Well!

I had to run out to the store this afternoon so I locked up (crated or penned) all the dogs just to make sure there was no trouble with Em and the pups. (Sometimes, like children as soon as Mom's back is turned, the dogs will stick their tongues out or twitched their noses at other dogs when I'm not right there to call them on it.) I was gone just about a half hour. When I got home, Emy was out of her pen and running around the bedroom, which is gated to keep those in in and the ones out out. I could tell she needed to go outside because as soon as I opened the gate she made a beeline to the front door. BUT by the time I got to the door, she had already run back to the bedroom. She wanted back in with the pups. So we played that game a couple times before I wised up enough to open the door and leave it open. Duh! as I'm always saying, the trick is to be smarter than the dog! It took her just a minute or two to take care of her outside business, but by that time I had closed the door and gone to the bedroom to check on and rearrange the pups. That means I removed and replaced all the newspapers in the nest and the pen and put the pups on a clean blanket. Not that the other one was dirty... it's too early for them to make a mess... but Emy digs in it and pulls it from one side of the pool to the other (and then moves the pups to the side with no blanket.) I got a very dirty look from Mama when I opened the door and let her back in the house. Then she kind of stomped around the bedroom until I got there and opened the puppy pen for her. She practically jumped into the nest, sniffed everyone and then went to her food and water bowls for a few minutes.

She's really a great mom, always, and has enough experience to know what needs to be done from minute to minute, pup to pup. Unfortunately, I think she also has an active imagination and thinks of all the things that could go wrong when the babies are out of her sight and hearing for more than a minute or two.

Yesterday afternoon, temperatures outside back in the 60s and the house warming up nicely, I put all nine pups in the nest with Emy and they've been there ever since with hardly a peep. Forty-eight hours seems to be the magic time period for newborns to adjust to life outside the womb. They have already grown A LOT! Nine pups completely fill up the space between Em's front and rear legs when she's lying on her side... and usually there are a couple stacked two deep plus one under her chin and another under her tail! I'll get another photo or two in the next few days.

By the way, I put a couple of yesterday's pictures on the website. The lighting is different which shows a lot of color. However, to the naked eye, the first (darker) shots are closer to what the pups look like right now in person. But the new pictures show there are no real black pups in this litter.