, but those were only a few laps around our roundabout.

And then they have to be pricked for the liver shunt test next week. I don’t expect there to be a liver shunt, but you never know!

Until now they are growing well. They prefer to eat pure meat without puppy milk and still like to drink at Cytaugh. Cytaugh is not so happy with it anymore because those teeth are quite sharp. So drinking with mom will soon be over!