Dog Blog: Puppy Update!!!

Well I thought we would give an update on the newborns.  We did lose one female on the second day.  She was one of our favorites so it made us so upset.  We took her and buried her in the backyard under our big tree.   We are going to get a little monument marker to let everyone know how special her short life was.  Other than that the pups seem to be doing good.  All of them except for two are growing like weeds.  The other two are one of the females and one of the males.  The male who we named Hercules is just a little small and tends to go blue on us every now and then.  He has a strong heartbeat and respiration rate, so we are hoping he can pull through.  The female, Orthia, is the runt so she is small, but boy is she feisty.  I am not that concerned about her living; I just think she needs a little time to catch up to her brothers and sisters.  We have started supplemental bottle feeding with puppy milk replacer for a few of the pups because it is such a large litter and the vet wanted to make sure they didn't dry out Kylie's milk sacs.   We do this every couple of hours so through the course of the day, each puppy gets a little boost.  We named all of them according to Greek god and goddess's names.  The names are as follows in order of birth:

  Female #1: Athena - goddess of war

  Female #2: Aurora - goddess of the dawn

  Female #3: Aphrodite - goddess of love

  Female #4: Luna - goddess of the moon

  Female #5: Orthia - goddess of wild things

  Female #6: Kora - goddess of spring

  Male #1: Achilles

  Male #2: Hercules

  Female #7: Hera - mother of the gods

  Female #8: Fauna - the fallen pup

  Male #3: Morpheus - god of dreams

We wanted to give them strong names with a theme so we researched and all of these names seem to fit the personalities of the pups.  We decided to keep my favorite, Athena, who was the first one born.  She is beautiful and feisty and I am excited to watch her grow as well as the rest of them.  If anyone has any helpful advice on raising pups, because this is all so new to us.  We appreciate any words of advice, because we want all of these pups to grow up big and strong. Thanks everyone on MDS!!!