Day 55--Stories from the mountain.

Our little Charlotte still doesn't have a permanent name. I will learn to not leave those decisions to others. We finally got the final results from the hearing tests and I am pleased to announce that all of the puppies, except for Charlotte, are bilateral hearing. They would like to retest Charlotte but my observations tell me that she does not hear and if she does it is not much. It doesn't seem to matter at all to her, nor does it matter to us. She is a beautiful and happy puppy.

Yesterday I decided to give each puppy a Denta bone to try. I had tested Charlotte the day before with one to be sure they weren't going to cause any issues. The puppies each grabbed theirs and headed to their own spot to chew.

 Atz Lee thought a safe place was in one of the potty boxes.

I spend a good deal of time each morning cleaning "the pit". The puppies are all placed out in the pen on the deck to play while I work on the inside play yard. They love playing out there and often crawl up on the bed for a nap while they are there. I remove everything, sweep and scrub the floor. I empty potty boxes and scrub them out before putting in fresh pine shavings. New bedding is put down and any toys that have become soiled get washed. I also change the bedding and potty box in the whelping pen. It always looks and smells so nice when it is done. One of the harder parts of this job is scrubbing out the bottom of the potty boxes. Yesterday I got the bright idea of placing newspaper on the bottoms before putting in new shavings to make the clean up easier. WELL, that was a mistake. It seems some little monkey discovered the paper and what I found in the pen later in the day was a big fat mess. I will say they had a grand time ripping and dragging paper and pine shavings everywhere. I first had to remove paper from everyone's mouth and close them in the whelping pen so I could clean up---AGAIN!

Well, little Miss Eve decided that she wasn't finished with the paper and over the top of the whelping pen she came. She has been an escapee from nearly the beginning and I suspect she will keep Chris on her toes. This is just a portion of the mess after the newspaper caper. 

My other story involves Daddy Gage. He has always been such a good boy. I had noticed for the last couple of weeks that after ten and a half years he was trying to drink from the toilet. That is just something he has never done. I just try to remind everyone to put the seat down. It was all very puzzling. Yesterday it finally dawned on me that where I keep the dogs water bowl is over near the puppy pen and he would have to walk past them to get to the water. The poor boy is afraid of these little monsters. I have moved the big dogs water bowl and he spent a good deal of time drinking from it yesterday.